Hardware

Repurposing a Surface HUB 1

I enjoy figuring out how to make locked down hardware useful after its use case is no longer a thing. A few months ago I was gifted a Surface Hub 1.....

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AI

Building a WebSite with AI

I am a fan of WordPress but I am also a fan of using the newest tools, my lab for example does run Beta versions just so I can get access to the latest features. So what's a guy to do when I hear that AI can build a website in 10 minutes...

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Learning

Learning in IT - Find a use case

I'm going to go through my thought process for a project I recently completed and that is repurposing a Unifi Cloud Key Plus as a standalone docker host.....

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Learning

Learning in IT - Think like an Architect

There are many qualities in a great Engineer and an Architect. I would say that in my experience I have worked with many Engineers that could become Architects if they wanted to. The expectations....

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AI

Local AI on a Budget

One of my many side projects is using Local AI but like most, I’m on a budget. Smaller models act like smaller models — until you stop treating them as one giant brain.

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AI

The Modern Engineering Stack: Moving Beyond the Search Bar

AI is quickly becoming an accelerator for more things than just Google searches. Copilot, Claude, OpenAI, and Gemini each earn a different seat in the stack.

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AI

Learning AI – The Basics

Let’s be honest with ourselves, AI is one of the greatest things since the internet. The question is what you offload, and how you stay in control of the result.

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AI

Getting the most out of AI, starts with you!

Prompt engineering is one of the most misunderstood issues with AI for the masses. I asked for a screwdriver, not a therapist.

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Networking

Building Unifi Analyzer using AI!

I loaded up Visual Studio Code, attached GitHub and Claude, and started building the Unifi tool I had wanted for years.

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AI

AI – Context Engineering Overview

AI is smart and has access to pretty much all data, but it is missing the context you are working in. That is the difference between an answer and the right answer.

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PowerShell

PowerShell in the Field

The public PowerShell repo is the toolkit I am willing to share. Clone it, read it, then run it on a box you can afford to break first.

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Meshtastic

Meshtastic NRF MQTT Decoding

NRF Meshtastic nodes will not emit JSON to MQTT. Decrypt the protobuf on a small Python bridge and push a clean topic Home Assistant and Telegraf can actually use.

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Meshtastic

Meshtastic TIG Stack

Grafana does not speak MQTT well, and MQTT is a terrible long-term database. Telegraf plus InfluxDB is how Meshtastic JSON becomes a map and a message log.

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Meshtastic

Private Meshtastic

The public LongFast key is well known. If you do not want strangers reading telemetry off your property mesh, change the primary channel key and own your relays.

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Meshtastic

Meshtastic Beginners Guide

Meshtastic is a way to communicate across distances without Wi-Fi or cellular. Range is a mix of height, antenna, and how many friends your mesh actually has.

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PowerShell

Network Tool

I asked Warp to combine LLDP Discovery, Port Finder, and Packet Capture into one PowerShell GUI. Six hours later I had a Swiss Army knife I would have spent a week writing by hand.

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Networking

LLDP Discovery in Windows

LLDP tells you which switch port a Windows box is sitting on. pktmon already lives on the machine. Wrap it in a GUI and stop tracing cables by guesswork.

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Networking

Packet Capture No Wireshark Needed

Microsoft pktmon is a stripped-down NPCAP you already have. Wrap it in a small GUI and you get PCAP plus a TXT file AI can actually read.

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Hardware

Repurpose Starlink Cable as Ethernet

The new Dishy cable is Ethernet with weird ends and a weirder color code. Here is the pinout that actually passed a 1 Gig wire map.

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PowerShell

PowerShell Introduction

PowerShell is one of my favorite scripting languages. These are the practices that keep scripts readable when you are not the person running them.

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Networking

Unifi Security Settings

Zone-based firewall on Unifi was confusing at first. Zones, policies, network objects, region blocking, and honeypots are what I actually turn on.

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Networking

Unifi Advanced Networking

Port profiles, DHCP guardian, and a Default network that is not 192.168.1.0/24. The advanced Unifi settings I actually leave on.

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Networking

Unifi UDM Quick Start

Unifi is not Cisco with a prettier UI. Get the UDM online, adopt devices, and stand up Wi-Fi without dragging enterprise habits into a 15-minute install.

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AI

Entry Level AI

When people think about using AI it gets daunting. What if you thought about AI as a mentor instead of a technology?

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