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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gVisor vs Firecracker vs Kata for Agents
Letting a coding agent run npm install and arbitrary shell? Compare gVisor, Firecracker, and Kata on startup, KVM needs, Docker fit, and network egress.
14 min read -
Network Namespaces by Hand, No Docker
Rebuild Docker's bridge network with ip netns, veth pairs, a Linux bridge and nftables NAT. Six iproute2 commands, three nft rules, and a 2 AM debugging edge.
15 min read -
Kill-A-Watt Tour of Every Box in the Rack
Measure real homelab power draw box by box: wall meter vs smart plug, UPS, IPMI and RAPL, which numbers lie, and how to log watts to CSV and average them.
16 min read -
Radicale vs Baikal: CalDAV That Syncs
Radicale or Baikal for a shared family calendar? Compose files, a rights file that shares one calendar, Caddy redirects, and the DAVx5 and iOS sync gotchas.
12 min read -
Train a Tiny GPT, Part 1: Tokenizers
Build a byte-level BPE tokenizer in about 100 lines of Python, then compare it to tiktoken's gpt2, cl100k_base and o200k_base on prose, code, YAML and German.
14 min read -
Clef vs Jev: Cloudflare's 4x Tie
Cloudflare's Clef decision model tied Jev on accuracy in a private benchmark, abstained on junk better, and cost 4.2x more per decision. Real numbers inside.
13 min read -
GitOps Rollback: Argo CD vs Flux
How to roll back a broken GitOps sync in Argo CD v3.5 and Flux v2.9: git revert, argocd app rollback, HelmRelease remediation, plus a 2 AM runbook to copy.
12 min read -
Temporal vs Cron: Durable Home Lab Jobs
Temporal vs cron plus bash for multi-step home lab jobs: what durable workflows buy you, the setup cost, and when a systemd timer is the smarter choice.
15 min read -
VLAN Trunking Gotchas Nobody Warns You
VLAN configured but traffic still breaks? Native VLAN mismatches, PVID traps on cheap switches, Proxmox bridge gotchas, and Docker macvlan fixes, with commands.
10 min read -
journald Structured Logging, No ELK
journald already stores structured key/value log fields. Learn to write custom fields, query them, and ship logs to one box before reaching for Loki or ELK.
12 min read -
AppFlowy vs Notion: Self-Host Your Notes
AppFlowy vs Notion in 2026: the self-host server is now proprietary and the free tier is one browser seat. Licensing, Docker Compose setup, and real prices.
12 min read -
LinuxGSM: Boring Game Servers Done Right
LinuxGSM manages 140 game servers from one script. Compare bare-metal tmux plus cron against the official Docker image, using a Valheim server as the example.
11 min read
