Welcome.
I’m Aaron, a network engineer focused on cloud, identity, and infrastructure. This site is a collection of projects, writeups, and notes from the field.
Most “smart homes” today aren’t actually smart.
They’re cloud-dependent, subscription-driven, and locked into a single vendor ecosystem. If the internet goes down, half your house stops working. If the company changes its pricing or kills a product line, you’re stuck replacing devices.
That’s not automation. That’s renting control of your own house.
This is where Home Assistant changes everything.
For years, UniFi Protect has been one of the most popular surveillance systems for home lab enthusiasts and small businesses.
It looks great.
The interface is polished.
And the integration with UniFi networking gear is seamless.
But over the past few years, a noticeable shift has started happening in the home lab and self-hosted communities.
Key principle:
Terminate TLS at a single reverse proxy.
Expose one entry point.
Keep everything else internal.
That’s discipline.
This isn’t about running Plex on better hardware.
This is about understanding:
You can buy ecosystems.
Hey there, fellow tinkerer. If you’re anything like me, a developer who’s spent too many late nights wrestling with bloated CMSes, you know the thrill of stripping things back to basics. Static sites? They’re the minimalist’s dream: fast, secure, and zero server-side drama. Today, I finally carved out time to dip my toes into Hugo, the Go-powered static site generator that’s been on my radar for years. No more excuses. This post is my raw, unfiltered log of the setup process. Think of it as a breadcrumb trail for anyone following in my footsteps. Let’s break it down, step by step, because if I’m doing this once, I might as well make it repeatable.