Welcome!
On here, you will mostly find articles on running my home lab, in the hopes that others can benefit from my own trials and tribulations.
Yacy Part 2: Crawling and Putting it on the Backburner
This is the second post in my series on the YaCy distributed, self-hosted search engine. The main topic this time is getting pages into the search index via crawling. In contrast to search engines like Google, Bing or Kagi, the content of the search index in YaCy is driven by its users. YaCy has an integrated web crawler to crawl pages and add them to the search index. It can be invoked in one of three ways: ...
I'm Frustrated about my Inability to Advise Homelab Newcomers
I’m going to vent a bit in this one, mostly about myself. Just a few minutes ago, the following post scrolled past me in my Fedi timeline: Anybody self host their blog on their sbc or pc at home? Is there a good tutorial I can follow? I’m especially concerned about opening up ports or exposing my home ip to randos. I read that post and immediately thought: Running my blog on an SBC at home? I’m doing that! Concern about opening ports and “exposing” the home IP to the wider internet? I’ve certainly got opinions on that! ...
Bahn Journey Nr 5 & Nr 6: Way too early, but going well
Getting there, 2026-06-12 The main feature of this one was the really, really early start. I had to get up before 6 AM to catch my train at 07:59. Contrary to my normal habits, I did have an appointment on the day of the train journey. So I decided to go for an early start to have a Deutsche Bahn safety margin. I got the chance to try something new from the Deutsche Bahn restaurant for breakfast: The antipasti plate. Can’t recommend. It comes in a plastic holder, not on a proper plate. Two pieces of “too cheesy” cheese, a couple of pieces of salami, a few crackers, some soggy olives and a dip. None of it of any quality. First time in quite a while that I got disappointed by Deutsche Bahn’s food offering. ...
Yacy Part 1: Deployment
Welcome to the newest rabbit hole I’ve found myself in. This post starts a new series where I’m taking a look at the YaCy self-hosted, distributed peer to peer search engine. And probably web crawling and search ranking algorithms. In this post, I will concentrate on how I deployed YaCy into my Kubernetes cluster, and a few pieces about my first steps with it. You won’t find answers to questions like “how good is it as a Google replacement?” in this post. There’s a lot more work ahead for me to actually make that judgment. ...
Wants vs Needs: Trying to Talk Myself out of Ordering an MNT Reform Next Laptop
I don’t really need a new laptop right now. But I do want an MNT Reform Next. This laptop has been scrolling through my Fediverse feed for quite a while now, and I’ve found myself scrolling through that CrowdSupply page every time it comes up. It is an Open Hardware machine, meaning for most pieces, detailed schematics and data sheets are available, so that it could be easily modded. Specifically, the motherboard and keyboard are entirely open. The CPU itself, the Rockchip RK3588, is not open. But small steps. ...