Field Logs
Field Logs
Field Logs
Everything I build, written down
One log per build. Each one is a thing I actually run, not a thing I read about. That means the mistakes are in here too, because the mistake is usually the part worth reading. If a log is marked live it's finished and tested. If it's marked planned, I haven't built it yet and I'm not going to write it up until I have.
001
I stopped renting my brainA real AI assistant running on hardware you already own. No subscription, no cloud, no data leaving the house.
Live
002
Kill every ad on your networkOne small computer between your router and everything else. Works on the TV, the phone, the tablet, your mother's laptop. Includes the week I spent thinking I had killed it.
Live
003
Own your movies againYour own media server on hardware too old to sell. Nothing disappears from your library because a licensing deal expired.
Live
004
A smart home that isn't listening for someone elseLocal control, local voice, no account required. The lights still work when the internet is down.
Live
005
I put this site in my own houseThis page is served off a small computer in a spare room, reachable without opening a single port. Ten dollars a year, all in.
Live
006
Build your own AI agentAn agent is a model with a chat window and a few safe tools it's allowed to use. The keys are the risk, not the model.
Live
007
Backups that actually workThree copies, two kinds of storage, one off-site, and the restore test that proves it. A backup you have never restored is a wish.
Live
008
A private network for all your machinesReach every machine from anywhere with nothing exposed. Plus the routing gotcha that looks exactly like slow hardware.
Live
009
What I learned the hard wayThe rules paid for by real mistakes, written down so a few of yours are free.
Live
010
My assistant said it did something. It hadn't.Series 1 of 4. A model will narrate success for things it cannot do, and asking it nicely to stop is not a fix. The gate that is.
Live
011
The worst alert is a green oneSeries 2 of 4. A job reported success every night while doing nothing at all. A check that can only ever say ok is not a check.
Live
012
Prove the monitor isn't the thing that's brokenSeries 3 of 4. Dozens of outage alerts for a service that was fine. A broken gauge does not read honest, it reads empty.
Live
013
If your health check does real work, it will take down what it watchesSeries 4 of 4. The status endpoint that became the outage. The observer has to be cheap.
Live
014
Never let an AI job spend money unattendedSee it, project it and pause, check the environment not the config, and make the expensive path unreachable instead of discouraged.
Live
015
Measure before you deleteSixty files to clean up, three of them causing the problem, and a sweep that would have taken the credentials backup with it.
Live
016
Every automation gets its own keyOne key copied everywhere turns one small mistake into all of them. Scope each job so a leak is one account on one host.
Live
017
Secrets leak from the boring placesNot a breach. A hardcoded password, a world-readable backup, and a token printed by a test stub that only half replaced the real thing.
Live
018
I made a music studio out of free software and AI.Generate original music on your own GPU, split it into stems, and master it. Open source the whole way, nothing leaving the machine.
Live
019
My research agent faked it for three weeksA proxy quietly dropped its tools, so it could not research anything and invented the answers instead. Part 5 of the series.
Live
020
Your machine isn't dying. The thing watching it is cooking it.Thermal throttling that looked like dying hardware was the metrics container holding a core around the clock.
Live
021
Read the log before you believe your own storyThe remembered pattern was wrong, and two different causes were wearing the same costume.
Live
022
Prove nothing's using it before you shut it offClose the port, stop the service, keep the data. Verify first, make every step reversible.
Live
023
Text with no internet and no carrierLong range radio mesh you own end to end, so a message still goes through when the grid does not. Planned, not built yet.
Planned