Since launching my website I’ve had a recurring item in my To Do manager¹ to do something related to this each day. January had been a particularly challenging time as my fitness goals increased, work topics increased, and I started teaching our beginner Flyball class. Something had to go, so while I attempted to stabilize my life I de-prioritized the blog. I had gotten into a great habit of having the recap post, but there wasn’t a lot to post for January due to this hiatus. I felt I needed to write something. Likely, the situation will remain the same through February and hopefully once the weather turns for the better in the Northern Hemisphere, I’ll come back in full force.

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Rewinds or recaps have become increasingly popular. I rather enjoy the trend because it allows me to look back on the previous year and see how did I spend my time. I’m not a fan of the ones that launch in early December because I do like nice and clean cutoffs. The calendar year is arbitrary, but it’s the best option. Rather than looking at each service individually, I thought it would be fun to look at a lot of them to see the total numbers in 2024. Going one step further to look at the typical day puts the numbers into perspective. I’ve gathered data across 9 categories from 8 different services.

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It’s surprising even to me that I’ve kept this up as long as I have. Creating posts and tweaking areas in the Projects area is becoming a habit now. My goal now is to increase the quality of my posts. December was a good month where I went down a fun rabbit hole that I summarized in various posts throughout the month.

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I’ve had a lot of fun writing the Homelab Chronicles, but Chapter 5 will be the final entry in 2024. This chapter catches us up to the current situation. This journey has been exciting and evolved a lot. In Chapter one, I covered my first homelab configuration, why I wanted to go down this rabbit hole further, upgrading my network through my office renovation project, and learning to love Docker. In Chapter two, I set up a reverse proxy for saner access to my services at home and away from home, changed how I managed my DNS, and fell in love with Docker Compose. Chapter three documented my growing application list, developing a backup strategy for the homelab, and improving security on the reverse proxy. Chapter four was a long entry dedicated entirely to my media streaming application, Jellyfin. This chapter covers a single topic too: Fail2ban.

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Since I experienced so many issues with the configuration of my new media system, this chapter of the Homelab Chronicles will be entirely focused on Jellyin. Like most tech related issues, they were entirely self-inflicted. Now that I have the metadata and plugins working as intended, there have been zero issues and I absolutely love it.

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Have you ever wanted to experience the Sega Saturn CD player UI with your music library? You can with saturn.fm!

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The Homelab Chronicles continue¹! Last time I discovered the magic of the Docker Compose file. In this chapter, using the Docker Compose files accelerated the process of adding new things into my portfolio of homelab applications. In this chapter, I’ll go through adding Paperless-ngx, handling backups of my homelab files, and enhancing the reverse proxy endpoint security.

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Last time on the Homelab Chronicles, I started documenting my ever evolving homelab situation. Things were still early in the journey but I was proud of the progress that had been made: my new network was installed with improved ethernet cabling, added the brand new Mac mini M4 to the mix, hosted Pihole on said Mac mini through Docker, and configured a reverse proxy with Caddy to three of my services. In this chapter, expect to learn more about securing the reverse proxy, reversing course on the Pihole, and getting new application hosted. I learn the magic of Docker Compose and I don’t turn back.

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A Homelab is a server or collection of servers that reside locally in your control where applications can be hosted for personal use. I started with a basic setup about two years ago but have stepped up my game over the last three weeks. The Homelab Chronicles is a series of posts where I’ll write about the evolutions my setup has gone through. In this first post, I’ll write about: my original setup, my network upgrade, the introduction of the Mac mini M4 to my setup, self-hosting an application with Docker, and the setup of a reverse proxy so I can access my services in a more sane fashion. This project has been the most fun I’ve had on computers since the 1990s when we got online for the first time and I spent all day making random websites.

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No game has ever sunk its talons into every facet of my being more than Lunar the Silver Star for the Sega CD. At the time of its release in the United States in December 1993, the few adopters of the ill-fated CD peripheral for the Sega Genesis were clamoring for a good role-playing game. It is safe to say that I think they received that.

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