Random but I'm looking for a heating engineer (electrician maybe?) in #manchester who specialises in smart heating (Wiser) who I can pay to help me debug my system. Any recommendations/retoots would be appreciated!
Mike Bell
Engineer, tinkerer, hacker and cat dad. ME/CFS.
Spent the day at a big 3 hosting provider. Most of it was spent internally screaming. If I hear the letters AI again I'm going to projectile vomit. What happened to doing proper work?
Some initial thoughts on the Kobo Clara Colour:
* It's a bit on the small side
* The bezel depth is huge and reflects light on the screen in a wierd way
* The back is nice
* The power button is on the back which kinda makes sense
* There's a lot of backlight bleed
* The plastic finish isn't as premium as the Kindle
* It's quicker than the Kindle
* I think I like the smaller form factor
* Installing KoReader was as simple as running a script - much easier than kindle.
* cont...
/cc @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk @ben@mastodon.bentasker.co.uk
My hotel room number is 404 I find this quite satisfying in an odd way. Had to explain it to my partner though.
The amount of spoons I posses is currently lower than the morals/ethics/braincells of Trump. That's to say I'm exhuasted and it's only Wednesday.
[Backrest](https://garethgeorge.github.io/backrest/) is super cool. Trialing it out with Backblaze B2 to backup my Immich instance. I already use Restic to backup my ForgeJo instances but wanted a GUI for my homelab.
The Google Pixel 10 Pro XL is a damned nice phone but the way it shoves AI down your face is annoying as hell. Slowly disabling as much as I can. Still the build quality and screen is fantastic.
Accidentally ran the entire test suite instead of focusing it. Time for lunch I guess.
⭐⭐⭐ New Post! ⭐⭐⭐
Homelab Update March 2026
https://mikebell.io/posts/homelab-update-march-2026/
⭐⭐⭐ New Post! ⭐⭐⭐
Rebuilding my digital library
https://mikebell.io/posts/rebuilding-digital-library/
My forgejo instance has reached it's limit now trying to compile arm64 docker images. I have so much spare compute in my homelab I'd love to run some runners on there but it's locked down and I'm not sure I want to setup a VPN between the two.
I built something and it worked - https://sundaylunch.club/
For a long time me and some friends have been doing a Sunday lunch club around Manchester. This is our attempt to start documenting it.
Todays been a pretty hard day for so many reason but my anxiety tics have been really bad. The tics are something I've always had but only just started to understand. It's been really tough coping with it.
Watching my friendship group slowly fall apart due to every situation possible is not how I'd planned 2026. I can't see it getting any better any time soon. Can't wait to be back in the UK tomorrow to give my fluffy ones all the love I can muster at the moment.
ok #traefik people I have 2 working routers provided by docker but new ones are not working with `Filtering disabled container` I have no idea why, I've tried copying working config and changing the router name but no luck. I've disabled file provider and my old routers still work. I have no idea what's going on, I have traeifk 2.0 on another server which works fine, 3.0 has been problematic.
I've tried to vibecode an app using local LLMs and it failed miserable. I spent more time getting frustrated with trying to get the setup working than actually creating anything. When I got it working it came back with a gibberish cli command.
I'm sure this is why copilot and claude are the "better" tools but I was trying to do this as ethically as possible.
Everything about the Nine Inch Noize set at Coachella is awesome shame I had to pirate it because there's no legal way of watching it anymore. I get there will be an album on the 17th (which I'll buy assuming DRM free).
⭐⭐⭐ New Post! ⭐⭐⭐
Thoughts on the Kobo Clara Colour
https://mikebell.io/posts/thoughts-kobo-clara-colour/
⭐⭐⭐ New Post! ⭐⭐⭐
Tuning my renovate config
https://mikebell.io/posts/2026-04-10-tuning-my-renovate-config/
I love the fact that the RAF have leased an A330 from Airtankers and it has jet2.com plastered on the side. Nothing beats an RAF holiday!
Aircraft: G-VYGL
Check out playback of aircraft G-VYGL from Brize Norton to Bardufoss on Flightradar24. https://fr24.com/data/aircraft/g-vygl#3edf06d9
`failed with exit code null`
you and me both goreleaser, you and me both