Notes

During my last homelabbing session, I ran into a problem that initially felt annoying but eventually turned into a surprisingly elegant solution—one worth sharing. The Problem I run a private server in my apartment hosting various homelab services. By design, this server is not directly accessible from the public internet. I want to keep my internal services private and under my control. For remote access while traveling, I rely on Tailscale . This allows me to securely access services like paperless-ngx from my phone or laptop without exposing anything publicly. So far, this setup has worked flawlessly. ...

Introduction Nextcloud is a self-hosted collaboration platform that provides file synchronization and sharing, calendars, contacts, and a growing ecosystem of apps. It offers strong data ownership guarantees while still covering many use cases typically handled by managed cloud services. So my goal is to replace Google Drive, Contacs and Calendar with a self-hosted nextcloud instance. In my homelab, I run a lightweight Kubernetes distribution based on k3s. To keep the deployment reproducible, maintainable, and aligned with cloud-native best practices, I decided to deploy Nextcloud using its Helm chart rather than relying on ad-hoc manifests or manual container setups. Helm allows me to describe the desired state declaratively, manage upgrades more safely, and keep configuration changes version-controlled. This is the first step to go to manage my K3S cluster using Argo CD. ...

Introduction: Why Add Comments? I wanted to enable readers to easily comment on my Hugo blog posts, aiming for a solution that is both simple for users and lightweight/easy to maintain for me. Hugo offers official support for integrating various commercial and open-source commenting systems. Choosing a Commenting System Commercial vs. Open-Source While several commercial options like Disqus exist (free for non-commercial use but often includes ads), I opted for an open-source solution to maintain control and avoid third-party advertising. ...

There are two kinds of note-takers: those who trust their precious thoughts to the cloud (hello Notion/Google Drive/OneNote people), and those who stare into the abyss and think: “what if I built my own infrastructure for this?” I belong to the second group. Here’s how I turned Syncthing + Obsidian + a webserver into a note-syncing, backup-happy, cloud-replacing monster. The Core Idea Server: a VPS that acts as my “Syncthing master” Clients: Linux, Windows, and Android devices, all happily syncing to the server. Vault: Obsidian notes live in a single folder. That folder is the source of truth. The magic is in Syncthing: every device talks to the server, syncing notes bi-directionally. That means I can edit notes anywhere (on my phone while commuting, at my desktop during coding sessions, or on my laptop while pretending to relax on the couch). Within seconds, the changes ripple across all devices. ...

The problem and the idea I want to write a blog post in english or german, and I don’t want translate it manually every time. This is much easier to maintain and obviously much less annoying. So the idea is to automate this translation process. Therefore it should automatically be detected if the post is written in german or english and translate it to the other language. I like to use Github Actions to translate before deployment. For this I want to use free translation service. ...

Refactoring is a vital part of maintaining and improving your Flutter application. It ensures your codebase remains clean, consistent, and efficient as your app grows. In this article, we’ll explore seven practical ways to refactor your Flutter application. 1. Use Parameters in Widgets for Consistency When building widgets, hardcoding values like padding or fontSize can lead to inconsistencies. Instead, pass these values as parameters to make widgets reusable and consistent. ...

Obsidian is a great tool for collecting ideas. I use it mainly for the following reasons: Research Collecting information Saving some spontaneous ideas Depending on my actual situation I prefer to use my laptop or my phone. To always have access to my vaults, regardless of the device I am using, I need to sync the data between my devices. For that purpose Obsidian provides the Sync Plugin. But for this plugin they charge you 4$ a month, which I don’t want to spend, if there is another option. ...