Jack's Tech Blog

I'm late to managed bots like OpenClaw and Grok Bot.

I tried the research preview of OpenAI's GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark in Cursor; it's very fast and very addictive.

Enabling Cloudflare D1 global read replication reduced cumulative D1 read latency from 1,800ms to 78ms for users in Australia - a 95.7% improvement.

Exploring why AI-generated designs often default to purple gradients and what this reveals about training data bias.

I recently picked up a Starlink Mini to use as a backup connection for my home network.

A journey from TLS decryption and Frida patching to a surprisingly simple solution for extracting the system prompt that Xcode feeds to Claude Code.

A detailed breakdown of my first year with solar panels - generation, consumption, battery usage, and costs analysed.

I discovered Safari/iOS 26 has a critical bug where it sends CONNECT requests instead of proper WebSocket upgrade requests, breaking connections.

A hardware interface for Eight Sleep temperature control using an ATOMS3 Dev Kit, displaying current bed temperature, sleep stage, and bed state on a small screen with button control for temperature adjustments through Home Assistant.

A technical guide for configuring a Ubiquiti Dream Machine to work with Trooli's FTTP service in the UK, including steps to obtain PPPoE credentials and set up IPv6 connectivity by bypassing the provided Technicolor DGA4134 router.

A technical walkthrough of using GPT-4o to automatically generate clear, descriptive titles and descriptions for Home Assistant automations from their YAML configurations.

A technical walkthrough of using GitHub Actions to automatically track Home Assistant automation changes.

A GitHub Actions setup that automatically updates Home Assistant Core and OS versions when new releases are available.

I have owned the Sleep Pod 3 for coming up to 30 nights now, here are my initial thoughts.

My review of the Home Assistant Yellow 5 having used it for 5 months.

How I used OpenAI GPT-4 and OpenAI Assistants to build a bot that answers questions around DigitalOcean's documentation.

In this post I explain how to introduce Renovate into your docker-compose setup, this allows us to pin docker image versions in our docker-compose but also declare them as dependencies that Renovate will raise pull requests for when a new image is publish…

In this guide we will deploy a Rook / Ceph cluster and give some working examples of consuming RWO Block and RWX Filesystem storage.

A guide to repurposing a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client as a WireGuard VPN router with AdGuard for DNS and DHCP services, achieving speeds up to 850Mbps.

Netmaker is a platform for creating fast and secure virtual networks with WireGuard.

I recently switched from using a HP T730 Thin Client running OPNsense as my home router to something more 'off the shelf'... a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Special Edition.

Deploying Ghost on DigitalOcean App Platform.

Configure Google Assistant to communicate directly with Home Assistant over your local network using mDNS, eliminating the cloud roundtrip for faster smart home control.

I use cloudflared to provide a secure tunnel to my home resources.

An updated look at iCloud+ Custom Email Domains in 2022, covering the new catch-all support while highlighting remaining limitations around DNS validation, Apple ID coupling, and email alias restrictions.

Unraid is my favourite NAS OS to run at home.

I recently installed a LSI 9211-8i HBA into my HP MicroServer gen8 as a replacement for a PCI-e M2 SSD adapter that kept putting my filesystem into read-only mode.

There are so many ways to build and host a blog for free nowadays.

Today I learnt something new.

WireGuard VPN refusing to connect on EE mobile data?

A workaround to integrate Nest Thermostat with Home Assistant using Wink as a proxy, bypassing Google's developer program restrictions after the Works with Nest program changes.

A creative Home Assistant automation that uses Google Home's text-to-speech to trigger Alexa Guard when leaving the house, enabling automatic smart alerts for smoke alarms and glass breaking.

Unfortunately this means they now proxy all your DNS traffic using a transparent DNS proxy, regardless of what DNS resolver you have set on your client.

How attackers can social engineer mobile carriers to issue replacement SIM cards, bypassing two-factor authentication, and steps you can take to protect yourself by using authenticator apps instead of SMS-based codes.

In this article I explain how to enable IPv6 connectivity from any desktop in less than 5 minutes.

A deep dive into a NatWest phishing email, tracing the attack through compromised Joomla sites in Poland and Ukraine, and revealing how attackers chain together vulnerable systems to avoid detection.

I recently migrated my blog from Wordpress to Silvrback to Ghost.

Organizing my photo collection has been incredibly liberating these past few days.

Virgin Media why does www.google.com resolve to host-62-253-8-99.not-set-yet.virginmedia.net?

I use Everpix to backup and organise every photo I've ever taken – all 27,159 of them.

Everything requires a password.

If there's one thing I seem to be obsessed with lately and that's security.