Keeping configuration in version control
Monday, 28 September 2026
The server used to be a pile of changes I made at two in the morning and forgot by breakfast. Rebuilding it after a disk failure meant remembering all of them, which I could not.
Power and heat in a cupboard
Sunday, 26 July 2026
Tucking the server in a cupboard is tidy right up until the day it runs hot and throttles. A small enclosed space with a working machine in it is a little oven.
The UPS that paid for itself
Thursday, 9 July 2026
A brief power cut used to mean a hard shutdown and, twice, a corrupted database. A small UPS and a line of config to shut down cleanly on battery ended that entirely.
Why I stopped exposing services directly
Saturday, 2 May 2026
Opening a port for each service felt simple until the logs filled with login attempts within hours of the first one going live. The internet scans everything, constantly, the…