A real homelab, written down.
One home server, about thirty Docker containers: media, smart home, DNS, a local AI and game servers for friends. This is where I write up how it works, what broke and how I fixed it, plus building a Roblox game with AI.
Topics
Homelab
Docker, networking, backups and the things that broke along the way.
Game servers
Running Valheim and Minecraft servers for friends, from setup to mods to weird bugs.
Roblox dev
Building a Roblox game with AI as a coding partner.
Start here
- Homelab
My homelab tour: one server, ~30 Docker containers
What runs on my home server, how it's organised with Docker Compose, and the lessons that shaped it.
- Homelab
My homelab has zero open ports. Here's how I still use it from anywhere
Why I don't port-forward anything, how Tailscale replaces it, how to publish a website safely with Cloudflare Tunnel, and the hardening checklist I actually follow.
- Game servers
Hosting a Valheim dedicated server with Docker (the setup I use)
A complete docker-compose for a Valheim server: ports, auto-updates only when nobody's online, hourly world backups, and how friends connect.
Free tools
Latest posts
- Game servers
Why my Valheim 'craft from chests' mod crafted 70 muckshakes from one click
A craft-from-containers mod took only the first ingredient and kept crafting until my inventory was full. I decompiled it, found a one-line reflection bug, and wrote a small client-side replacement.
- Game servers
My Valheim base got wrecked while I was AFK: finding the exact hour in the backups
Eight chests and their contents vanished on my dedicated server. Valheim's save chunks aren't compressed, so a 30-line Python script could count the chests in every hourly backup and show exactly when they were destroyed.
- Homelab
How this blog is built: Astro + Cloudflare Pages for the price of a domain
A static site with search, tools, guest authors and ads, costing about €12 a year, with nothing exposed on my home server. The stack, the costs and the security decisions behind it.
- Homelab
Applying for Google AdSense with a brand-new static site: what actually happened
Owning the domain, the code snippet vs ads.txt, verification that failed for reasons that had nothing to do with my site, the EU consent message, and the rules that get accounts banned.
- Homelab
A Cloudflare API token that can't hurt you (least privilege, IP lock, expiry)
How I scoped a Cloudflare API token to one domain, five permissions, my home IP and three months, so automation can manage DNS and redirects without being able to touch billing or the domain itself.
- Homelab
Free email on your own domain with Cloudflare Email Routing (receive-only)
hello@yourdomain forwarding to your normal inbox in five minutes: the DNS records it adds, verifying the destination, and the one privacy catch when you reply.
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