Posts

I turned 40 in April, most people would be happy but not me. It marks a milestone in general shittery, a point in time where I’m forced to reflect on a decade of midlife crisis.

It’s been a few months since my last update as per usual! I try not to blog for the sake of it so I wait until I have a few things of value to update on.

After using the Kobo Clara Colour for a few days here are my initial impressions. I’ve come from a fairly old Kindle so this has been really interesting. This isn’t a proper review just my thoughts on the new device and how I use it.

When I was a kid me and my brother read a lot, we devoured books so much so my mum had to keep taking us to the library to get more. Eventually when we got a bit older we started buying our own books and both our rooms became full of Terry Pratchett, JRR Tolkein and other amazing authors. I love reading it transports me to a better place.

A list of my default hardware and software for 2025, taken from here and expanded on. Hope you enjoy! 📨 Mail Service: Gmail Fastmail 📮 Mail Client: Gmail Fastmail 📝 Notes: Joplin ✅ To-Do: Google Calendar & Vikunja 📆 Calendar: Google Calendar Fastmail, Etar 🙍🏻‍♂️ Contacts: Google Contacts Fastmail 📖 RSS Service: Hugo 🗞️ RSS Client: FreshRSS ⌨️ Launcher: None ☁️ Cloud storage: Gdrive & Synology Nas 🌅 Photo library: Google Photos & Immich 🌐 Web Browser: Firefox & Librefox Firefox 💬 Chat: WhatsApp & Signal 🔖 Bookmarks: None 📑 Read Later: Wallabag 📚 Reading: Kindle Paperwhite 📜 Word Processing: Google Docs & Libreoffice 📈 Spreadsheets: Google Docs & Libreoffice 📊 Presentations: Google Docs & Libreoffice 🛒 Shopping Lists: Mealie 💰 Personal Finance: None 🎵 Music: Navidrome/symfonium/feishin 🎤 Podcasts: AntennaPod 🔐 Password Management: 1Password 🤦‍♂️ Social Media: Mastodon 🌤️ Weather: Weather&Radar 🔎 Search: Google & DuckDuckGo 🧮 Code Editor: VSCode & nvim & VSCodium 🖥️ Distros: Win 11, OSX, Arch, Debian, Ubuntu, CachyOS (I use Arch btw) 📱Phone: Google Pixel 7 Pro 💻 Laptop: Lenovo X1 Carbon 5th Gen MacBook Air 📜 Document Management: Paperless ngx 💾 Remote servers: 1 💾 Home servers: 3 3.5 📱Tablet: Samsung Galaxy Tab 9

Happy new year homelabbers! I’m cheating a bit and rolling some of the work I got done in December 2025 into this update. I want to say my homelab is pretty boring now it just works which is awesome, only minor tinkering is required these days so I’ve decided to focus on observability for a bit. Knowing when and what things have gone wrong was sorely missing so I’ve finally gotten round to sorting a lot of that out which I’ll detail in a section below.

Spurred on by this great article from Jessica Journals I’ve decided to document how I handle my music collection in 2025/26. I’ve split the post up into what seem like logical sections.

I think this is the first time I’ve done this although I’m not really sure, for reasons I didn’t do it last year. So this will be an attempt to summarise 2025 into something that makes sense.

I’ve changed site generators and cms more times than I can remember (my git repo has the entire history of this site!) the one thing I try to keep the same is my CV. It changes roughly every few years with either a new job or update in skills. I want a way that regardless of however my site is built my CV is just there ready to go.

The frequency of blogging is directly tied into how work is going, what my physical health is like and what my mental health is like. At the moment work and my mental health suck so I’ve just not been able to put as much effort into blogging. I currently have the following posts that are in some state or another (in no particular order):