Uses

My digital toolbox — the stuff that's survived real-world use. What started with a $50 Raspberry Pi in 2015 has evolved into a homelab and workflow that actually works for me. Living document. I update it when I change something significant.

The physical layer

Hardware

Desktop PC2019 · self-built: Intel i9-9900K, 64 GB RAM,RTX 3090, 1TB NVMe + 8TB HDD. The 24GB VRAM handles 7B–34B LLMs comfortably. Killed a 2080 Ti overclocking for inference in 2020 — taught me to respect thermal limits.
Framework Laptop2022 · DIY Edition: i7-1260P, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS. After three laptops became e-waste because one component failed, the modular design won me over. More expensive than a Dell with similar specs — I value the right-to-repair philosophy.
LG 34WK95U34″ ultrawide · 3440×1440: One seamless ultrawide beats dual 27″ monitors. Three vertical code panes side-by-side, no bezel gap. Game changer for monitoring dashboards.
Wooting 80HEkeyboard · ~$185: Analog hall-effect keys. Thought it was marketing hype until I tried it. Per-key actuation points and analog input changed how I interact with my machine. Can't go back to mechanical.
Glorious Model Omouse · ~$50: 67 grams. After years of heavy gaming mice and wrist pain, going ultralight was a revelation.
SteelSeries Arctis 7X+headset · ~$150: Wireless that actually works. 30+ hour battery, comfortable for all-day wear, and the mic doesn't sound like I'm in a cave.
Steam Deck1 TB · first-gen LCD: The original LCD model, maxed out to 1 TB. Half handheld console, half pocket Linux box — it runs Arch, so a fair share of its screen time is me SSH'd into the homelab from the couch. Occasionally I also play games on it.
Steam Machine512 GB · SteamOS: Valve's second swing at a living-room PC, a decade after the first Steam Machines quietly flopped. The 512 GB model, just arrived — a SteamOS box on the TV that doubles as one more place to check whether something actually runs on Linux.
Chemex 10-cup + Baratza Encorecoffee · $50 + $170: Good security engineering requires good coffee. Non-negotiable. The ritual of manual pour-over gives me time to think through problems.

The server rack

Homelab

Ubiquiti UDM Profirewall · ~$380: Spent years with pfSense on repurposed hardware. UDM Pro isn't as flexible, but it's stable, fast, and I don't maintain another box. VLAN segmentation, IDS/IPS, DPI. Handles gigabit without breaking a sweat.
Dell PowerEdge R9102017 · ~$800 used: Main hypervisor. 4× Xeon E7540 (48 threads), 256 GB RAM, ~400 GB ZFS pool. Runs Incuson Ubuntu 24.04 with BOSH-managed Cloud Foundry and Concourse CI. Sounds like a jet engine at full throttle. ~$150/month at idle — cheaper than equivalent cloud.
Raspberry Pi 5×3 · $80 each: Dual Pi-hole for DNS, Authentik for SSO, assorted auxiliary services. The ARM tax is real but power draw is negligible.
Raspberry Pi 42015 · the OG: The one that started it all. Still running after ten years. Handles Chrony NTP for the lab. Won't retire it out of principle.

The editor

Software & Development

Ubuntu 24.04 LTSdaily driver: Tried Fedora for six months, kept breaking after updates. Ubuntu LTS is boring, which is exactly what I want on machines I depend on.
Incusvirtualization: Fork of LXD after Canonical's licensing changes. Cleaner virtualization than ESXi for a homelab, less overhead than KVM alone.
VS Codeeditor: Left it for Neovim in 2023 over Electron's memory footprint, ran a tidy Lua config for two years, and quietly came back. The AI coding tools live here now, and fighting my editor to reach them stopped feeling like a principled stand. The RAM it eats is a rounding error next to a browser anyway.
Astrostatic site framework: What this site is built with. Islands architecture, zero JS by default, excellent Markdown and MDX support. The sweet spot between Jekyll and Next.js.
Git + GitHubversion control: Everything lives in git. Dotfiles, homelab configs, blog posts, scripts. If it's not in git, it might as well not exist.
Terraforminfrastructure as code: Managed firewall rules as code. Best investment I made in automation. Turned "click 20 things in Ubiquiti's UI" into a reviewable pull request.

The perimeter

Security & Monitoring

WazuhSIEM · self-hosted: Self-hosted SIEM for the homelab. Open source, integrates with CISA KEV and AlienVault OTX threat feeds. Detects real things, not just noise.
Bitwardenpassword manager · self-hosted: Self-hosted via Vaultwarden. Integrated with YubiKey for 2FA. If a service doesn't support 2FA, it doesn't get my data.
YubiKey 5C NFChardware token · $55: Hardware-backed 2FA for everything that supports it. Two keys — one on my keychain, one in a safe as backup.
Pi-holeDNS filter · ×2 for HA: Network-wide ad and tracker blocking. Blocks ~40,000 malicious or privacy-invasive domains. Caught a smart bulb trying to phone home 47,000 times in one day.
Prometheus + Grafana + Lokiobservability stack: Metrics, dashboards, and log aggregation. Alertmanager pushes tontfy for mobile notifications.

The assistants

AI & Coding Tools

Claude Codedaily driver: Primary AI coding assistant. Strong at architecture, long-context reasoning, and multi-file refactors. Most of my AI-assisted work runs through this.
Codex / Gemini / OpenCodemulti-model: Different models for different tasks — routed viaNexus Agents. Gemini for research, Codex for deep code analysis, OpenCode for privacy-sensitive work.
Ollamalocal LLM runner: Runs Llama, Qwen, and Mistral models locally on the 3090. Privacy-sensitive work never leaves my machine.

The subscriptions

Services

GitHub~$4/mo · Pro: Where my code lives. Pro tier for private repos and Actions minutes. This site auto-deploys from GitHub Pages.
Cloudflarefree tier: DNS, DDoS protection, edge caching. Free tier covers everything I need for personal projects.
Backblaze B2~$50/mo · off-site backup: Off-site backup for homelab. 3-2-1 strategy. Cheaper than S3, fast enough for nightly restores when needed.
SimpleLogin~$3/mo: Email aliases for every service signup. When a company gets breached, I know who leaked my address. Compartmentalization reduces blast radius.

Running on my metal

Self-Hosted

VaultwardenBitwarden-compatible: Rust rewrite of Bitwarden server. Lighter than the official container, same clients, same features I actually use.
AuthentikSSO / identity provider: Self-hosted SSO for homelab services. OIDC, SAML, LDAP. Integrates with everything that speaks standard identity protocols.
BookStackwiki · documentation: Homelab wiki. Procedures, runbooks, and "why did I configure this like that" notes. Future-me always thanks past-me for writing things down.
ntfypush notifications: Self-hosted push notification service. Alertmanager, cron jobs, and scripts all send alerts through it.

The shell

CLI Tools

Zsh + Starshipshell + prompt: Modern shell, fast prompt. Starship is written in Rust and stays out of my way. Git status, exit codes, runtime indicators at a glance.
ripgrep (rg)replaces grep: Faster than grep, respects .gitignore by default, sensible defaults. I've genuinely forgotten how to use plain grep.
fdreplaces find: Faster than find, friendlier syntax, respects .gitignore. The find command's argument order has haunted me for years.
batreplaces cat: Syntax-highlighted cat with line numbers. Looks better piped into less or used directly. Small quality-of-life win.
ezareplaces ls: Modern ls with git integration and tree view. The successor to exa.
zoxidereplaces cd: Directory jumper that learns your habits. z proj to jump to your most-used "proj*" directory. Saves hundreds of keystrokes a day.
fzffuzzy finder: Fuzzy finder for everything — files, command history, git branches, process lists. Ctrl-R will never feel the same again.
tmuxterminal multiplexer: Sessions survive SSH disconnects, split panes for parallel work, shared sessions for pair debugging. Can't work without it.
htop + btop + ncdusystem monitoring: htop for process monitoring, btop when I want the pretty view, ncdu when I need to find what's eating my disk.

Last updated July 2026.