When I started Hamlogs, I didn’t sit down with a whiteboard and architect the perfect tech stack. I started building — then slowly replaced the parts that annoyed me. The result? A stack that’s fast, maintainable, and easy to self-host. And more importantly: one I actually enjoy working with. Here’s what’s under the hood of Hamlogs.com, and why I chose each piece. 🧱 The Core Stack NestJS gave me structure without slowing me down....

I didn’t intend to build another logbook. I set out to solve a problem I’d grown frustrated with. My amateur‑radio logging experience felt fragmented — desktop apps that didn’t sync, clunky tools, scattered QSL tracking. So, I quietly started building. No grand vision at first. Just a blank canvas and an evening of code. And today, just over three months later, Hamlogs.com goes live. ##The Why: A Signal in the Noise...

For years I’ve been dabbling with programming without much success, however a couple years ago I went back to finish my undergrad degree in Computer Science which has meant a near instant level up! I’ve made some toy apps are part of my school projects and I have a couple of large for me at least applications that I want to write. In my quest to get better at programming and because I’m looking to diversify my income, I decided to work on creating a new company that sells game server rentals....

Recently I got heavily into working the 2m ameture radio services, I currently have a pair of 2m/7cm antennas, a 1090 for ADS-B and a wide band for general SDR stuff. Today I’m going to build an APRS digipeater using an old Raspberry Pi 3, a cheap Baofeng UV5R and one of those 2m antennas on my roof. Shopping list ( currently the Pi is in short supply and therefore wildly over priced):...

Upgrade Old Ubuntu Server to New LTS Use sed to update /etc/apt/sources.list sudo sed -i -e 's/archive.ubuntu.com\|security.ubuntu.com/old-releases.ubuntu.com/g' /etc/apt/sources.list apt update apt upgrade apt dist-upgrade

My blog is filled with all sorts of content, but one thing that’s not on here is gardening! To be fair I’m not a gardener, I only became interested during the pandemic because I had a lot of time to kill and was looking for stuff to do. So you know, build your wife a garden. Shopping list: 100 ft of hose Chicken wire Lumber Garden irrigation kit Topsoil Landscape fabric Lawn staples Basic gardening tools Gloves ( if you don’t want to spend 15 mins washing dirt off your hands and finger nails) Pick the area where you want to plant your garden, pick a place where there is plenty of constant direct sunlight (6+ hrs)....

I’ve spent the last year or so perfecting my movie curation experience. It started when I build my first Unraid Server using an old Dell R410 that I had laying around my lab. It was a relatively good experience as a NAS system, but then I Decided to centralize all my movies and tv shows. Like lots of people I had stacks of DVDs and Blu-Rays laying around the house, it was a pain to store them in a place that made them readily accessible for those days when I wanted nothing more than to binge watch some of my favorite content....

I’ve always wanted to get back to my technical roots and work on electronics projects, however, life somehow always seems to get in the way. The Nationwide/Worldwide lockdown has been in full swing for months now which means lately I’ve had a lot more time to work on various projects such as a podcast, and fooling around with solar power for my garden shed. After I finished working on my solar project I needed something else to do and had the idea of building a weather station....

Automate you docker containers with ansible --- - name: install pre-reqs apt: name: "{{item}}" state: present with_items: - "ca-certificates" - "curl" - "software-properties-common" - name: docker repo key apt_key: url: https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg state: present - name: docker repo install apt_repository: repo: deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu bionic stable state: present - name: install docker apt: name: docker-ce state: present update_cache: yes - name: start service service: name: docker state: started enabled: true - name: ensure docker-py is installed apt: name: "{{ item }}" state: present with_items: - "python-docker" - "python3-docker" - name: add user to docker group user: name: ryan group: docker append: yes --- - name: file: path: "{{ item }}" state: directory with_items: - ["/config", "/key", "/music", "/movies", "/pics", "/vids", "/tv" , "/weddingg_vids", ] --- - name: Mount config nfs mount: path: /config src: freenas:/mnt/tank/docker_host fstype: nfs state: mounted - name: Mount key nfs mount: path: /key src: freenas:/mnt/tank/key fstype: nfs state: mounted - name: Mount music nfs mount: path: /music src: freenas:/mnt/tank/music fstype: nfs state: mounted