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.

A picture of the MNT Reform Next laptop. It's a 12.5 inch model, a bit thicker than other modern laptops.

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. ...

A picture with the logos of three projects: The Golang gopher, the PostgreSQL elephant and the WoodpeckerCI woodpecker. The Golang gopher is pretty goofy looking, showing two large front teeth in a small mouth, tiny ears and two large eyes. The Postgres elephant is a stylized front view of an elephant, including tusks and a large trunk. finally, the WoodpeckerCI woodpecker is more of an outline of the namesake bird.

Smokeweb: Setting up Database Connections

After implementing a lot of helpers and basic infrastructure for my Smokeweb app (see here if you’re interested in what the project is about), I finally arrived at creating the database connection. In this post, I will give an overview of the Golang test helpers I implemented for tests which need a database, show you how I implemented some scripting for a Postgres database using Podman and then I will tell you how I implemented database tests in WoodpeckerCI. ...

Bahn Journey Nr 4: If it already starts like this...

This one started with 16 minutes of delay right in the first train, before the journey even started. But I still had 13 minutes for my only switchover. So I will be cautiously optimistic. 😅 I ended up arriving only a few minutes late at my switchover station, and after that everything went perfectly fine. Nicely done, thanks Deutsche Bahn! Tally So let’s add this journey to our tally. Date Inconvenience Dest Lateness Overall Lateness Duration 2026-02-12 6 0m 5m 6h13m 2026-02-15 0 58m 58m 7h9m 2026-04-23 2 43m 43m 7h00m 2026-04-27 0 0m 8m 6h13m Totals 2 25m/101m 28m/114m 6h38m/26h35m No inconvenience on this journey at all. ...

A picture of a gamer-y laptop sitting on the tray table of a first class seat in a Deutsche Bahn ICE train. The screen shows the Woodpecker CI web UI for a pipeline run in the Smoekweb project. It shows multiple jobs, some successful, others not. The most interesting one is called 'ut-db'. It is not a normal job, but a service. Its logs are currently open, and it shows the startup of a Postgres database instance.

Bahn Journey Nr 3: Almost!

It is Deutsche Bahn time again! 🎉 And yet again, I’m traveling from the south of Germany to Ostwestfalen, its most exciting part. And incidentally, also the part of the country where the most competent and ravishly good looking people are born. 😇 At the time of writing, the train is perfectly on time. So I’ve got that going for me. But not all is well in the land of white and red trains. Namely, when I went to ordering myself a nice lunch, the menu only showed drinks. Nothing to eat. The nice waiter assured me that food will be available again starting from Cologne. Which is 1) where I’m going to be switching trains today. And 2), that’s two hours from now. 😭 May the gods have mercy on my undying soul. And my grumbling stomach. ...

Smokeweb: Setting up a CI with Go Caches in Woodpecker

In my $dayjob, I’m a build engineer in the CI team of a large company. So I’m reasonably confident that this is going to be only the first post in a long series on the CI setup for my Smoking project. I like CIs and the automated testing they come with. I think it was one of the better ideas the tech industry has come up with. I’m seeing its benefit every day at work. So I also have CIs for most of my private projects. ...