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A bit of a reflection on my trip to Scotland
So, something that doesn’t happen very often – I found myself home alone. Not completely alone, but just me and the dog – dog-sitting, you could say. My wife and kids went to Spain, and suddenly the house felt very different. Quiet, empty, no background noise at all. It sounds like the perfect setup for…
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When “Very Good” Is Not Enough
At some point I stumbled across Adolf Hitler’s paintings online. Not in a history book. Just… there. Watercolours. Buildings. Streets. Quiet scenes. The uncomfortable question followed immediately:All wrongdoings aside — purely as a painter — was he any good? The honest answer surprised me. Yes. He was good. Technically competent. Solid perspective. Careful execution. His…
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A Cup of Coffee That Shouldn’t Have Existed
Here I am, sipping my morning coffee while watching the new Veritasium video about antimatter. At school I always loved physics. I wasn’t a physicist or a mathematician, but something about it pulled me in. I even sat the physics exam for fun and got admitted to university for applied physics, although I never pulled…
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Three Months Later: A Journey from Clicks to Containers
Time really flies – wooosh – another three months gone. I’ve been struggling a bit to keep this blog consistent. Whenever I start a new project, I tend to go all in and stay laser-focused until it’s done. The downside is that everything else gets pushed aside, and sadly, this blog often ends up on…
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Defining Values: Version 1
I realised something fundamentally important today about values. I’ve often heard – from people, books, and articles – that we are all driven by our internal values. Our decisions, actions, motives, and even fears stem from within. These values aren’t all equal, either. They form a hierarchy, a kind of internal priority system. Every time…
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Uptime, UPS, and the Domino Effect
There’s an interesting concept behind any problem: you never really solve all your problems – they’re always there. What actually happens is this: by solving one, you inevitably create another, just in a higher dimension. Take being overweight for example. You decide to fix it by joining a gym. Solved? Not quite. Now you need…
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How to connect an ESP Board to HAOS: My Go-To Setup Guide
I always struggle a bit with the steps required to connect an ESP board to HAOS for the first time. Even though it’s super simple and straightforward, the sequence of steps does matter for a clean setup. So, just for my own reference – here’s what needs to be done. Open ESPHome Builder and add…
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Restarting Apache on Remote Servers via SSH from Home Assistant
Goal Allow Home Assistant to securely restart Apache on a remote server (e.g. AWS Lightsail instance) at the press of a button. This is ideal when a rarely unstable website goes down and a manual restart is sufficient, but you want the flexibility to trigger it from anywhere — even your phone. Step 1: Generate…
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Monitoring Website Status in Home Assistant
This post documents how I set up a simple and reliable system in Home Assistant OS (HAOS) to monitor the status of websites, display the result in the UI, and keep a timestamp of the last check. It uses native command_line and template sensors and is designed to be easy to maintain and extend. Goal…
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Web Monitoring on My Terms: Powered by Home Assistant
I used to monitor my websites with SolarWinds Pingdom. Recently, they migrated me to their new observability platform. It’s not bad – in fact, quite powerful – but way too complex for what I actually needed. I managed to reconfigure everything and set up SMS alerts through another provider (apparently, they no longer supports SMS…
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