Nova: Building My Own Echo, One Weird Problem at a Time

Nova: Building My Own Echo, One Weird Problem at a Time
I have wanted an Alexa that doesn't phone home for years. Every commercial voice assistant is a microphone in your house wired to someone else's computer, and the whole point of a homelab is that my stuff runs on my stuff. So I built one. It's called Nova, it lives on my LAN, and nothing it hears has to leave the property. The interesting part of this project wasn't the tool itself. It was making…

Introducing Cruxwire: a personal news digest that runs on your own hardware

Introducing Cruxwire: a personal news digest that runs on your own hardware
I read too much news, badly. A dozen RSS feeds, three "read it later" apps I never went back to, and the creeping sense that the algorithm-driven version of all this was optimizing for someone else's goals, not mine. So I built the thing I actually wanted, a personal news digest that runs on my own hardware, ranks stories with a model I control, and never phones home. It's called Cruxwire, and it's open source.…

Managing a Homelab AI Project with Claude Code, Gitea, and the Gitea MCP Server

Managing a Homelab AI Project with Claude Code, Gitea, and the Gitea MCP Server
I am not a software engineer. I think in milestones, user stories, and outcomes. Kim wants a smart garden assistant that tells her when to water and when the blight risk is high. I want to build it. Solo homelab projects like this usually die in a half-finished Docker Compose file. Ceres is different, and the reason is three tools working together: Gitea, the Gitea MCP Server, and Claude Code. The Setup Ceres is a…

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

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" was just a few Philips Hue bulbs and a Raspberry Pi running Home Assistant that didn't do much. It was essentially a glorified light switch connected to Alexa. Fast forward to today, and the Raspberry…