Cool stuff I'm working on (Jan 2025 edition)
Just a brief update since my last blog post was 2020.
- Revamping this website. I used to use Jekyll and GitHub Pages to run the site, but I was always a little annoyed with the limitations. I've started using Ghost again for the Noob2Poweruser website, and I really enjoy the publishing experience with it.
- Virtualizing my home network with Proxmox. I went through a catastrophic failure of my home network where the server that held my Home Assistant, my network controller, and my Adguard DNS server crashed and took out my home internet for... longer than I'm willing to admit. With a NUC and Proxmox, I'm building a more robust infrastructure so hopefully one server going down doesn't take me offline. So far here's what I've put on there:
- The Noob2Poweruser site (proxied through Cloudflare, but hosted at home)
- This website (same as above)
- Unifi network controller
- Adguard Home for local, network-wide ad and malicious content blocking
- Wireguard VPN so I can access all that stuff remotely
- Plex (though that's still running on another server until I get it moved over)
- Automating more things with Home Assistant. It's such a cool project that allows me to connect all my smart home stuff together locally, and create automations to connect different things. Love it
- A website for creating your own chatbot with the ChatGPT API and sharing that with others. I've made a version of this in the past, but it was designed primarily for my use and doesn't have a lot of features to allow others to use it. I'm working on rebuilding the site with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView and designing it for public use. It's a fun project that's definitely testing the limits of my programming abilities.
- Chattr Live. This site is production ready, but it's definitely built to be what I want it to be for now. I used to use PollEverywhere to have live question asking from my class. Doing it anonymously allows quieter students an opportunity to ask their questions, or allows students to avoid "looking dumb" when asking questions. Last summer I built Chattr Live as a replacement. With it, an audience can ask questions of an instructor or presenter through the form. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but it's great for my use. And it's currently free for anyone to use, so give it a try.
- About a zillion chatbot and ChatGPT research projects that need to be written. We've run a bunch of studies and experiments over the last few years, and lots of stuff needs to be written and published. Now that I'm done teaching for a bit, it's time to get cracking. More details on those later 😄