Practical patterns for useful release notes and clear versioning. When to choose semantic or date based versions, what to include in each note, and how bad releases and version numbers hurt teams.

Practical patterns for writing commit messages and pull request descriptions that speed up reviews, preserve intent, and keep projects healthy. Includes templates you can drop into any repo.

A practical guide to backing up to AWS S3 with restic, restoring data when you need it, and managing retention so costs stay sane.

A practical walkthrough of the home-lab repository changes since 1.0.0: Immich photos stack, backup improvements, a Zigbee2MQTT migration, safer redeploys, and a tidier blog deployment, plus upgrade notes.

A look at how I stabilised the climate in my garage-office using a heater, circulation fan, extractor fan, and dehumidifier — all automated through Home Assistant.

After a busy few months of work, renovations, and family time, I’m back to posting. Here’s a quick update on what’s been happening and what to expect next, including some upcoming Home Assistant projects.

A week at Lake Garda that mixed ferries, castles, Eurocamp pool time, and standout espresso, with a faulty hire car and a few storms that became part of the story.

After a month using a Raspberry Pi 5 as the daily machine, general work and coding are smooth, heavy CAD and slicing stay on the desktop, and the constraints noticeably improve focus and output.

A tiny workflow file adds newly opened issues and PRs from multiple repositories to one GitHub Projects board, with a PAT for permissions and no Enterprise upgrade needed.

How I added a Netgear LM1200 4G modem as a backup connection for Virgin Media outages, ensuring seamless failover and uninterrupted connectivity.