HA Sinkhole - High Availability DNS Without the Headache

12 Dec 2025 I've been running Pi-hole for years now. If you're not familiar with it, it's a DNS-based ad blocker that sits on your network and intercepts requests for known advertising and tracking domains, returning nothing instead of letting them load. It's brilliant - browse the web without ads, stop smart TVs phoning home, block tracker domains on mobile apps. Once you've experienced an ad-free network, there's no going back. But there was always this nagging issue.. what happens when the Pi goes down? read more...

Philips - another company that wants to steal your data

12 Jan 2025 Philips, via their Hue hub, have recently decided they have a right to steal your data, weaken your security (while lying that it improves it) and cripple products you bought from them in good faith if you refuse to comply with the lowlife they employ to make such decisions. I chose not to of course and now this company that I previously had no beef with is the latest addition to my list of "never spend another penny on any product of theirs for the rest of my life" list. read more...

Wayland Rice - part III

31 Aug 2024 Is there a better approach to ad hoc terminals in a tiling wm? I think I found one that I quite like. read more...

Wayland Rice - part II

18 Aug 2024 Thanks to all the brilliant upstream work from wayland/mesa/linux/nvidia devs, it looks like Wayland is fully usable for me now - time to get to work replicating the desktop experience I refined over many months in bspwm, sxhkd, polybar and others. read more...

Wayland Rice - part I

13 Aug 2024 Some recent updates to nvidia and mesa modules (maybe others) finally made it possible to switch to wayland for me full time. So I did. read more...

Escaping the Cult of Google

16 Dec 2022 For a long time now I've been getting more and more concerned about the damage being done to me through my membership of the "Cult of Google". I'd long shunned the Chrome browser and the Google search engine, as well as GMail for personal use. But weaning myself off the rest of the chocolate factory product suite is overdue. read more...

OpenHAB Upgrade (to HomeAssistant!)

16 Jan 2021 OpenHAB 3.0 was released in December, time to upgrade from my 2.5 installation; so I had intended. read more...

Fixing broken sync in Brave Browser

18 Dec 2020 The sync functionality in the Brave browser is a useful way to keep settings, extensions and bookmarks synchronized on a number of different devices. But it can end up in a broken state where you are unable to leave or reset the sync chain on one or more of the sync'd devices. Here's how to fix that if it happens to you, without creating a new profile or re-installing the browser. read more...

Privacy in the UK

26 Oct 2020 For what feels like the millionth time in the last 15 years, uk.gov is attempting to either legislate against mathematics itself with encryption "back doors", or simply make our use of private communication illegal. read more...

Office Revamp

30 May 2020 Decided to spruce up the home office and do something about the growing cityscape of wires and gadgets under the desk. A story in pictures. read more...