gavinj.net

Thoughts on technology, infrastructure, and AI

Flipper Zero with Momentum: A Review Before BSides Canberra

September 18, 2026 • security, flipper-zero, momentum

Getting ready for BSides Canberra with the original Flipper Zero: my experience with Momentum, RF remotes, NFC, USB tools and the iOS app, plus Wi-Fi, Ethernet and the upcoming Flipper One.

Heretic Models: An Uncomfortable Rabbit Hole on a DGX Spark

September 16, 2026 • ai, llm, local-ai

A DGX Spark with 128GB of unified memory let me explore much larger local models. Then I discovered Heretic variants, and a hardware experiment became a rather uncomfortable lesson in how AI refusals work, how easily they can be changed, and what that means for the rest of us.

Connecting an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi to Home Assistant with MQTT

September 13, 2026 • home-assistant, arduino, mqtt

A complete tutorial for bringing an Arduino UNO R4 WiFi into Home Assistant with ArduinoMqttClient, MQTT discovery, two onboard controls and two useful sensors.

Three Small ESP32 Devices, One Home Assistant

September 12, 2026 • home-assistant, esphome, esp32

My first three ESPHome projects turned a LILYGO T-Embed, a Nano ESP32 and a Waveshare reflective display into useful Home Assistant devices.

Eleven Servers, One Hammer, and a Serious Look at Proxmox

September 10, 2026 • proxmox, vmware, virtualization

A Broadcom upgrade conversation sent our infrastructure team looking at alternatives. Three retired servers, a graduate named Thor and a Proxmox trial have made the next renewal much more interesting.

gav.ilicio.us

neat-annotations: Hand-drawn CSS annotations
Hand-drawn arrows and handwritten callouts for the web, all in one CSS file. No JavaScript, no build step—just a little personality for your page.
Telstra Outage: The Night a Network Decided the Year Was 2006
One bad GPS clock, one NTP timing loop, and Telstra's network thought it was 2006. Certs, DNS, time—the sysadmin trifecta strikes again, with time taking the lead.
Bonsai 2 27B
Another model for the local-AI shortlist: PrismML says ternary weights shrink Qwen3.8 27B to 5.9 GB while retaining 98.2% of its benchmark score.
My AI Agent That Loves to Talk to Scammers
Scammers have AI callers now, so Paul Nevin built an AI honeypot to keep them talking and map their playbook. Some things never change—only the tools.
fugleramme: E-Ink Bird Frame for Raspberry Pi
A Raspberry Pi identifies garden birds by sound using local AI, then displays them on e-ink as hand-cut 19th-century illustrations. Delightful.
Ubuntu 26.10 Completes Transition to Rust-Based Coreutils
Ubuntu 26.10 finishes replacing GNU coreutils with memory-safe Rust uutils—including cp, mv, and rm. A quiet, drop-in security upgrade.
Alternatives to MinIO for Single-Node Local S3
MinIO's licensing and stewardship upheaval has kicked off the hunt for a replacement. This practical bake-off puts SeaweedFS and S3Proxy near the front.
Tesla says it will finally unveil the second-generation Roadster on October 1
After years of delays, Tesla says the second-generation Roadster will finally be unveiled on October 1. Flying cars! The future envisaged in my youth is finally arriving ...
Oracle layoffs: Employees receive the 6am job cuts email from "Oracle leadership" again
Oracle has started another round of job cuts, and once again the news arrived as a 6am email from "Oracle leadership". My heart goes out to the affected employees - a 6am email is a very cold way to part ways. I wrote about this pattern back in March in AI Layoffs in Australia and the Contractor Anxiety They Create, and nothing about it has become more humane since.
Lifespan
After a few weeks listening to David Sinclair's podcast, I'm tempted to subscribe to Lifespan magazine. The future of longevity research is looking extraordinary.