Symmetric vs. Asymmetric Encryption – A Nerd’s Practical Guide (with GnuPG, Certificates & Signatures)
If you use the internet, you are constantly interacting with cryptographic systems—TLS handshakes, package signatures, SSH keys—whether you notice it or not. 💡 Cryptography is not just about secrecy —…
WordPress on K3s — A Nerdy, Layered Update Strategy
This article is a direct continuation of the previous guide. If you haven’t read it yet, start here: Initial Setup: WordPress on K3s (Ansible-managed). This guide describes a clean, deterministic…
From Debian to AlmaLinux to K3s: Or How I Accidentally Built a Mini Cloud 🚀
If you’ve stumbled across my previous post “Operating Community Nextcloud Instances with Ansible, AlmaLinux, SELinux and a Podman-based Collabora Stack” , you already know this started as a totally reasonable…
CKAD Reality Check: Yes, You Can (and Should) Use the Kubernetes Docs Like a Weapon
I’m currently considering taking the CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer) exam from the Linux Foundation. The main reason is simple: I want to seriously strengthen my Kubernetes skills and move…
fwupd: Because Firmware Shouldn’t Require a USB Stick from 2009
Let’s be honest: firmware updates have historically been… a mess. You download a mysterious ISO, write it to a USB stick, reboot into some arcane environment, pray to the silicon…
Installing Longhorn on a 3-Node Homelab Cluster
If you’re running a small Kubernetes homelab and want persistent storage with redundancy, Longhorn is an excellent choice. 🚀 Longhorn is a lightweight, cloud-native distributed block storage system for Kubernetes.…
Automatically Verifying All RAR Archives with a Bash Script
In my previous article I described how I reorganized several terabytes of personal data and bundled large collections of photos into RAR archives. This approach dramatically reduced the number of…
Archiving Terabytes of Personal Data – My Nerdy RAR + Bash Workflow
Over the past decades I have accumulated a few terabytes of personal data. Mostly things like: Photos Music Documents Videos Random project backups For a long time everything lived in…
My First Kubernetes Cluster in the Homelab
Today I set up a Kubernetes cluster in my homelab – abbreviated K8s 😁. I’ve had some professional exposure to Kubernetes before, but I wanted to run a Nextcloud installation…
😱 Today I Almost Threw My Entire Rack into the Trash…
😱 Today I Almost Threw My Entire Rack into the Trash… So, today I had one of those classic homelab panic moments. 😅 I was copying a huge dataset back…