Jason

Insulating the Chicken Coop – The Data

Earlier this year, I took the time to insulate the walls of the chicken coop and cover the insulation with 1/4" plywood. I had hoped we could go without needing a heater in there in the deep winter, and luckily…

February 19, 2026Carpentry, Home Automation, Homestead

The Painless Problem: Why Kibana Runtime Fields Needed an AI Skill, Not Better Docs

When I owned the Runtime Fields authoring experience in Kibana, we shipped a feature that was elegant in concept and brutal in practice. The concept: define fields at query time against an existing data view, no reindex required, perfect for…

February 3, 2026Development, Product Management

Goodbye Ring, Hello Privacy

With it being ever more likely that someone could access Ring cameras or lock me out of access to Ring footage, I decided it was time to leave Ring for the doorbell cameras. I had two, one on the house,…

January 13, 2026AI Projects, Security

Beyond the IP Address: Modernizing Homelab Infrastructure for Security and Scalability

In a growing homelab environment, managing services through raw IP addresses and port numbers quickly becomes a bottleneck for both security and usability, not to mention incredibly annoying unsafe browser warnings. My goal for this project was to move away…

January 11, 2026Home Automation, Security

From Smart Bulbs to Skynet: The 2026 State of my Home Automation

When I left Elastic, one of my goals was to dive deep into home automation and finally "level up" my setup. Looking back at where I started when we first moved to Graham, it’s almost comical. Back then, "Home Automation"…

January 1, 2026AI Projects, Computers, Home Automation, Security

Co-Writing Music with AI

I set out last week with a simple but slightly provocative question: Can I write a song with AI the same way I would if I hired a professional producer and songwriter? I didn’t want the AI to just do…

November 2, 2025AI Projects, Music

Cedar Wall 1-day Build

The studio room has had a white block wall since we moved in. There was no power and I had no interest in drilling to mount anything so it really blocked my options in the room. I helped a friend…

July 18, 2025Carpentry

Nova’s Fast dev API

Today's been about getting this thing set up properly. I'm not a developer by trade, but I've always been a coder. That being said, I consider myself a prototype developer, so my projects tend to be loosely managed. I wanted…

July 3, 2025AI Projects, Home Automation, Python

Nova Assistant: It was only a matter of time

My house is definitely smart to the extreme. I have a lot of automation that runs all aspects of the house, security with AI, and dedicated servers for automation and AI. One example of how I have already wired some…

June 28, 2025AI Projects, Home Automation

A Special Place for Tadpoles

The folks at Hoshi Koi were nice enough to let us scoop up some tadpoles with our pond plants. They said the fish wouldn't bother them, but there were no tadpoles the next day, so I decided to try again…

May 16, 2025Pond