TOPIC
Deployments should be uneventful. These notes cover the pipelines, guardrails, and observability that make them so.
Serial debugging is still central in embedded work, and Rust is excellent for building reliable terminal tooling. I structure serial utilities as pipelines: read bytes, frame messages, parse the protocol, then route structured events out.
Writing `no_std` Rust firmware requires different habits than server Rust. Memory is constrained, timing is strict, and panic strategy must be deliberate.
Hardware abstraction layers are where embedded code often becomes difficult to test. I design traits around capabilities, then keep business logic independent from concrete drivers.
Hardware-connected software fails at boundaries: timing edges, flaky links, and rare protocol states. A strong test strategy must combine fast feedback with realistic integration checks.
Edge devices frequently run with broad network exposure and weak maintenance. Security hardening has to be practical, repeatable, and automation-friendly.
A long retrospective on how I hardened a Debian 12 VPS for public internet exposure with practical config details and operational lessons.
A detailed retrospective on using Apache2 as a reverse proxy in front of legacy internal applications with TLS, auth, and rollout control.
A long practical report on setting up Nginx edge caching and predictable zero-downtime deployments on a small VPS stack.
A deep retrospective on running Traefik for many self-hosted services with dynamic routing, middleware policy, and safer operations.
A detailed retrospective on building and operating a small k3s Kubernetes cluster in a homelab, including networking, storage, and reliability lessons.
A detailed retrospective on migrating small VPS and homelab hosts to Ansible-managed infrastructure with practical role and rollout patterns.
A long retrospective on building a reliable Proxmox homelab cluster with practical lessons on storage, backups, networking, and operations.
A detailed retrospective on building a safer CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions and a self-hosted runner for infrastructure and web deployments.
A long-form retrospective on building an observability stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, focused on practical alerting and incident response.
A detailed retrospective on backup and disaster recovery drills across homelab and VPS services, including RPO/RTO design and practical runbooks.
A deep retrospective on tuning PostgreSQL performance with query analysis, index strategy, autovacuum adjustments, and connection management improvements.
A detailed retrospective on stabilizing Terraform workflows for multi-environment infrastructure with safer state handling, drift detection, and rollout governance.
