Own your computers again
Most of the technology in your house is rented. The films can vanish when a deal expires. The assistant that answers your questions sends every one of them to a company you will never meet. The photos live on somebody else's hard drive, and the price goes up whenever they decide it does.
It does not have to be that way, and getting out of it is far less difficult than it looks. This site is a set of guides for running those things yourself, on computers you already own, written for people who have never done any of it before.
Every guide here is something we actually built and actually use. That means the mistakes are written down too, because the mistake is usually the part worth reading. Nothing here is sponsored. Nothing is an advert. There is nothing to sign up for.
Someone we love read the main version of this site and said it seemed like a second language. He was right. A site that argues against gatekeeping should not gatekeep with vocabulary. So this edition says exactly the same things, with the jargon taken out and every technical word explained the first time it shows up.
Nothing has been dumbed down. The facts, the warnings and the honest catches are all still here. Only the language changed.
New here? Start with this
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BeginStart here: what to build first, and why
Nine steps in a sensible order, from your first private AI assistant through to your own private network. Each step is one evening and costs nothing but a computer you already have.
The guides people read most
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GuidesI stopped renting my own thinking
A capable AI assistant that runs on a computer in your own home. It answers without sending your questions to anyone, it works when the internet is down, and it costs nothing every month.
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GuidesHow to remove ads from every screen in your house at once
One small computer, sitting quietly between your router and everything else. The television, the phones, the tablet and your visitors all get the same quiet internet, with no software to install on any of them.
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GuidesI built a music studio out of free software
Real, original music written and finished on one computer at home, using software that costs nothing. You can listen to what came out of it and download any of it.
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GuidesProve nothing is using it before you switch it off
Tidying up is where people break things. This is the twenty minutes of checking that stops a tidy up from taking down something important several days later, long after you have forgotten what you changed.
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GuidesYour computer is not dying. The thing watching it is cooking it.
A machine ran far too hot for weeks and looked exactly like failing hardware. The real cause was the software that had been installed to watch for problems.
See all the guides, in the order they were written.
The rest of the site
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RecommendationsFree software worth your time, judged honestly
Tools you can run yourself, each one with its real drawback stated plainly. Nobody pays to be on this list, and we make no money if you use any of it.
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RecommendationsDJ gear and software, from behind the decks
Written by someone who has actually played out. Everything is judged on whether it survives a real night, not on what the box promises.
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Music and filmFree original music, made on one computer at home
Eleven finished tracks, made with free software on a single graphics card. Download any of them. No account, no email address, no strings.
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Music and filmShort films made on one graphics card
Five short films made from start to finish at home, with free tools and a second hand graphics card. Free to watch and free to keep.
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AboutThe actual hardware behind all of this
Every machine mentioned in the guides, what it does and what it cost. All of it bought with our own money, and there are no affiliate links anywhere on this site.
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AboutHow this website is built
Written by hand and served from a small computer in a spare room. No tracking, no adverts, and nothing loaded from anybody else's servers.
What this site will never do
There are no adverts and no sponsors, so nothing here is written to sell you anything. There is no newsletter and no account, so there is nothing to unsubscribe from. There is no tracking of any kind, which means no cookie banner to click away, because we set nothing that would need your permission in the first place.
The only things stored are the text size you pick and the music settings you choose, and those stay in your own browser. They are never sent anywhere, and we cannot see them.
This page in the original Kyber Cypher voice: KYBER CYPHER