Lab Notes

Starting: AI Game Buddy

Exploring the feasibility of creating an AI to play games on a GameCube console.

Starting: Action Repeater (browser extension)

A Chrome browser extension that records and replays user actions for automation tasks.

FontForge: what I built

A homelab project to create a web-based tool for generating custom fonts, supporting drawing and exporting in image formats.

Starting: FontForge

This project aims to create an online tool for generating custom fonts, allowing users to draw and export their creations in various image formats.

StringWeb: from a virtual guitar to a 7-instrument multiplayer jam app

This project evolved from a simple virtual guitar into a full-fledged multi-instrument browser-based jamming experience with sheet music, rhythm games, and real-time multiplayer.

Cool Trending GitHub Repos: Week of 2026-08-03

This week's picks worth a look: block/buzz, virgiliojr94/book-to-skill, ayghri/i-have-adhd, microsoft/AI-For-Beginners, 1jehuang/jcode.

Cool GitHub Reviews: Week of 2026-08-01

This week's trending repos worth a look: block/buzz, citrolabs/ego-lite, alibaba/open-code-review, ayghri/i-have-adhd, pascalorg/editor.

Pi Picker: A Goal-First Raspberry Pi Build Tool

A project aimed at providing verified parts lists and compatibility warnings for Raspberry Pi builds based on specific goals like a Pi-hole or home server.

Self-Hosted VS Code with Docker on a Homelab

Deploying code-server in a custom Docker container for remote coding from any browser—no laptop setup needed.

Building Out a Homelab Cluster with Self-Hosted Tools

A detailed account of building and deploying various self-hosted utilities for personal and business use.

Building and Deploying Shorts Clipper: A Homelab Adventure

Learn how I built a self-hosted tool to automatically create viral short clips from long videos, complete with captions and AI narration.

Building Bread Boi Live Pet: A Homelab Project

This project details the setup and deployment of a real-time interactive digital pet for TikTok live streams using Docker and Node.

Building Toast Town: A Homelab Project Dive

This project involved building a walkable 3D town for the character Bread Boi, complete with various mini-games and zones.

Building and Deploying Shape Party: A Kids' Sensory App

This post details the journey from development to deployment of a sensory app for toddlers, highlighting the challenges faced during the Android app build process.

Offloading Shorts Clipper to a Spare GPU Box

Learn how I offloaded heavy AI tasks from my main Docker host to a spare Windows box with a GPU, improving performance and efficiency.

What a Used RTX A4000 Actually Runs: Local LLM Benchmarks on a $700 Card

Dive into the real-world performance of an affordable RTX A4000 in benchmarking local large language models.

Networking Basics #8: Firewalls and Rate Limiting, From the Router Down to 12 Lookups an Hour

Networking Basics #4: Reverse Proxies — One nginx Front Door for a Dozen Containers

Learn how to use a single nginx instance as a reverse proxy to route traffic to multiple Docker containers.

Networking Basics #2: DNS — How breadtoasting.com Actually Resolves

Dive into the intricacies of DNS with `breadtoasting.com` as a real-world example. Learn about record types, TTLs, and how Cloudflare enhances privacy.

Hardware Fundamentals for Homelabbers: RAM Types, CPU vs GPU vs DPU, and Unified Memory

Learn the basics of hardware selection for your homelab, focusing on RAM types, CPUs, GPUs, DPUs, and unified memory.

Networking Basics #10: Monitoring and Health Checks — Knowing It's Down Before a Customer Does

How BreadLab knows a service is down before anyone tells us: health endpoints, caching, and honest status.

Networking Basics #9: Latency vs Bandwidth — Why Game Servers Care About Milliseconds

Learn about the critical difference between bandwidth and latency in your home lab, especially for game hosting.

Networking Basics #7: TLS and HTTPS — What the Padlock Does for breadtoasting.com

Learn about TLS/HTTPS, from encryption to authentication, and how it's implemented on my homelab setup.

Networking Basics #6: Cloudflare Tunnels vs Open Ports (and the Two-Cloudflared 502 Mystery)

Discover why Breadtoasting.com uses Cloudflare tunnels instead of opening inbound ports, and how a misconfiguration led to intermittent errors.

Networking Basics #5: Docker Networking — Why Containers Talk to Each Other by Name

Learn how containers in a user-defined bridge network can communicate using names, and why this setup is more secure than hardcoding IP addresses.

Networking Basics #3: NAT and Port Forwarding — How Game Servers Survive Behind a Home Router

Learn how Network Address Translation (NAT) and port forwarding enable game servers to operate behind a home router's single public IP address.

Networking Basics #1: IP Addresses and Subnets, via BreadLab's 192.168.1.0/24

Dive into the basics of IP addressing and subnets using real-world examples from my homelab setup.

Building a Customer Order Tracker on the Gooten API (Without Leaking the Key)

Created an internal endpoint to securely check order statuses from our homelab, ensuring sensitive customer information stays safe.

Running a Minecraft Server on Real Hardware with AMP

A walkthrough of deploying a Minecraft Java server using CubeCoders AMP — covering installation, a hardware migration driven by I/O contention on shared NAS storage, and DNS configuration via Cloudflare to keep the home IP private.