Intro
Welcome to the second issue of The Year X Conclusion. An end of the year post where I conclude my thoughts of anything that happened during the previous 12 months. This issue will cover a mix of self-hosting and software developer related content. As well as some news for the rest of 2025!
Note Mark
As spoken about in the 2023 edition of this series I released Note Mark, my markdown note taking application. Since it’s release it has had several updates. Here’s a quick list of some of my favourite features that I enjoyed developing and using:
- UI improvements (with some page re-designs)
- VIM mode for the editor, written mostly by a kind person from the community
- A scratch pad for temporary note taking
- Data import/export via CLI
- Completely re-written backend (better stability and maintainability)
- Prevention for possible note collisions (when editing same note on multiple devices)
- Syntax highlighting for code blocks
Also, I would like to thank all of the current contributors who have assisted in some features/fixes: alessio-romano, christoph-heiss, jivanyatra, RobViren and wuguishifu.
Hasty Paste II
Some time has past since I announced the EOL (end-of-life) for Hasty Paste. However, many requested it be brought back. As announced recently I have decided to bring it back, however this time it will be completely rewritten from scratch; to allow for future expansion and stability. In the first stable release it will come with some new features not possible in the original program. These features are: user accounts, saving files as well as text pastes and the ability to attach multiple attachments to a single paste.
Because of a complete redesign the way pastes are stored is different and now a database will be required, however it will make it more powerful. Because of this the original version will not be compatible with V2.
Stay up to date with development by checking out the project repository here. It is currently in a “alpha” state and most functionality is missing. I will continue working and make a public announcement when it is ready for public use, so stay tuned!
‘Now Self Hosted’
2024 has not been as full of articles as other years. I would of liked to explore many of the apps on my backlog however, something unexpected happened. I had to have surgery as I broke my elbow! As I write this article I just about have the ability to type at my normal speed again. I look forward to exploring new apps in 2025.
However, earlier in the year; I did take a look at some interesting task board applications in issue issue 7. It seems my choice Planka is still being maintained and now has the ability to add attachments via S3 buckets. You should definitely check it out (and the others mentioned in the article) it you are looking for a kan-ban style task list.
My Servers
I am still running the same hardware mentioned in my ‘Self Hosting Experience’ article. I have been quite happy with the experience and I even managed to run a small AI model on one of my cluster nodes where I can use it to generate “random” words for given topics.
I have a few maintenance tasks to perform such as upgrading to the new LTS release of Ubuntu Server, which will be done soon in the coming weeks. Also my Raspberry Pi NAS is showing a some S.M.A.R.T warnings (thanks Scrutiny for the heads up!). I do enjoy how long my servers have been online without needing a shutdown longer than 1-2 minutes every so often (for kernel updates) and having a high availability cluster meant everything remained running, since I could perform maintenance on each machine separately.
Speaking of the RPI NAS. I don’t really enjoy using Open Media Vault anymore, it’s got quite a few issues on my system. For example not showing there are updates available (when there is many), the borg backup plugin took a while to get working and does not have the option to easily set a specific time, just general intervals such as daily, weekly, etc. I am currently looking into switching to NixOS; so that I can have something easily configured that is always consistent.
I’m currently happy with Docker Swarm, however I will probably move away from GlusterFS to an alternative since RedHat stopped official development.
I got to test part of my 3-2-1 backup strategy, since during a mariadb update it corrupted the database data (no idea how that happened). All I had to do to restore; was copy the database dump and load it into a fresh instance of mariadb. This is a very important PSA that you should backup your data always. Since replicated storage (via RAID or like my distributed storage) can’t save you from that type of issue.
I also have decided that I will upgrade my cluster nodes to all have 16GB of ram, since the amount of stuff I am hosting has grown, now above 45 services. I also want to add some more ram; so I can host my own CI/CD system for my private use, as well as have the ability to spin up a quick development environment.
Home Assistant
Since deploying Home Assistant; I have had a mostly happy experience with controlling a few lights and monitoring the humidity levels around the house. The issue I do have is not with Home Assistant directly but rather a poorly designed zigbee rgbw led light strip controller, it breaks if you turn it off whilst it’s already off (happens with motion/presence sensors). My other lights (from Ikea) don’t do this. If anyone knows of some alternatives (around £30 and available in the UK) that work directly with zigbee (or matter/thread) and require no special hubs or apps to function, please leave a comment.
One automation I particularly like that I have setup, is a wake up mode for my lights. It turns on my bedroom lights gradually, acting as a peaceful alarm clock. It also turns off the auto-light function when enabled, otherwise the lights would stay on whilst sleeping (I have a presence sensor). The time for when the “alarm” goes off is all set via the built-in calender integration. The most annoying feature, in a good way though, is I setup the lights to pulse on and off if I don’t turn off the “alarm” within 10 minutes. That definitely causes me to wake up! A future expansion I would like to have is opening the blind automatically.
I wonder what other things I can automate though home assistant???
Other News
I’m working on a project to hopefully replace my private use of GitHub pages. This project will be Open Source when I eventually release it to the world, however it is very much unfinished at the moment.
I’m also working on a teleprompter app to replace a rather hastily made one currently available on my GitHub account. This is mainly for my use as I wanted a nicer prompter than the ones currently available. This will of course allow me to speed up the production of videos on my YouTube channel.
In the previous issue of this series I spoke about moving to NeoVim. I can happily say I still am using it and with the ease of customisation through lua I have found it to be my perfect editor. Once I got used to vim motions.
I would also like to remind you; that you can support this website and my projects by donating. Any donation amount is greatly appreciated!
Thanks For Reading
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed and found it useful. I wish you a happy new year!
