As much as I rely on Claude Code while managing home lab and writing code for DIY projects, coding agents never meet the media’s perception of AI: “slaves to logic” as I, Robot has put it. Agents hallucinate, make mistakes and take them back, and more often than not, their output is a wall of text that is completely out of order. For Claude, the recent models print more than their predecessors.
From App-to
App to Customize Time Machine Schedule
Of many things I have adopted over the course of years, Time Machine is one element that is both most helpful if hell breaks loose and least updated since. I have discussed the shortcomings of Time Machine and shared some of the possible remedies before. Apple’s own iOS backup system supersedes macOS Time Machine. It is remote, and nothing equivalent is offered on the Mac yet. But one feature was added rather recently: rudimentary scheduling.
App to Self-Host Location History Tracker
My last camera for the sake of pure photography, I believe I bought it around early 2010s. It was a click-and-shoot with GPS tagging. Smartphone cameras were still playing catch up, and while the GPS chip gave it more metadata, hardly any software could make use of it. The geolocation data lived by itself, not matched to a place. And it was not easy to export elsewhere, either. Scroll forward to 2026, I wish I hadn’t bought the camera at all. Smartphones genuinely provide impressive quality for a portable device, with much needed metadata (including accurate date and time), face…
App to Identify wp2shell Vulnerability on WordPress
If your WordPress has automatically installed an update, this is the retroactive PSA on why WordPress has urgently issued one. If it hasn’t, consider it an urgent PSA. There is a vulnerability in WordPress Core, disclosed July 17, affecting 6.9.0–6.9.4 and 7.0.0–7.0.1. The attack surface is Core itself: no compromised plugins, themes, or custom code. As far as I could find, with an estimated 500 million+ websites running the platform, WordPress has decided to push the update rather aggressively.
App to Test USB-C Cables on macOS
I did float the idea of buying a USB-C tester only to be thoroughly defeated. USB-C, as it stands, is more about the physical shape of the plug and port, not what is traveling on the cable itself. However, USB-C simply isn’t “one cable to rule them all”. Type C is more a nutrition label or laundry tag — universal in format, but nothing in the rules says a cable has to support all of it.
App to Block YouTube Ads from DuckDuckGo
YouTube has been aggressively pushing for more ads on its platform. And their antics circumvent their own supposedly ad-free subscription. YouTube Premium, at a fixed price, is supposed to deliver the unaltered experience and more, like added functionality. But as I have covered before on the topic, YouTube is bad at keeping up with their own platform as-is: subtitles, PIP, multi-language support. The list goes on.
App to Convert Email Notifications to App-based
Legacy projects often support legacy methods of alerting users that their home labs are in jeopardy — in email. Only that this method no longer flies. Not only do the notifications often get stopped by the automated spam filter, but these emails are also sent out by an anonymous SMTP server, not a certified known server. If you want an instant push-based notification, there is a tool for that.
App to Notify the Return of Fable 5
I thought I’d share some light-hearted news before I can drop the pessimistic read on the tech sector as a whole. Anthropic hasn’t yet shared any update on when the US government’s suspension of Fable 5 will be lifted, but there are communities voicing support for the repeal of the ban, while sharing memes around its status.
App to Restart Unhealthy Docker Container
One of the odd features left out of the Docker ecosystem is restart on unhealthy. Docker knows the status of individual containers, but it somehow does not natively support the feature. There are yaml tricks to have a container kill itself if unhealthy, so the Docker engine restarts it based on the policy. The tool I am recommending is a more comprehensive, if not more commonly recommended, method.
App to Span Filesystem Across Storage Pools
The home lab community has long assessed the pros and cons of NAS ecosystems and respective accessories for future expansions. Notably, Synology has been offering expansion units as a companion to their DiskStation lineup. For example, if the main unit only has 5 bays but the spec sheet says it supports up to 15 drives, the implication is that the user may expand the configuration with the compatible expansion unit they offer. That being said, an expansion over a single line of cable also presents a single point of failure — a risk most find outweighs the benefit of additional…
App to Discover IP Addresses for Proxy Switchers
If you are using a rule-based proxy switcher, checking IP addresses for each proxy could easily get out of hand. It is possible to stop the auto-routing and force the connection for manual testing, but that is not what I wanted to do with a browser extension.
App to Automatically Sync Subtitles to Videos
As I was going through my media library, there was one thing I noticed consistently — I am more or less after the fan-made subs than the rips themselves. The official subtitles tend to miss out on the clever wordplays, crude jokes, pretty much anything that is not broadcast-friendly in both literal and financial sense. But at the same time, I also consistently notice fan-made subtitles are out of sync by 1/4 seconds or so.
App to Manage Streaming Contents and Self-Hosted Media Discoveries
I know the title can be mouthful. So let me start by describing the problem first. There are different services available on the internet showing what streaming services in your region carry the contents you are after. The problem I had with these services were: one. it often fails to parse the localized titles used outside of North America, two. these services are not always up to date with licensing. What it means, in the real world, is you might be buying or adding a new subscription to watch a movie or a TV show that either you already own…
App to Import and Download Films for Plex
This is a related post from yesterday’s. Both Plex and *arr platforms share the same categorization of video contents. They are either films or series. Sonarr handles series, Radarr handles films or theatrical runs. One would think films would have less an issue fetching metadata, but managing media libraries can create some extreme edge cases.
App to Import and Download Series for Plex
One of the automation self-hosting streaming aims to achieve is matching and fetching metadata. Plex handles both rather well and is quite forgiving with file names on average. I suppose the emphasis is on average. Plex divides medias into two major categories: films (or theater) or series (TV shows, and others). If Plex fails to match the existing files for series, it has to be done manually; at worst, it could be a grueling work to match the show, the seasons therein, and then the episodes therein.