SumGuy's Ramblings
The art of wasting time.
Docker, self-hosting, AI/LLM, Linux, and DevOps — explained by someone who learned the hard way. No fluff, no enterprise jargon, just practical stuff that actually works on real hardware.
Recent Posts
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YubiKey + age: Hardware-Backed Encryption Without GPG
Use age + age-plugin-yubikey to encrypt files with a key that literally cannot leave your hardware token. No GPG drama required.
9 min read -
K9s vs Lens vs Headlamp: Cluster UIs
K9s, Lens, and Headlamp compared for Kubernetes cluster management, find the UI that fits your workflow: terminal TUI, desktop GUI, or self-hosted web app.
10 min read -
Pangolin: Self-Hosted Cloudflare Tunnel Alternative
Pangolin gives you Cloudflare Tunnel-style access to home services via a $5 VPS, WireGuard mesh, and zero vendor lock-in.
9 min read -
Krew: Kubectl Plugins You'll Actually Use
Krew is the kubectl plugin manager. These are the plugins that genuinely save time in a home lab Kubernetes setup, plus exactly how to install them all fast.
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Aider & Cline: Terminal AI Coding That Actually Ships
Aider vs Cline: two agentic AI coding tools that go beyond autocomplete. Which terminal AI coding agent ships cleaner work?
9 min read -
systemd-resolved: The DNS Resolver You're Already Using Wrong
systemd-resolved does way more than mangle /etc/resolv.conf. Here's how its stub resolver, split DNS, DoT, DNSSEC, and resolvectl actually work.
10 min read -
KEDA: Event-Driven Autoscaling Self-Hosted
KEDA lets Kubernetes scale workloads on queue depth, cron schedules, and broker lag, including scale-to-zero for serious home lab resource savings overnight.
9 min read -
Beszel: Server Monitoring Without the Prometheus Tax
Beszel gives you Prometheus-style multi-host monitoring via a single hub container and tiny Go agents, no Grafana, no exporters, no yak shaving.
9 min read -
Crossplane vs Terraform for Home Lab
Crossplane vs Terraform and OpenTofu for home lab infra: GitOps-native Kubernetes CRDs versus battle-tested HCL, which one actually fits your k3s cluster?
10 min read -
OpenTofu in 2026: Where the Terraform Fork Stands
Two years after HashiCorp's BUSL switch and IBM's acquisition, OpenTofu is the mature open-source Terraform fork. Here's the honest state of play.
11 min read -
Goldilocks + VPA: Right-Size Pods Without Guessing
Stop guessing Kubernetes pod resource limits. Goldilocks + VPA analyze real usage and recommend exactly what CPU and memory your containers need to run.
11 min read -
Capsule: Multi-Tenancy for Home Lab k3s
Stop handing out cluster-admin access to everyone. Capsule gives k3s lab tenants real namespace isolation without the overhead of spinning up vCluster.
10 min read
