HOMELAB 24/25
Repurposing EMC 520b Sector Drives
I recently picked up a batch of enterprise-grade EMC SAS hard drives off eBay for a homelab storage project. They were dirt cheap and came from a decommissioned EMC storage array. I slotted them into a JBOD (KTN-STL3 enclosure) and connected it to a Linux server running Proxmox – but quickly hit a wall. The […]
PSA: A 16GB Intel Optane ZFS SLOG is Not as Good as You Hope
I recently picked up a 16GB Intel Optane drive off eBay for pennies, thinking I was in for a big win. My hope? That it would supercharge ZFS synchronous write performance when used as a SLOG (ZIL) device -especially to help out some aging SAS SSDs I also bought online. Those early-gen SSDs turned out […]
Psyked Website
The client, Psyked, needed a multi purpose website with several custom features. Ecommerce, hosting large quantities of photos, blog posts and scope for custom designed elements down the road. After establishing budget (which was low), I started assessing which platforms would be best for the project. Initially the client wanted to go with Shopify, but […]
BUD 925 Ring
I decided to get into jewellery making? Very lightly. A friend commissioned me to make a replica of his copper ring which was wearing away and making his finger green, and I happily obliged. Not bad for a first attempt! Excellent fun and definitely the first of a few. https://youtu.be/89f1EO6C85Y
C.A.L.C.I.F.E.R
Cortical Archival Library for Contextualization, Inference, Filing, and Efficient Recall Yeah, that acronym is a bit of a stretch… but you get the idea. Calcifer, or Cal for short, is my ever growing AI powered assistant written in python. It’s main function is to archive and organise all my thoughts, so they are browsable, indexable and […]
PSA: Running a Tor Middle Relay Can Cause Blacklisting
This is just a quick note to reassure anyone else who thought they were losing their mind because they thought there was something wrong with their firewall or DNS. In the end, it actually wasn’t DNS for once. This is not a particularly ground breaking or surprising observation, but good to have solid evidence that […]
Helium Leak Detector Teardown
I rescued a helium leak detector from the optical engineering lab’s rubbish pile at Loughborough University. I wheeled it back across town my house and eventually took it to my workshop where I tore it apart. It had plenty of interesting tech inside including a mass spectrometer and turbo-molecular pump, which I take a look […]
Recovering CEPH/Proxmox After a Major Oopsie
Archive of a panicked post by me on the LevelOneTechs and Proxmox forums in August 2024. I hope this helps some poor sod who also goes through the same stress! Please reach out if your cluster reaches the same sticky end and I will do my best to help you. Needless to say I learnt […]
EM1 Prototyping Vlog
A playlist of every update, frustration and breakthrough I had during the prototyping process of my main university project: The EM1. I recommend checking out my other post about the EM1 to find out more about it. View the Full playlist Or watch it here…