Like many folks post-2020, I’ve been working from home a lot more, and with that came a new set of challenges — one of them being how to let my family know when I’m in a meeting without yelling across the house or hanging a note on the door. I decided to solve that problem the way any tech nerd would — with a bit of home automation magic.

From time to time, I see folks confusing the products of GitHub and Azure DevOps with the version control of Git and the practices of DevOps. In this post, I will break down terms like Git, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and DevOps to help clarify what each one does, their relationship with one another, and how they contribute to the software development lifecycle. 1. Git: Version Control System (VCS) Git is a distributed version control system created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 and actually it turns 20 this month.

How I Stream My Church Service to YouTube and Facebook — A Small Way to Give Back When the pandemic hit, a lot of things changed — including how we worship together. Suddenly, gathering in person wasn’t an option, and our church needed a way to stay connected. I knew I could help. Before all this, I worked as a developer advocate, so I’ve always enjoyed solving tech problems and sharing solutions.

If you’re a developer, DevOps Engineer, Operations Engineer, SRE, or anyone passionate about improving collaboration in tech, then DevOpsDays Chicago 2025 is the conference you don’t want to miss. Having attended DevOpsDays in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2023 and even speaking in 2022 I can confidently say that this event is one of the best opportunities to grow your skills, connect with peers, and stay ahead of industry trends.

Previously, I made a YouTube video demonstrating how to automate the detection of whether a meeting is happening using Home Assistant and a light. In that video, I used an ESP32 board and LED light strips controlled by WLED, integrated with Home Assistant for the automation. Since then, I’ve discovered the ESP32-S3 Matrix a compact and versatile development board featuring an ESP32-S3 processor and an 8x8 RGB LED matrix with 64 integrated LEDs.

In my latest video, I’m giving you an exclusive tour of my 2024 Home Network Rack, showcasing the meticulously designed infrastructure that keeps our digital world running smoothly. From blazing-fast internet speeds to seamless multimedia streaming, this setup is all about performance, reliability, and cutting-edge tech. What’s Inside the Rack? Ubiquiti Products: Experience unparalleled internet speeds and rock-solid connectivity powered by some of the best networking gear on the market. Home Server Magic: Discover how I manage streaming, file storage, and automation with my home server running [software of choice].

I’m thrilled to share my latest YouTube video showcasing my 2024 Unraid server setup! In just 10 minutes, I walk you through how I use the power of Unraid to create the ultimate centralized platform for all my digital needs. Here’s what I cover in the video: 🎵 Music – How I organize and access my entire collection. 📸 Photos – Keeping precious memories safe and easy to browse. 🎥 Movies – Streaming my favorite films seamlessly.

This blog post was written for future Richard and anyone else who might be looking for documentation on where to start with enabling GitHub Copilot within an organization. The process is pretty simple but might be diffcult to find where to start. What is GitHub Copilot? GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered autocomplete tool that acts as a peer programmer, assisting in writing code. if you want to dive deeper into Copilot you can find more information about GitHub Copilot on the github resource site.

Simple design of realtime streaming from Application Insights to PowerBI I recently dived into the exciting world of Azure Stream Analytics If you’re scratching your head and wondering what the heck that is, don’t worry - I’ve got you covered. Simply put, Azure Stream Analytics is a cloud-based service that lets you analyze data in real-time as it’s being streamed in from various sources. Think of it as your personal data magician that can extract insights from your data as soon as it hits the cloud.

Being a DevOps and SRE minded person professionally has a big benefit when it comes to home automation. Im constantly looking for ways to make my home automation more efficient and easier to manage. One of the important things to consider in your home automation is observability this usually comes via a some sort of Dashboard usually this is an application or two you use to interact with your smart devices.