Homelab nerds, unite!
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Changelog
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So weāre here with Techno Tim. Do people call you Tim, or do they call you Techno? Is Techno your first name and Tim is your last name? Whatās the deal here?
Oh, wow. Tough questions first. So people call me Tim. I think sometimes people call me Techno Tim. Actually, in college people called me just Techno, and itās a kind of a long story, butā¦
Yeah, yeah. In college, everyone just called me Techno. That was my name. Because in college, I used to play electronic music really loud in my dorm, and everyone said, āHey, that guy plays techno music.ā My RA always had a bullet point in our weekly meeting to say āTim, turn your techno music downā, so my neighbor Gary, a hockey player, just started calling me Techno Tim. And ever since then, thatās what I went with. That was my handle for gaming and everything, so I when I started the YouTube channel, I thought āHey, why not?ā
Iām a listener and watcher, I suppose, of your YouTube channel. For the first time today I was like āLet me go back as far as I can on this channel, to be like āWhen did this guy begin?ā Because Iāve been paying attention for a while; Iād say at least about two years, maybe a year and a half, to your content. And I went back, and Iām like āThis dudeās a gamer!ā Because your earliest stuff is gaming stuff, for five years. Youāve been doing YouTube for like five years, but three of it has been just straight-up gaming. I donāt even know if you talk on there, or what youāve done, but I caught a couple just to kind of see what you were doingā¦ But now it makes sense why youāre called Techno Timā¦ Because thatās been your handle, and you were a techno music player, which - I like techno too, you know? Itās good stuff. EDM, all that good stuff.
Yeah, yeah. Iāve always liked electronics, back in the day, I should sayā¦ But everyone called everything electronic techno, so thatās what stuck. But it was more just EDM, just kind of chill-out music, too.
Trance, breakbeats, houseā¦
Yesā¦ I donāt know how old you are, but that goes back to my day. I was born in ā79, I lived in Orlando for a little bit, so I got to be steeped in some of the local folks thereā¦ Digweed came to townā¦
Yeah. I havenāt heard that name in a long time.
Yeah. Sasha, Digweed, Deep Dishā¦ Thatās like my era. Theyāre still around, but theyāre just not as cool. Then it became like Tiesto, and stuff like thatā¦ So there you go. So homelab - letās get into the innards of homelab. I think I have an idea of what homelab means to me. Now, you obviously have a YouTube channel thatās primarily focused on homelabby things; I think mostly homelabby things. So how do you define a homelab? What exactly is a homelab to you, Tim?
Yeah, it means so many different things to so many different peopleā¦ But for me, I try to bundle it all up into having an environment, whether that be virtual, physical, but just having an environment where you can tinker and play around with technology, without the fear of breaking things, or taking down a production environment. A lot of people that get into homelab are in IT, and so they inherit this environment from their enterprise, and they inherit this architecture from their enterpriseā¦ And they donāt get to tinker much outside of that. Youāre playing in someone elseās playpad, so to speak.
[04:01] And so with homelab, you can build up this environment and this architecture and explore things in your own environment, without asking for permission or bringing anything at work. So Iāve always bundled it up into this environment where you can play with stuffā¦ And then itās multifaceted. Like, some people consider virtual machines on their desktop their homelab. Totally fine, I totally agree. A virtual environment on your desktop? Sure, why not? Some people think itās a server rack full of stuff. It absolutely could be, like the one behind me. Or just a couple of Raspberry Piās, or even one Raspberry Pi. Absolutely. It could be. But really just an environment. And it has many tentacles from there. It could be networking, it could be focused on hardware, it could be focused on storageā¦ Thereās just so many ways to go.
Yeah. So I tried to think about this ahead of time. I was like āOkay, what do I thinkāā Because I agree with everything you just said too, and I try to play it from my perspective, so software developer/product manager, now podcaster around softwareā¦ Iāve been doing it for 14 years just on this channel alone, but really have been podcasting for almost 20 years. So Iāve talked to almost everyone in tech over the years. Not literally everyone, but weāve talked a lot of different angles around how software is developed since 2009, so weāve really eked it all out. And over that journey, I primarily focused on software. Iāve always had my own dev environmentā¦ And that was always a version of not so much homelab stuff, but like it was my single-machine, single-node environment that I had to mess with. Iāve always been on a Mac in most cases, so thatās Homebrew, thatās CLI stuff, thatās setting up Ruby back in the day, then itās JavaScript, then itās Node.js, then itās npm, then itās web environments, then itās Elixirā¦ Because our stack for Changelog.com is Elixir-based. Itās a Phoenix application. You know, obviously GitHubā¦ All those things have been like not homelabby stuff, but like the software developer things. But then I was like ā I really didnāt get into home networking until aroundā¦ I think I got my Unifi set up ā that was really what got me further into just typical [unintelligible 00:06:08.24] was never easy to use. I was never a network person. But for me, it began āHow can I set up a better home network?ā My wife is upset because Wi-Fi sucks in the bedroom, okay? That was ā you know, I got into web development because my mom was like āAdam, youāre really good at it. You should just keep doing this stuff.ā Iām like āMom, this is just a hobby.ā Sheās like āNo, you should just keep doing it. Youāre really good at it.ā And so now my wife is like āHey, Wi-Fi sucks. Can you make it better?ā Iām like āWell, I guess I can tryā¦ I donāt know how to do it. I make software for a living, and I build software for a living, I run software podcastsā¦ But I donāt know how it really works.ā And so I studied it, and I learned. So for me, it was like a better network; how can I make Wi-Fi suck less in our house? Now I have multiple machines, Iāve got to move data around the house, so now Iāve got to understand true Ethernet-based networking. I understand ā you put a cable into the wall, you get internet from a modemā¦ But then I started to get really, really curious, and thatās really kind of where the fun began for me as someone who was steeped in software, but then sort of like had to eke into the network world, to some degree. And then it was like multiple machines, and services, and like oh my goshā¦ So yeah, as you said, the tentaclesā¦
Yeah, yeah. Funny, my story is the opposite. So I am a software engineer by trade; thatās kind of my day job. Things have changed a little bitā¦ So I started out in infrastructure. I mean, the first time I ever learned about networking was trying to get my brotherās PC connected to my PC, so we could play NBA Live ā98, or something, over the network. And I remember āOh my gosh, static IPsā¦ I have no idea what Iām doing.ā Iām just typing in whatever Yahoo! told me to type in at the timeā¦ And I remember seeing on our hub the network lights flashing, and we could play two players at the same time, even though our bedrooms are right across from each other. And I remember just like almost welling up in tears, because it was like āOh, my gosh, we did it.ā
[07:58] But anyway, so I started out in infrastructure. I kind of have a background in infrastructure, but started out in tech support, did server administration, did some networking stuff, and so I built up that way. And then I became a software engineer, within the last 8-9 years. So I kind of had that background, and then I got into software development, and I think that was a good play for me, because it taught me a lot about networking infrastructure, some of these core tenants of just running servicesā¦ And then later on to build software. So I built apps, I built websites, Iāve worked for large companies, startupsā¦ And that taught me a lot about infrastructure.
And so after I became a software engineer, I started missing ā like, I used to tinker with this stuff all the time at home, and I realized I wasnāt doing that as much anymore. Thatās really how I got back into homelab, because I wanted to network stuff. I mean, Iāve had a server in my closet, quote-unquote, for a long time, whether itās running a small website, or a media serverā¦ Iāve done it for a long time.
Anyways, getting back into running services and software at home - at home now I have a full Kubernetes stack. I write my own code, I deploy it, I build it in containers, I ship it to my own Kubernetes stackā¦ And itās all self-hosted here at home, in my homelab. Youāre kind of abusing the term homelab as soon as you get into self-hosting production at home, but a lot of people do, I think, still call it homelab.
I still call it home ā if itās in the house, itās a homelab, Timā¦ Right?
I agree. Iām there. Iām there with you.
But itās just more layers of sophistication, in my opinion. You can start small, like I did. I was trying to share my journey, to some degree, because itās about curiosity.
You may not even really be like you were, in infrastructure, or even like I was, more in softwareā¦ And then, I think for anybody, itās usually the dad or the guy in the home thatās like āHey, Wi-Fi sucks.ā Or at least thatās my stereotypical opinion. It may not be super-accurateā¦ But itās like āWell, thereās somebody thatās curious about home automation.ā Thereās somebody who cares about ā okay, for example, in my home I can say āliving room onā and the Apple TV will arc wake up my TV and turn on the living room TV. Or if the kids are upstairs in the family room, and Iām like āHey, kids, itās time for lunchā, or dinner, or whatever, if itās the weekend, or itās dinnertime, and theyāre not listening, Iām like āOkay, family room offā, and the TV turns off. My watch probably is gonna start yelling at me here in a secondā¦
Start to light up?
Yeah. So itās like, that was cool. And then you kind of have certain things you want to do in your home, or even like NFC stuff, where you want the temperature changed because youāre close to the thermostat. Thereās all sorts of little things that I think are homelabby. Thereās home automation and smartness that I think is a blend of homelab. It may not be exactly that. And then youāve got things like Plex. For me, Plex was a big deal to get into homelab. I was working with 45Drives a couple of years ago, got an AV15 that helped me learn a lot more about Linux, a lot more about ā everything about ZFSā¦ And then what it would actually take to basically tear that machine down and rebuild it in a way that was more Plex-friendlyā¦ Because it had a Xeon processor that did not have QuickSync, andā¦ Okay, I was like āWhy in the world every time I transcode Iāve got this beefy Xeon processor? Why does transcoding not work?ā I didnāt understand it. Then I learned, āOkay, it really relies on QuickSync.ā
And so you learn these things with each failure or learning point along the way. But Plex was a big deal, learning ZFS was a big dealā¦ And then when I kind of got past that intimidation factor, I was like āOkay, I donāt know anything really about Linux.ā I mean, Iāve played with Linux, Iāve deployed Linux servers, Iāve got WordPress on Linux in DigitalOcean dropletsā¦ And thatās fun. But I followed a tutorial. I didnāt learn truly what it meant to be zero to Linux, running Linux, managing Linux, keeping it updated, keeping it secure, firewall, all those fun things.
[11:57] And so over time, Iāve learned little by little more and more, through curiosity. And we kind of all come into this āhomelab worldā from different areas. Do I need a rack full of gear? No, not necessarily. But if you have one, itās still a homelab; if youāve built your own Kubernetes high-availability cluster and you deploy your own software to it, thatās still homelab too, Tim.
Yeah, thank you. Like I said, it means so many different things to so many different people. I think DIY in general encapsulates a lot of homelab. It doesnāt mean DIY like I built a shelf from wood and I hacked an IKEA rack, and now Iām putting servers I got from a secondhand market. It could be as simple as āHey, I may have a UniFi switch, totally fine. But you know what? This is my DIY PC that I converted to a server, and now Iām installing and learning things about it.ā
I think anything kind of DIY, or āIāll do it myself, or assemble it myself, or even configure it myselfā is really what encapsulates a lot of homelab, the spirit of homelab. I think you find a lot of people who like to save money, like to configure things, like to adapt things like, to bend things to their willā¦ And I just love that about it. Anytime I talk to someone whoās using something I learned, either a way that theyāre doing it that I havenāt thought of before, or theyāre doing something with it that I didnāt think was possible, which both are awesome.
Yeah, precisely. And you donāt have to have a full rack of gear. I even like repurposing. Iām not not trying to save money necessarily, but I want ā I tend to be the person who upgrades myself, Tim. So if I go to buy a car, they donāt have to talk me into like the nicest thing. Iāve already pre-selected ā Iām actually coming to the lot to buy, not to look, in most cases. So Iām that kind of person just generally. But I like the idea even of like repurposing that old PC to some degree, and just finding out how to truly, like you said, bend it to your will, and be able to do something with it.
Letās dig into the stack, I suppose. Whatās your chosen homelab stack? I mentioned UniFi was my gateway drug, to some degree. I literally bought some UniFi gear, and it sat there for months, at least two or three months, because I was just intimidated. Iām like āI donāt even know where to begin.ā I think I was watching Crosstalk Solutions, and Iām like āThank God that guy told me how to set it up the first timeā, because this was like four or five years ago. Maybe four years ago or so. Iām like, I donāt even know what to do with it. I got the boxes, and UniFi is notoriously not really good with like documenting how to do anythingā¦ Itās like āHereās the stuff. Itās great. Just go figure out how to do it.ā And Iām like āI donāt want to do.ā Iāve got this cloud key, I donāt even know what POE really meansā¦ Iāve got the USG, Iāve got the cloud key, and Iāve got a switch. Okay, thatās what I need. I didnāt even know I needed an access pointā¦ Iām like an idiot, really, getting into this. So I mentioned UniFi was my gateway drug. What is your homelab stack? Where do you begin with your stack? Is it UniFi all the way up? I mean, how do you choose what your stack is?
Yeah, itās changed over time. At first it was a lot of DIY solutions like pfSense. I was like āOh, Iāve got an old PC.ā I was really big of upgrading myself and handing those things down to my homelab. So that was a big part of my early days of homelab - I am going to upgrade my current PC, and then my old PC is going to become a new homelab PC. So I would basically hand me down this hardware to myself, and so I did that for a long time.
So I really got into pfSense for a long time. I tried a lot of software firewalls, open source software firewalls for a really long time. And then just recently, Iāve been getting into UniFi stuff. And donāt feel bad about UniFi, I did the same things. Yeah, I looked at Crosstalk Solutionsā¦
Paramount, right?
[15:51] Yeah. This guy on YouTube, [unintelligible 00:15:51.20] taught me how to do VLANsā¦ So yeah, itās totally fine. And so yeah, my network core now is UniFi. And it is a gateway, and it is a black hole, because once you start realizing āOh, right behind me here I have an old switch that was downstairs in my big rack.ā And so I upgraded that switch with this switch up here, and then realized thereās a bunch of these POE switches. Why would I want a POE switch? I thought Iād never need thatā¦ And then I was like āOh, I want VLANs for the devices in my living room. So Iāll plug in a little mini POE switch that powers from my big switch, and then I get three additional switches to plug my Xbox, to plug my TV, and plug everything else in, so they can be on different VLANs, or cameras, or what have you.ā
So my network core almost ā yeah, 100% UniFi. Access points, everything; switchesā¦ All the way down UniFi, just because I like a single pane of glass to manage both the network, the firmware, and then the other pieces of the ecosystem. And so having one pane of glass for me is huge. And donāt get me wrong, I still run a version of pfSense in my homelab, virtualized, for testingā¦ But having an easy way to update my cameraās firmware - awesome. To update any of my devices firmware - totally awesome.
Yeah, you donāt waste your time, right? Keep it simple.
Thatās right. And push out VLANs, and one can add a VLAN somewhere, it pushes that out to every device; I donāt even need to think about it. And so thatās become valuable to me. Huge time saver. And not to mention, their apps are so good. Their apps on iPhone, Android, tablets, everything - they are so, so good. And even their web-based ones. Anyways, this is not a UniFi commercial, but Iām a huge fan of them.
It is a UniFi commercial, Tim. I concur, because Iām UniFi all the way down too, from the cameras, to the switches, toā¦ I mean, I just ā for the same reason; I watched your VLAN video, and Iām like āOh, I should do VLANs, because āā Long story short, I was building a new home, and so I just recently moved into it, and Iām like āWell, Iāve got like three or four months until this thing is done, so Iāve got my gear right here doing nothing, because Iām not in the home nowā¦ I should set up my future network. It should just be like when I get there, just plug it in and it works.ā Because what will often happen is youāll get to the home, or move somewhere if thatās the case youāre doing, and then youāll be like āNow I should do all the setup.ā Iām like āI can do all this preparatory.ā And then I saw your video on VLANs, and Iām so intimidated by VLANs. I donāt even know how to do themā¦ And Iām still stuck, honestly. I had to flatten it out, because like I had one device that couldnāt talk to the otherā¦ Iāve got Sonos in my house, and I wanted the Sonos to be on the IoT VLANā¦ And then my app on my iPhone could not talk to it. I was on my main trusted network, and it couldnāt talk. So Iāve sort of abandoned the VLANs temporarily until I figured out my firewall issues. Iāve got some passthrough concerns.
I know thereās two settings. I know what they are. Thereās two settings. MDNS is one. Thatāll probably solve all your problems.
MDNS itās called.
Okay. So I hit that brick wall, but Iām like ā I wanted to do VLANs, and have all this up. I know I should do these thingsā¦ I mean, should and shouldnāt; itās about security and concerns. I think Iām okay for now, but long-term I want to be betterā¦ But yeah, same thing with the VLANs. If my access points ā which I currently only have two installed, but Iāll eventually have fourā¦ No, I have three, and Iāll eventually have five access points throughout the house. One on the back patio, one kind of in the garage areaā¦ I happen to have like a workshop garage that just is in the driveway area, that just needs more Wi-Fi out there, because I did a whole mapping, and stuff like that. I have one in my office, and kind of two that serve the home. And if you VLAN, like you said, it just pushes those out to the access points, and the access points serve up all the wireless networks you decide to create. And Iām like āThat to me is easy.ā Thatās why I like UniFi, because if I didnāt use UniFi, Iām sure it would be more manual, and Iād have to like copy the config, and SSH into the actual device, or something like that. It would be not quite as software-driven, where UniFi really has nailed that. So I donāt mind being commercial, because I love UniFi. I wish they would pay us, butā¦ Maybe they pay you. They donāt pay me.
[20:02] [laughs] But yeah, and then, just to touch more on UniFi, tooā¦ Because I used to do a lot of home security stuff myself. I ran Blue Iris, Iāve run Frigate, Iāve run lots of different solutions. And at the end of the day, I was using a lot of these no-name cameras, with weird firmware, with weird accounts I couldnāt delete from who knows whereā¦ And so thatās why I really decided to get into UniFi security too for a long time, and UniFi Protect for cameras, is because now I have these devices that are updated and managed by UniFi, by a company I trust, and I donāt need to go and search for firmware and have all these weird local accounts, and stuff like that. So yeah, huge fan of basically all of their product lines. I havenāt tried them all yet. I still want to try out their secure access stuff, butā¦
Do you have a doorbell yet? Or do you use something different?
I do have a doorbell, and I realized they released the POE one now, and Iām like ā
Oh, manā¦ Guess what I just got? I have a new home, so I just got the POE switch, or the POE doorbell. Itās not installed yet though, so donāt feel good or bad for me yet. Next Wednesday, my network people ā Iām going to have somebody else install it, because I have stucco on the front, and it needs to be kind of dug out, and Iām like, itās a new homeā¦ I want them to do it. Iāll manage the connection to the POE and Iāll adopt it, but they can do the install of the actual hardware itself, so my home stays safe.
Yeah, huge fan of POE. I feel like theyāve breathed new life into a technology thatās been around for, I donāt know, 20-30 years, probably more. I mean ā
POE has been around for a really long time. I mean, even Cat 5e was supporting POEā¦ And yeah, I mean, people have powered things over Ethernet for a really long time, and I feel like it was just this untapped market that UniFi is now like āHey, weāre gonna power LED lights, camerasā¦ Everything. Phones, you name it.ā And other companies have done it, too. Theyāve powered phones, and stuff like that. But I feel like theyāre expanding their line of things they support with POE, and itās just so cool to see. Because I have a 48-port POE switch in my basement. I went 48-port, all POE, because I want to power more things over POE. And then on top of that, thatās on battery backup. So if my power goes out in my home, I can still run my POE switch for two hours, and that will still power access points. I donāt have phones, [unintelligible 00:22:17.04] back there, butā¦ Cameras, and all of the things that I plug into that UniFi switch will still be powered. The switch is everything, so having battery backup, and not having the battery backup individual things, and worry about my security camerasā¦ Itās so nice. Such a relief to know that my switch is powering all these things in my home, so if something happens, theyāre still going to be online.
Okay. So we love UniFi; letās put that downā¦ They know that. UniFi - call either of us; weāll gladly find ways to work with you. And weāll potentially even bend over backwards to do it. So big, big fan. Iāve given them lots of money, probably too muchā¦ But itās good gear, and I like it. Okay, so letās go from network - probably Cat 6, if you can choose it; Cat 5e, unless you have an older home that you just couldnāt choose the wiringā¦ Cat 6 will let you do 10-gigabit, which most people donāt really need, but itās future-proofingā¦ So if you can, why not, right?
Thatās right. And Cat 5e will too, over short runsā¦ But yeah.
Right. Itās less reliable. Itās still possible, but just not reliable, because of interference.
Thatās right.
And then the long-run, too; the long-run is really what diminishes the speed. I run 10-gigabit on Cat6 easily in almost all cases. The switches - I always choose SFP+, because I want the interconnectivity between an aggregation switch, or the actual switchā¦ I happen to have the rackmount [unintelligible 00:23:41.18] I believe; itās the 16-port with all the SPFs, or SFPs, and then like the four RJ45sā¦ I have that because I had a lot more 10-gigabit transferring. And now Iām like āYou know what? I can just wait a little longer.ā Itās more about transfer than it is āI need the actual speedā, because Iām really the only power user in our home. Everyone else is convenience. They donāt even knowā¦ And probably the same for you - they donāt even know what youāve really built for them. My kids are like āDad, this is amazing. I love it.ā They never say that. They just watch the TV. They just watch whatever; they just have their iPad and do whatever.
They really have no clue that no matter where they go in the home, there is amazing Wi-Fi . They just enjoy it.
Yeah. No news is good news when it comes to networkingā¦ Because if you donāt hear anything, that means everythingās working. You hear it when things donāt work.
Right. And so from there, I think youāve gotta establish some small machineā¦ Like, for me Pi-hole is an absolute in my network stack. Iāve got - UniFi is the network, protect, obviously, with cameras; those are sort of a given. So assuming youāve got your network settled - VLANs, no VLANs, it doesnāt matter; youāve got an established network thatās strong, with Ethernet or Wi-Fiā¦ And then youāve gotta establish some machines. So youāve got an actual Raspberry Pi, or potentially some other smaller form-factor machine that can run some sort of Linuxā¦ I like Docker in most cases. I havenāt ventured into the Kubernetes world yet. I think maybe Iām waiting for you to release a āzero to Kubernetes videoā, and maybe then Iāll actually go into that world, because Iām quite intimidated by it.
Proxmox, if you like virtualization, obviously. I like to virtualize ā and really thanks to you for explaining Proxmox, because you really preached this hypervisor. And I didnāt really think about ā I mean, I understood Docker, and I can do containers and stuff like that. I never really considered virtualizing from one good, solid machine, and having my entire stack kind of live mostly on that machine. So for me, thatās ā in a lot of cases, thanks to you for trading those waters for me, and like saying āHey, itās safe over here. Come on over here to the Proxmox world and virtualize your Ubuntu servers, and do this or do that.ā And so I havenāt mimicked literally everything youāve done, but youāve sort of given me a map. Itās almost like a gamerā¦ Imagine the map is dark, and until somebody ventures into that room, and now itās lit up for the mapā¦ Tim has done that for me, so I appreciate that.
Yeah, no problem. Yeah. Fog of war. I like it.
So for me, thatās Pi-hole, virtualized. Dockerā¦ Thatās my stack. I think Iām mirroring your stack, but what about you?
No, I like it. Yeah, thatās my stack, too. So first, I start with a machine, a hypervisor. So if youāre not familiar with hypervisor - most people are, but if youāre not, itās just really a machine that you can run virtual machines inside of. There are different types of hypervisors, but for all intents purposes, run machines inside of machines.
My choice has been Proxmox. Itās been for a long time. I used to run Hyper-V, which was a Microsoft product, Iāve run ESXi at home, which is a VMware productā¦ None of those gave me the flexibility that I needed at home without buying expensive licenses. And so Proxmox was there, it was open source, and early in its development, and it hit all of those things that I wanted; a web-based hypervisor that was performant, thatās Linux-based, thatās open source, and has some enterprise features if I want them.
And so itās Proxmoxā¦ From there, I usually virtualize everything. So everythingās virtualized. I tried to virtualize everything, just because it makes management and backups a lot easier. Pi-hole is definitely one. Pi-holes - I have gone a little overboard; I have three Pi-hole servers. Two of them are load balanced behind a load balancer, with a software load balancer; not important.
But then I run containers. Iāll say I run containersā¦ I used to do a ton of Docker. So I run Portainer, which is a Web UI for Docker, which makes Docker very approachable for someone who doesnāt know Docker. It gives you a nice Web UI. And so Iāve run a lot of containers in there; Plex, Pi-hole, you name it. [unintelligible 00:27:47.13] A lot of dashboard stuffā¦
[27:52] And then since I did a lot of Kubernetes at work, I decided to do Kubernetes at home. I will say that it takes a lot; it takes a lot to grok Kubernetes, to understand Kubernetes, and then to run it at home and maintain it. So I donāt recommend it for the average home user. Itās definitely not approachable. There are some things that make it a little more approachable, like Rancher, and even Portainer, but for the most part, not approachableā¦ Because itās made to be this huge state machine for running high-availability applications. And so you need lots of machines, lots of hardware, and lots of resources. You can minimize all of that, but at the end of the day itās going to take mostly three machines, which is out of the question for most people.
So yeah, I containerize everything. I always try to containerize everything, mainly because I want to run multiple containers on one machine, so Docker containers on one machine. I donāt want to have to worry about global dependencies, or all of that stuff that you worry about if you have a virtual machine. If you think about it - you know, back in the day I used to install WordPress on a machine. And then I would install - you name it, some other software on a machine, because I wanted one machine to do everything. Well, at the end of the day, when you start doing that, you might, say, for WordPress need PHP 8, and MySQL 7, and then you install something else on that machine, which requires MySQL 8, and now you have these broken dependenciesā¦ So thatās where Docker comes in and kind of keeps all of those in little containers and silos, so that you can run multiple things without them affecting each other.
But yeah, everythingās containerized. I run a ton of stuffā¦ I run a ton of stuff at home. Uptime Kuma, I monitor and log all of my servicesā¦ I have a lot of custom code that I wrote, a lot of websites that I writeā¦ I mean, I do a ton of Node.js, I do a ton of Docker, I do a ton of TypeScript; so I build and deploy ā I have CI running in my homelabā¦ I write code, I push it to my CI, it runs my tests, it builds containers, and then it puts them in Kubernetes. It used to put them in Docker, but yeah, now it puts them in Kubernetes. And thatās all a home. I learned how to do all of that kind of in my homelab, soā¦ But yeah, itās a lot of services. Probably too many. Some of them are for testing, but some of them have stood the test of time, like Pi-hole. I absolutely love it.
Yeah Pi-holeās a given for me. And then really it just helped me learn more about how to use Docker Compose, how to really look at network ports, things like that, obviouslyā¦ Which container to useā¦ Because thereās a couple of different flavors of Python you can use. You can use, I think, the Linux server version of it potentially, and then Pi-holeās version of it, that they manage and deployā¦
Do you think that you would be as deep or as many services as you run at home if you didnāt have your YouTube channel? Do you feel like itās cyclical, where you obviously have a persona, and you have a channel that you like to share what you learn, but you also learn so that you can create content? I donāt know really what your content creator journey has been, or what really makes you do it. Does the channel feed the beast, basically? Are you having to do these things or feeling like you have to do these things because you have this channel?
Yeah, it is; it is cyclical in the fact that Iāll create content that will go out into the world, people might recommend something else, or an alternative, and I feel like āOh, maybe I should look at thisā, or āWhy didnāt I consider this?ā Then Iāll look into that, and maybe create some content from that. But it definitely is. I never feel like itās work. I mean, Iām not gonna say that itās all roses; sometimes editing takes a lot of time, and being creative on-demand is something different, and so that takes a lot of time and energy; not used to that being a software engineer, so thatās tough. But the content itself is definitely fun. I definitely learn ā like, I get a lot of my best ideas from peopleās comments, too. Because people will recommend alternatives, or say what they did for a particular case, or say how they solved a problem, or some software that they use. And so a lot of times I find out about things in the comments, on some of the videos I release. But it is cyclical.
[32:07] There are times when I have to chase topics. And there are other times where Iām putting something out because itās something Iāve been interested in. I try to treat my YouTube channel almost agile, or like a software project. I have things in the backlog, I prioritize them; as things become either more popular in the world, or its time has come, Iāll prioritize that story or that video and work on it.
For a while, I was going after a lot of different services you can self host, which was totally fun. I learned so much in the first two years about self-hosting in general about Docker, about Docker Compose; even about Kubernetes, I learned so much by teaching this to other people. Sometimes I miss those days, just going out there and figuring out whatās the latest from Linuxserver.io, because they have all the cool containers, and a standard way of writing your Compose, and standard properties, environment variablesā¦ But I used to window-shop Linuxserver.io all the time, and say āOh, could I run this at home? Do I need this?ā and āHow would I use this?ā And for a long time ā and I guess still is even the case, most of the things that you ever see on my channel are things Iām doing, or that I believe in, or that Iām using. I mean, thatās how I started my channel. My channel was always, āWhat projects am I working on right now?ā I still ask that same question on my Twitch channel. Itās been that way for years. We all talk about what weāre working on this weekend, or things weāre excited about in tech, or projects weāre working on. And so my channels always been like what I did last weekā¦ [laughs] And itās still to this day what I did last week. Itās really focusing on home, and home tech, and homelab projects; really focusing on projects Iāve really done, and really do. Most of the time itās not something that Iām exploring, itās things that Iāve already done, and I think theyāre awesome, and I want to share them with people. So I donāt know if that makes me different than anyone else, but thatās something that Iāve always taken kind of seriously; all the things Iāve put out are things I either run in my home, or services that I run, to this day.
The reason I asked you that is because you said youāve got a CI in your homelab, which is an anomaly. Not everybodyās gonna do that. I mean, thatās homelab, because itās in your home, Tim, but itās not common for somebodyās homelab. And then to have that built and test, which is what CI does, and deploy it somewhere. And you could deploy it to the cloud, but you choose to deploy it to your own locally-host high-availability three-node Kubernetes clusterā¦ Which is totally cool, but thatās not normal.
So the reason why you do that is because you probably have this channel and youāre also a software developer, and youāre also curious, so you kind of have to eat your own dogfood or drink your own champagne, whichever flavor of that, phrase you like to use, because thatās why you do it.
Now that you said why and how you use Kubernetes, Iām probably never gonna go and use Kubernetes. Iāll probably just stick to Proxmox, virtualized servers and Docker, and call it a dayā¦ Because thereās an end to my means. The reason why I do homelab stuff isnāt necessarily so I can tinker. I do enjoy the tinker process and the curiosity, but I have other priorities. Iāve got a family, Iāve got kidsā¦ My time with them to me is way more important than upgrading firmware. I know you like to upgrade firmware.
Everybody loves to upgrade firmware when it makes sense, but I donāt want to live and die by this upgrade, or whatever. So Iād rather prioritize other things around me. So really, my joy in homelab is making it so that I donāt have to interact with as much. Do some of the upfront work and maybe dig for two weeks on a project, and then for the most part be off. My Plex server - it took me a while to learn. I literally took the AV15, which Iām pretty sure youāre familiar with, because you have one, from 45Drivesā¦ I took that and I removed the Supermicro board, replaced it with an Asus Z70ā¦ Because I wanted to have ECC RAM, I wanted to run the Intel 13900K CPUā¦ Like, I wanted to max it out and just have a beefy server, and I wanted to have as much storage that 15Drives could give me in that machine.
[36:25] And so Iād never built a machine ever in my life, ever. I had never ā like, I took everything out and put everything in. And obviously, I had a test board for a bit; it wasnāt in the machine the whole time. And it took me a while to ā I tried to Proxmox this thing; I could not get virtualization to work. I couldnāt pass through the HBA to ā and I just hit brick wall after brick wall. Iām like āYou know what - Iām gonna install Ubuntu.ā I just went to straight ā this machine is not virtualized in any way. Itās just Ubuntu with Docker machines on it, essentially. But I did all that upfront work, and I learned everything I needed to get to that pointā¦ And now itās just simply change directory into the Plex directory, spin down that thing and do a new poll, spin it back up and prune the images, and keep my disk clean, or whateverā¦ Thatās the extent of like my Plex server.
Now, that board, and RAM, and ā well the RAM probably isnāt, because ZFS isnāt RAM-hungry. It uses RAM very well. I wanted to have a lot of RAM, I wanted to have a lot of disk space, I wanted to have ā I just wanted to build a beefy machine. So itās under-utilized right now, so I do have more plans for it. I have no idea how I would use it more. I mean, if I put a home assistant on there itās not gonna really ping this CPU. The most I ping the CPU really is during data transfers, or ā so because itās a ZFS server for the most part, pretty much Iām just storing things there. I might do some 7V stuff. So we actually have ā 7Z is what I meant to say. So we have - you know, these podcasts, when theyāre done, they maybe are like 4, 5, 7 gigs of data in a directory. Iāll take that, and rather than store that 4, or 5, 6, or 7 gigs of data, Iām 7Z-ing that directory down. Itās usually about 40% to 50% compressed. And so Iāll keep that as a single file, which is so much easier to transfer than 50 or 60 files in a directory. So thatās the extent. The CPU gets pinged quite heavily during that algorithmic compression, but thatās about it. But I learned a lot.
So I did all this upfront work to build this machine, to learn how it should work. And now itās in my stack, and I never really have to touch itā¦ Aside from keeping Linux updated, which is ā Iāve got security patches automatically implied. I mean, thatās pretty much it; itās pretty much handsfree.
Yeah, thatās a good thing. I tell a lot of people a lot of times - like, a lot of people want to go huge enterprise, and make things as complicated as possible. Iām guilty of that. Totally guilty. I rely on automation to help me out with some of the complexity, and logging, and all of thatā¦ But a lot of people want to go all-out and make everything complex, and thatās totally fine. And then you have people who basically want to set it and forget it, or not worry about it, or itās a means to an end. I appreciate all of that. I tell people all the time, do what you want to do, because at the end of the day youāre the one thatās going to be supporting it. And do you want to support it a lot, do you want to support it a little? And I always lean towards keeping things as simple as possible. A little different for me, because I have a channel and stuff, and I have to do all of this crazy stuff all the time to try to keep abreast on the professional side for DevOpsā¦ But I totally appreciate keeping things simple.
I mean, thatās a large reason why simplified my network, I simplified a lot of things, is because thatās not where I want to spend my time. And like you said, you want to spend time with family, kids, and hobbies, and workā¦ Do I want to spend my time on a particular problem that I created for myself? Not a lot of times, not a lot of times.
[39:54] Well, there is Netflix, there is Apple TV, and thereās other things you can stream from. I choose Plex because I just prefer it ā well, I mean, if for some reason culture doesnāt care for this movie anymore, Netflix didnāt stop serving it, and now I no longer have access to it. Or just not having to leverage the cloud so much. Just not having to put that kind of pressure on the backbone of humanity, really. At some point, itās gonna be a bigger deal. If I own these discs, or if I donāt mind owning these disksā¦ It also blocks out commercials for my kids. Thereās all sorts of reasons why people choose to use Plex. I also happen to be a home theater geek, so in my home I have a 120-inch screen, a laser projector, THX speakers in the wall because Iām just crazy like thatā¦ Because I really appreciate movies. And so for me, itās like, I donāt want to change discs anymore. I donāt want to have to keep a rack of blurays, 4k blurays, whatever, pick your flavor, and have to go swap them out. Iād rather just - give me a lossless version of it, thatās on my network, that gets served wherever I want, whether itās a restaurant for my children, because they want to do something while weāre sitting there waiting for food or whatever, or weāre are on a trip or something like thatā¦ We also have a travel trailer RVā¦ So we will stream Plex from our home in our RV. We donāt have to take all those discs with us. Thereās so many reasons why people choose it, and thatās whatās important to me and my family. Not everybody really cares about movies and access to their media library. I do. And I built this beefier service so I can make sure I can do it anywhere.
Yeah, thatās fantastic. Iām a huge fan of Plex, too. I do a lot of over-the-air TV recording, too. I love this free resource called OTA TV, and itās great. I have a network tuner, and I figured out the whole antenna thing, and filtering out noise, and itās so great to be able to record over-the-air TV and use the commercial skip on it, all from Plex. Itās so awesome.
And my only concern really for the future is what if Plex isnāt around anymore? What if Plex stops being Plex? What if their business model changes to the fact that they no longer really prioritize the local media? It is changing already; they have streaming in Plex now, and I can see some of their priorities shiftingā¦ I just hope they always keep these legacy features in the forefront of their long-term vision. Because if Plex ā sure, you have Jellyfish, and maybe weāll have others, maybe something will come out instead of Plex, an alternativeā¦ But Plex is just really good. Their application, their iOS app is amazing for me; Iām an iOS user. Their Apple TV app is just phenomenalā¦ Itās on most smart TVsā¦ Itās pretty much wherever you want to watch TV, and so my only concern really is, one, I donāt really do much over-the-air, so thatās less a concern for meā¦ But Iām concerned for you now, so Iāll add it to my list of concernsā¦ Is what happens when thereās no more discs to rip? What happens when media is only streamed? You canāt literally buy the physical copy to watch whenever you choose to watch it, in your DRM player, of courseā¦ Thatās still a thing. What happens when that changes? I guess at that point Plex would become on the road to obsolete for me, because I mostly care about my local media. But then, if that does happen, then obviously Plex will change their priorities, because - well, physical disks are just not a thing anymore.
Yeah, itās scary to think about. It definitely is, for sure. Especially when streaming companies ā Iāve heard stories of them removing media that people have already purchased on that streaming platform.
Yeah. No media is safe unless you have a physical copy. Itās like ā I donāt know if youāre into Bitcoin at all, but the āNot your keys, not your walletā kind of situation. Like, āHey, not your media, not your āā Like, just because you own the discs too, you still have a license to use the disk. You donāt actually own it. But you can; you know, you have way more freedom than streamed, because you can find a way to change where itās stored at. I donāt think ripping is against the law. Sharing - Iām not sharing my content with you. Iām not torrenting my media library. Thatās not at all why I do any of that stuff. Itās really for convenience for me and my family.
[44:01] The experience of swapping out discs is like caveman, right? Itās like trying to create fire with sticks. Why would you do that? Like, if you have homelab sophistication or curiosities, why would you not find a way to run Plex? Why would you not find a way to have a small NAS, and run ZFS? Of course, not Btrfs or anything else, because nothing else exists besides open ZFS. I donāt know about you, Tim, but thatās how I feelā¦ Iām just kidding. Iām not a hater. I do prefer, but Iām not a hater.
I know. I know. I hear it a lot. There are pros and cons to both. Once ZFS implements the resizing of pools, I think it might be a less argument for or against Btrf, or ButterFS. Because thatās ā I donāt want to say the one, but thatās a huge feature that Btrfs has going for it, is that you can JBOD discs. You can add storage just by adding another disk, and itāll resize the pool, and reshuffle everything around. Whereas ZFS, you canāt. Youāve gotta grow your pool in a certain way, either double discs, or depending on how you divide it upā¦ Itās tough. Itās tough. Iāve been there. I had to move ā my old ZFS pool was a certain size, and when I got my ā
I watched you swap out disks. I couldnāt believe how you grew that pool. I was like āThis guyās ballsy, man. Heās swapping disks and heās growing his ā I mean, I was watching and I was just like sweating with you. Iām just like āOh, my goshā¦ Is his data gonna be there when heās done?ā
Yeah. So itās tough. So thatās one of the challenges with ZFS. You know, Iām all for just having some flexibility to ā because ZFS is pretty awesome. I love the software RAID, I love all the integrity checks that it does, I love how quickly you can snapshot and back it upā¦ At the same time, itās pretty rigid for home. I want to be able to go buy a disc, one disc, or maybe two, and add it to my pool and expand my pool. Thatās not there yet in some versions of ZFS.
Yeah, I talked to Matt Aarons about that, and I think that was a coming feature when we talked about it. I canāt recall if it was like landed in certain versions, or if it was coming. And even then, it wouldnāt really resilver the whole entire pool. It would still be unbalanced to some degree, but in the realm of ZFS, your data would all be in the same VDEV, or whatever it might be. But it was still not going to rebalance the whole disk array. Which, you know, just may be a technical challenge that it will never overcome. But the reason why I like ZFS is itās so easy to use, it is pretty secure in terms of [unintelligible 00:46:30.15] and all sorts of the reasons that itās just a good file system. Backing up - like, I have a backup system; I had ChatGPT write me some scripts that I run there, Bash scripts that help me do some cool stuff, that Iām just like āBackupā and it just like will back it up to it. I can learn those things, and I can write those commands every single time, and I can up arrow to my nth degree, and rerun the command, but who wants to do that? Iām not gonna do that.
So I had ChatGPT write me some stuff. My pair programmer.
Thatās alright.
Okay, letās get back to the stack. So ZFS is in my homelab stackā¦ Youāve chosen Ubuntuā¦ Ubuntuā¦ Pick your way to say it. I think itās Ubuntu, actually. Iāve chosen Ubuntu. Iām curious why you chose Ubuntu.
Where do I go? So Iāve used Ubuntu since - I want to say 4.10, which would mean April of 2010.
Thatās so long ago. Yeah, tell me about it. And I think thatās the first time I heard about itā¦ Like, yeah, it was Windows ā I still am a Windows fan. Iām not against Windows, I use Windows, Mac, Linux, I use them all, for different things. And back then it was all Windows. It was all Windows, and I just didnāt have a lot of experience with Linux. I had heard about it, and so that was the first approachable Linux for me, was Ubuntu. It had a desktop, it kind of felt like Windowsā¦ So that was my first foray into Linux, really. And then from there, they had the server version. So as I used Ubuntu desktop, I could open up a terminal, and kind of tinker, and play around with Linux, and copy and paste these commands into there, and do things that people were doing on Linux server.
[48:05] So eventually, I got to the point where I was like āWell, Iāll use Linux headless nowā, basically the server version, to where I donāt need the UI. And so I got really familiar with Ubuntu in general, or Debian I guess I should sayā¦ But more so Ubuntu. And I learned their package manager, I learned all of the stuff about itā¦ And so I just kept using it. And then being in infrastructure, and then being a software developer, a lot of people supported Ubuntu LTS for a lot of their stuff, whether it was MySQL, MongoDB, or anything. You could always guarantee that any software package or service was going to run on the latest LTS of Ubuntu.
So since the tech community considered it so stable, I just stuck with it. And I still do. And Iāve tinkered with all different versions. So Iām a huge fan. Iāve been using it for a long time. And then with Microsoft now having WsL, and running Linux on Windows, and having Ubuntu kind of running on Windows too, itās super-nice to be able to use. For me, approachable and accessible, stable and supported. Thatās what it boils down to.
And I think everyone has their flavor of Linux that they like, orā¦
Yeah. Youāve got distro hoppers, or youāve got some sort of hatingā¦ Like, āWhy do you like this distro?ā So did you explore all the distros ever? Or did you sort of like just land at Ubuntu and just stay there?
No, I distro-hopped. I think once you get kind of bitten by the Linux bug, I think then youāre like āOkay, well, what else is out there? Is this the best one? Am I on the best one? Whatās everyone else using?ā So I used to go out to DistroWatch all the time, all the time, and say āHey, whatās Ubuntu MATE? Or whatās Fedora all about? Or Red Hat?ā or you name it, and hop around and try things. Arch, you knowā¦ And then I did that too for my Linux firewall. So I ran a Linux firewall for a long time; I ran SmoothWall, IPCop, Untangle, pfSenseā¦ And so that was part of my routine too, was Iām gonna distro-hop with my Linux firewall. So DistroWatch, see what the top network distribution was, and hop that way, too.
At work I used Mac or Windows, and at home I used Linux, so I found every time I went to switch to another Linux, I felt like Iām paying some debt to keep learning something else, and to keep trying something elseā¦ And at the end of the day, running Linux at home for me was kind of a means to an end for some things. And so I started to be a little more pragmatic and say āI just need this to work, I need it to run, because at the end of the day I need to get Docker containers running on here, I need to get Kubernetes on here.ā And so if it works, itās stable, itās supported, I had to put my pragmatic hat on and say āI just need this to work.ā And so yeah, to answer your question though, I have distro-dropped a lot. A lot less lately.
Okay. Okay. So you stabilized to Ubuntu.
Thatās right.
And since version four, essentially. 4.10. So I think I was 12.10 was the first version I installed. And I think that was around 2015-2016 maybe, something like that. And the first place I installed Linux myself was on a DigitalOcean droplet, and it was to run a WordPress server.
I did the firewall, all that good stuffā¦ And that thing was stable, and ran without being rebooted for years. I mean, it was either DigitalOceanās good job, or my good job, or the tutorialās good job, I donāt knowā¦ Or Linux itselfā¦ So I was a fan of Ubuntu for a while. And so when it came to - about a year or so ago I kind of got back into Linux. I never really got out of it, but I never really tinkered with it day to day. But then I kind of got more into my homelab stuff, and was more concerned with which flavor of Linux I was runningā¦ And I wanted to try them all; I want to try Debian, I wanted to try Red Hat, I wanted to try Rocky, I wanted to try all the different onesā¦ But what made me come back to Ubuntu was, one, the reasons which you say, which is support and stability. But then I just recognized that it was always better resource-efficient; always better CPU-efficient, and phenomenally better on RAM, in comparison to most distros.
[52:05] I always kind of gauged it on like āOkay, if I install basic Ubuntu, get Docker running on it, and spin up Pi-hole, what is the resource utilization on that?ā Well, basically nothing on the CPU, of course, because itās not really a CPU-intensive application anyways. But the ram was like 300 megs, maybeā¦ While I had four gigs or so on a small machine in most cases for that. It was just super-RAM efficient, and you could just add more and more. I believe that was even inside of Proxmox now that Iām thinking about it. So it was like Proxmox, then Ubuntu as the - obviously, having a machine to run it on. And then Docker, and then the actual container itself. And it was sitting inside that container, 300 megs, but I would run htop on Proxmox itself; the resource utilization was just like basically nothing.
So if you add more and more to that; pfSense, or Plex, or something else, you just have a lotā¦ And in the homelab, the things you really care about. And I think youāve helped me understand this more, because you always talk about like kilowatt usage, and you know how much Watts something usesā¦ Iām like āWhy does that even matter?ā And Iām like āOh yeah, the power bill.ā So thatās important.
But then - like, when youāre tinkering, youāre just curious. Youāre just learning, so youāre like āI donāt care how many Watts this thing takes. Does this work, and does it serve my use?ā And then youāre like āOh, how can I now make it more efficient? CPU, RAM, Watts etc.ā And the point Iām trying to make, I suppose, is just that you start to care about heat, you care about noise, and you care about wattage in homelab. And you care about reuse. So can I reuse something, and does it sound X? Does it power X? Okay, no. Let me spend some money.
You were recently doing a video on your mobile homelab forbidden travel router plus plus ultimate homelab thingy. I didnāt see it like you did. I thought it was hilarious, the times you said it on that episodeā¦ But Iām like, āI need that for my travel trailer RV. I need a version of that.ā And I thought about like building a UniFi network, but that thing you built was just way better, because itās everything in one single device, and itās quiet, and itās low-powered. So you start to think about ā as we sort of go up and down this homelab stack, what matters I think is power, obviously, and noise, and does it create a lot of heat? Because if youāre in a small environment, or even a closet in most cases, are you generating a lot of heat that youāve gotta somehow exhaust? These are things youāve got to worry about. So talk about the Protectli, talk about this mobile homelab forbidden travel router plus plus ultimate homelab thingy that youāve built.
[laughs] You nailed it. Yeah, so Iāve had this idea for a while. Every time I travel, I bring devices with me. I think a lot of people in tech do.
I almost never. I will just bring a hotspot. Iām the opposite. I would want to bring a lot of stuff, I just didnāt have anything to bring. So I just bring my hotspot and hope for the best.
Yeah, thatās true. But I guess I was bringing a lot of things that needed to connect to another network. And off the top of my head [unintelligible 00:55:02.03] āOh, a laptop.ā But no, it was a laptop, a phone, a tablet, maybe a gaming device, maybeā¦ Whatever. And so those things grew. And then if my wife traveled with me, it was that times two. And so I always felt weird about like āHey, we just got an Airbnb. Weāre just gonna connect all our devices to their Airbnb. Yeah, we 100% trust this thing.ā
Trust them. āYeah, letās just trust them.ā
You know? And I always felt weird about it. And I was like āThereās gotta be something better. I donāt trust this.ā And so for a while, I would bring a little Raspberry Pi, and I would plug it in, and broadcast a network. It didnāt do the greatest, but it did exactly what I wanted it to do. It was like this travel version of a network firewall, that only our devices got connected to. If I wanted, it could VPN back home, and then get all the protection I wanted. Or if I wanted, Iād run Pi-hole on it.
[55:59] And so the Py did kind of okay at that; it did okay at that, for a lot of different reasons. And then I started looking at, okay, well, I need something a little bit more powerful than a Py. I wonāt get too technical, but I need something that does AES encryption, [unintelligible 00:56:12.05] doesnāt exist on ARM CPUs, or at least the Py, and it does on x86 processorsā¦ So thatās when I started looking for small, low-power, quiet devices that I could bring with me. Small. Iām talking about the size of a phone, a large phone. And thatās when I came across these Protectli devices. And then I started thinking, āOkay, what are the things that I want to take with me?ā And it was that same thing; it was like āHey, letās build a firewall, so that I can connect only my devices to it. Letās add an access point to this, so that I donāt have to connect to their access point. Iāll connect to this deviceās access point, and then I can uplink to their router. And then letās add Pi-hole to it, because I want the same protection I have at home.ā You know, why have everyone track me as soon as I walk out the door?
And then I realized, hey, Proxmox is a great fit for this. These little devices - I mean, there are a lot of them, but this Protectli device, at the end of the day, itās an Intel CPU that supports virtualization. So I was like āWell, why not just put Proxmox on this and do exactly what I do at home, except for add an access point to it?ā And so thatās kind of what I did. And it works great. Itās super-complicated, it is funā¦ But yeah, itās great for ā like, if youāre going to travel somewhere Iād say for a week or more; or like your RV. Perfect for that. Because itās something you could set up, you could have everyone connect to, and you can be sure that everyoneās connected and safe.
Also, I can run Plex on it, and because it has QuickSync on that Intel CPU, because it has an Intel desktop class processor, with an Intel Iris, it can do transcoding there local, too. Obviously, most people are going to connect back home for Plex, but think of ā like, youāre on the actual road trip, road tripping, and all your kids want to connect to a device, and you donāt want to use dataā¦ You could easily serve that out locally through that machine, too.
Thereās just so many possibilitiesā¦ And every time I traveled, I thought āThereās got to be a better way.ā And then NetworkChuck did something similarā¦ And I was like āAwesome! This kind of ties together one piece that I was missing.ā I was just like noodling on this idea for a while, and eventually it kind of came together. But I think Proxmox made it so much easier than it was without Proxmox.
Now, there are tiny little travel routers too that Iām gonna look into at some point, but itās super-nice to be able to bring some things with you, and to be able to tinker and to spin up stuff, local services, whatever I want.
What I like about it is that it can run Plex, and I donāt always want to phone home for Plex, because the network isnāt always there, really. And so if I can actually have one ā the reason why I like it is for all the reasons youāve said; it can be the router for all the devices that I trust, I can connect to LTE, or a hard line to the local network if there is one available. If itās an Airbnb, or this RV place happens to support that. Sometimes theyāll give you a router that connects to their network, which you can then run an Ethernet port out of to something else. So you can still be their device, but then protect yourself from there. But the fact that I can run Plex and just run a mobile version of my Plex, so it doesnāt have to be my main version of it. I can just pull over the kidsā directory, for example, which is - they have their own directory. All the stuff that the kids can watch is in the kids directory. I can just clone that to this device. Now, obviously, if itās too big, and itās 10 terabytes or whatever the number might be, maybe Iām then choosy, or itās a selection process. But I can always take a mobile version of my Plex, essentially.
And I wanted it for all the reasons - itās low-power, Intel CPU, virtualization, can run Proxmoxā¦ So thank you for doing all the hard work, Tim. And then the relationship, Iām sure, because ā finding hardware manufacturers that support open source the way that Protectli seems to based upon what youāve shared about them - itās kind of hard. If it werenāt for folks like you, and I think just YouTube in general, or like content creators, either being approached by these brands, or being curious and having these needs, and being like āThereās got to be a better way.ā If it werenāt for folks like you going and doing all that digging, then people like me would not be able to just piggyback off all your work and just ā because Iām gonna go and figure out how to do that for myself, because my idea was āOkay, Iām gonna get that small square USG, a POE thing with a POE access pointā¦ā I was gonna do a small version of UniFi network. And like that thing basically is all that in one, plus it can run Plex. And also have ā I think it supports SATA SSD, so I can maybe doing an eight-gig, or maybe I can plug inā¦ I think thereās some USB ports, or something like that, too. Maybe I can have an external device thatās just for the storage. I donāt know, I havenāt thought that far, because Iāve only recently just watched your video. But that to me is like, thatās the better way to do it.
Yeah, itās toughā¦ Because I thought the same thing, like is there a mini UniFi thing I can bring with me, that autoconnects me back home? And I donāt think that exists yet. Or who knowsā¦?
Well, theyāre listening. Theyāll make it after this call. Theyāll be like āOkay, listen, theyāve really promoted UniFi at the beginning, and now theyāre not doing it anymore. Theyāre building Protectli stuff. Weāve got to find a way.ā Theyāre gonna listen.
Thank you for calling that out about me doing research and making relationships with companies, because thatās kind of what it is, you knowā¦ And thatās another tough part about content creation - a lot of people think āOh, theyāre just saying this because youāre getting paid.ā And itās like, āNo, I believe in this productā, and either they approach me or I approach themā¦ But at the end of the day, I believe in this product, and I want it to succeed. And yes, Protectli definitely has leaned into open source a ton. If you look at their documentation, they have everything you can possibly install on that device, between OpenWrt, Proxmox, you name it; theyāve done a ton of documentation on it. And itās a pretty cool device, too.
I didnāt even know that existed, the OpenWrt. I didnāt know it existed, I didnāt know ā I mean, youāre helping me discover these new things that are already out there, and open source is just so big. Weāve been covering open source on the Changelog for ā I mean, basically, one year after GitHubās birth; it was like maybe six months or so. We just saw the trend of open source moving faster. And the name of the show became really because I was watching open source change so often; Iām like āWell, thereās nobody talking about what happened between this version and this version. Nobodyās reading the changelog.ā And so then the show became called The Changelog, because we were chronicling open source changing via our blog; we had a blog back in the day. That became our newsletter and news feed, and then now just our news show. We have a new show on Mondays, thatās a newsletter and a podcast in one. Itās about eight or nine minutes; itās a must listen, basically, if you want the top stories for that week. And then the newsletter obviously gives you more details.
We have an email called Changelog Nightly, that literally comes out daily, or technically nightly, and shows the trends on GitHub, repository-wise. Sadly, thereās so much GitHub spam now that itās made that newsletter kind of suck a little bit, and itās so hard to sort of prune it. And it leverages Googleās BigQuery, and some of itās out of our controlā¦ So all we can really do is filter; we canāt really change the queries much. But yeah, I mean, the power of open source is amazing, but I had no idea about OpenWrt, and how you can leverage itā¦ So really, thank you for being what I call in the trenches. Youāre a content creator, but I think youāre this person whoās curious, and you probably have these challenges, and youāre like āWhat devices out there work?ā Okay, either they called you or you called them, but thereās some sort of discovery process. And then thereās a software discovery process. And then thereās āWell, actually this thing makes sense to run Proxmox, so will it actually virtualize?ā Well, because sometimes youāll support IOMMU, and maybe you can virtualize some things. I think you had an issue with a video driver or something like that with Windows; thereās always something finickyā¦ Even though itās supported, thereās always something. And so it requires sometimes that person to go ahead of everybody else and sort of like recon. āOkay, the path is safe. Come on, come this way.ā
[01:04:23.00] Totally. A canary in the coal mine I feel like sometimes. But itās tough, and Iām glad you recognize that, because it starts with an idea sometimes, but thereās so much, I realized, for tech YouTube too, at least for what Iām doing for tech YouTube - thereās a lot that goes into it. Not only the writing, the thumbnails, the things you guys see, but just - yeah, a lot of these are projects that I have to test ahead of time. And usually, I test them two or three times, because I donāt want surprises as Iām recording. So a lot of work goes into it, but itās fun. I learned a ton, and itās fun to share that stuff, too.
Since weāre kind of on the subject and weāre probably getting close to time, can we kind of talk about the business of being a YouTuber, to some degree? Do you mind?
Yeah, no, sure.
Is that an open subject for you?
So I noticed recently - and because youād mentioned Protectli, and this relationship, Iāve noticed ā and I donāt know if I had noticed it before, but Iāve noticed this phrase in the top left corner of some of your videos, not all of themā¦ āIncludes paid promotion.ā And I think you have to do something when you publish a video, because there is some relationship, and you have to be forthcoming with YouTube the platform about the dealings of business behind the scenes. How does that work for you? Do you have dedicated sponsors? What is the business side of your channel like? How does it work for you?
Good question. I feel like this was the question I was hoping forā¦
Because ā well, I mean, there are a lot of people that are always trying to figure out āIs this person being genuine, or is this person being paid to say this?ā
Youāve always seemed genuine to me.
Well, thank you.
Itās either the way you talk, which I think you have a unique way of delivering, you have a pace with your voice; either itās on purpose, or itās just naturalā¦ But youāve always seemed, without having to say so, like youāve gone on a journey, and youāre telling us the tale of the journey, and why it made sense for you to go on it. So youāve always seemed very trustworthy to me in terms of being truthful, and honest with your dealings. Itās never felt like you had to over-explain; it just seemed, the way you approached the topic, and the subject matter just seemed naturally trustworthy to me, personally.
Thank you. Well, I really appreciate that. Sometimes I get bogged down by the commentsā¦ Itās one comment thatās like āHeās just getting paid to say this.ā And I shouldnāt read the comments, but I do.
Donāt read those comments, yeahā¦
I knowā¦ I canāt help it though.
Well, every time you see that comment, just imagine me going āNot true. Tim, I believe in you.ā
Alright, thank you. I appreciate it. So let me explain this the best way I can without ā Iām not a lawyer or anything like that, but YouTube has this checkbox. So when I create content, YouTube has this checkbox. And this checkbox says, āCheck this checkboxā, Iām paraphrasing, āif you received anything of value to create this video, or received money.ā So they kind of lumped them both into one. And me, Iām a rule follower. Iām a rule follower, and so I read into it deeply, and I think āWell, on my latest video, Rackstuds sent me a free pack of Rackstuds.ā They didnāt pay me, didnāt say anything, they just said āI want you to have them. Use them in any of your videos.ā And so to me, Iām like āOkay, Iām posting this video, I received one thing for free in this videoā¦ I should probably check the checkbox.ā
So anyways, long story short, thatās up for almost every single one of my videos, because one thing in my video was usually sent to me for free, that I used. So full disclosure. I try to disclose that in the video too, but there are times when I paid sponsors, who want to sponsor the video, or a segment in the video, and Iām pretty clear about that, too. I usually have a segment in my videos that says āHey, this video was sponsored by so and so.ā
[01:08:01.08] And Iām very picky on who I work with, Iāve been fortunate enough to do that. I work with some really awesome brands, and so Iām sticking with them. But the business of YouTube - itās tough. Itās trying to balance this ā well, one, itās being able to get paid for what youāre doing. That is tough. You have to have an audience that trusts youā¦ And then YouTube has a rev share with ads, which isnāt muchā¦ And then there are brand deals and sponsorships where brands can sponsor your videos for however much you charge for a segment on your video.
Iāve done okayā¦ Iām a software engineer, so in general I earn a pretty good wage. Recently thatās changed; Iāve been doing half and half, sort of. Iāve been fortunate enough to dial back some of my software engineering stuff and contracts, and do more of YouTube to try to give this a shot, to see if this is something I want to do for the next six monthsā¦ But I will say, itās a huge pay cut. But at the same time, Iām doing - three of five days Iām doing exactly what I want to do; just trying to make a business out of YouTube, and figuring out what that means. I donāt have a lot of mentorship. I actually have zero. I donāt have anyone to talk toā¦
Bummer. It doesnāt seem like that from the outside.
Oh, thanks. But honestly ā donāt get me wrong, Iāve talked to other YouTubers, but it never gets into āWhatās your business model? How do you charge? How do you make money outside of YouTube?ā Itās been all this trying to figure it out for myself, which is totally fine. But at the end of the day, I have to figure out if this works for me. Anyways, this is not meant to be a sob story, butā¦
Well, itās the journey. Itās the journey that youāre going on. Youāre like āHow do Iāā And I think I understand, if Iām reading between the lines, and also having gone down ā Iām not on the YouTube path. Weāve been on podcasting primarily. I feel like audio is the best type of content; like, video does ā I mean, I suppose, I couldnāt imagine you audibly talking about the things you talk about, because you need a visual to it. So thereās some things that just donāt fit the podcast method, so to speak. But weāve chosen podcasts first, audio podcasts first, and then video being a second-class citizen in all of our production. But I can empathize, because youāre toeing that line of like āI want my listeners, and the people Iām trying to cultivate as an audience, the people I genuinely care about - because I am one of them, so in a lot of ways what I produce is a mirror of what they desire in life, or what theyāre curious about, and they donāt know about it yet, and Iām on this discovery pathā that weāve talked about with youā¦ And you want to stay genuine to that. But in order to do that, you do have to make money. So I mean, there is a relationship that comes there.
So itās like āWell, how do I capitalize from a business and revenue perspective without squandering, or just basically removing that trust that theyāve given me?ā Because you want to toe that line. And the only way Iāve been able to find out how to do that is just choose the brands that, like you had said, that you trust, that you believe in, that you would yourself use if you had that problem. And our case is a little bit different, because we donāt always have the problem every brand approaches us withā¦ Tailscale is a good example. I use Tailscale. Theyāre one of our sponsors. I chose Tailscale because I like them. I use them. Iām like āHey, I would love it if you all sponsored a podcast. If you have any budget, Iād love to talk about how these things work for us.ā And those for us are super-clear. You can tell where thereās an ad spot.
I just mentioned Tailscale - they didnāt pay me to do that. Thatās because I use them. Thatās genuine. And so you do have that blend. And itās unfortunate for you, because ā yeah, itās kind of crazy they lump both of those into one. But you have that struggle of like āI want my audience to trust me, I want them to know that when I mention Protectli, or Racksys, I believe, or what was the other ā the rack you just talked about today.
Yeah, Sysracks.
Sysracks. I had it backwards. Did you buy that? Do you own that? Would you buy that if you had to buy it? Did they give it to you? Like, all these questions come into play. I personally had that question when I watched that, and Iām like āWell, Tim, you have a big version of that. Why in the world do you need a second small version of that, Tim? What story are you not sharing here?ā And itās not that Iām thinking youāre dishonest, itās just more like - I know you have to create a business around this, but then youāre like āWell, did they give him this one, and now he just cares that much, and this is a small version of the big version? Whatās the story here?ā
[01:12:13.08] And itās so challenging to be forthcoming with every detail without giving too much TMI. And then also, just bloating your content with all the explanatory of explaining why people should trust you. So for us, I always feel like every time I get a chance, in a podcast, naturally, to mention how we deal with sponsors, just saying like we choose to work with them. We donāt just take money from anybody, and this is because we truly trust and think that business is worth promoting, because you should know about this; you should know about their brand story, you should know more about the details. And thatās how we choose them. So I donāt always preface every single ad with āHereās how weāre getting paid. Hereās the business dealings. And by the way, hereās the details about the business itself.ā Itās a challenge. So I empathize to the nth degree with the challenge.
Yeah, thank you. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. A lot of people wonder, every video I releaseā¦ And maybe itās just me reading into stuff, but itās tough. Itās like, do I want to spend like 45 seconds in the beginning disclosing exactly how this product came to my house? And Iām sure some people would be interested in that, but other people may not be. Plus, the algorithmā¦ I mean, I have to deal with the algorithm on YouTube, too. So thatās tough, too. YouTube analyzes everything you say, and all the engagement with your stuffā¦
Is that right? Theyāre analyzing your words, too?
Oh, yeah. Everything. Everything plays into it. You could put a video out on YouTube with no title whatsoever, and YouTube already knows who your audience is, and whoās going to click on itā¦ I mean, theyāll analyze the thumbnail too, but how much time do I want to spend talking about how I got this item? Well, if I do that in the first 30 seconds, people are going to click away. So thatās gonna drop off. So itās like āOkay, the first 30 seconds of your video is to captivate the audience, not to talk about all your prerequisites, and stuff like that.ā
So itās tough. Itās tough. So if you see that checkbox, most of the time it means that I received at least one thing for free in this video to make the video, because thatās the FTC saying they have to do it, too. Thatās Google basically saying āHey, we have to do this for the FTCā, and so I have to check that checkbox if I received one thing for free.
Iāve heard a lot of people say āOh, well, they didnāt give it to me for free. My money costs time, so this technically isnāt for free.ā And I donāt want to play the game. Iām just going to check the checkbox almost every timeā¦ If something in my video was free, then Iām going to check the checkbox, because I never want the FTC or Google coming after me for not doing it.
Have you considered doing a video that explains the phrase they put up there, āIncludes paid promotion?ā Like, almost just do a whole standalone video that the title is āIncludes pay for motion. This is how it works for me.ā
āBecause youāre gonna see this on almost every video, and hereās why. And this is the path that things come to me. Sometimes I reach out to them, sometimes they reach out to meā¦ Sometimes they just send things to me, and I donāt even know itās comingā¦ Whatever the methodology is. And when you see that thing up there, because I canāt avoid it - Iām forthcoming, Iām a genuine person, I play by the rulesā, all the reasons you just basically stated. āWhen you see that, this is how my business here on YouTube kind of works. So that when you see that, this is how you can trust what I care about, and why things end up on my video.ā
The Rackstuds - I bought mine. They didnāt send me any. And I heard about them from Tom Lawrenceā¦ And I like them. I think theyāre pretty awesome. I didnāt see the one youāve just mentioned before. I think those are brand newā¦ Kind of cool. They donāt hold a ton of weight, so you canāt ā I mean, I think you put your UPS on it, and it was a lighter version. Mine is 75 pounds, so it would not hold mine. And if it did, it would stress-test it and maybe break it. But those racks, those are pretty cool. I like them.
They are cool. They are super-cool. And Iām not gonna lie, I was a little skeptical about them. I thought āWell, cage nuts arenāt that hard to use.ā
And thereās a plethora; theyāre everywhere. Thereās no shortage.
[01:16:06.06] Yeah, I like this thing that ā I had stainless steel ones, and I was like āYeah, theyāre pretty cool and shinyā, and never have using them, seeing them on other channels, I thought āWell, I think cage nuts are fine.ā And then this is exactly how it happened - Iām working on this video for this new rackā¦ I think itās the owner for Rackstuds reached out and said āHey, I watch a ton of your videos. Give me your address, I want to send you some Rackstuds.ā I said āSure, why not.ā And then I decided to use them for thisā¦ And Iām a believer in them now. Itās super-nice to be able to just ā I donāt know, the new ones are awesome, because you just clip them in, and then you can put your device there and screw them in. But I also had to use the other ones, too. And I was surprised at how much weight they can hold. Iām surprised at how much weight and how steady they are. I will say, if you ever put a screwdriver to them, put it to it gently.
Yeah. Iāve only done it to get them off, because I would hand-tighten them too tight, and Iāve only had to use a screwdriver to get them off.
Itās never been to ā like, I would just only hand-tighten. Because itās plastic. I mean, itās nylon of some sort, Iām sure. But itās not metal, you know?
Yeah, yeah. They are pretty amazing at what they do. So the 22-pound UPS is as far as Iāve taken it. And this is a tiny little rack that I have behind me; itās basically going to house a couple of things that I have coming up. Basically, studio stuff thatās going to be rack mounted.
Right. So you have, like ā I donāt know the map of your house, but I think you have a basement, and I think your main rack is in your basement, because thatās what youāve saidā¦
Thatās right.
Very colorful rack, you knowā¦ But you have a large ā I think a 32U rack, whichā¦ Thatās a lot of stuff. I think the 45Drives is probably for youā¦ So youāve got 28 to go from there. Maybe youāve got a few switches, so maybe youāve got down to 26ā¦ I mean, youāre not filling the whole thing, are you? The whole 32U rack. Youāve got a little bit of space left. Maybe like four or five Uās, something like that.
Yeah, I do. And I have a disc shelf in there that Iām selling now, and so yeah, things have evolved over time. I have some 1U servers in thereā¦ I even have an Intel NUC cluster in thereā¦ So yeah, things have definitely evolved.
What are you using that for?
My Intel NUC cluster?
Yeah. Is that your Kubernetes cluster then, that youāre deploying to? Or is it something else?
It was. So for a while it was for testing my Kubernetes. So I built this thing in Ansible, thatās open source, that helps you deploy a high-availability Kubernetes cluster, and that was my testbed for a long time. Funny you mentioned power and heat, and all this stuff we were just talking aboutā¦ Well, weāre in a heatwave here in Minnesota. I mean, itās really hot. I mean, weāre talking like it was 95 yesterday, 94 today, and Iāve been running these 1U servers in my basement, in my server rack for a while. And they get hot, theyāre loud, and they use a lot of power. And Iāll preface it with theyāre pretty efficient. I mean, theyāre pulling 140 Watts each, which is pretty efficient compared to if you look at other things that are 200-300 Watts apiece. So theyāre already pretty efficient, but I thought, āYou know what, I wonder if I can run Proxmox on this intel NUC cluster and replace one to one?ā Replace one 1U server running six to nine virtual machines, and move and migrate all of those virtual machines to one Intel NUC. And so I did it. And I did this, I want to say, a couple days ago. I was posting it on Twitter, basically; my almost live tweets.
And what Iāve found was I was able to migrate all of those virtual machines to an Intel NUC, and run them all there, and shut down my 1U server, and I went from 140 Watts to only 26 Watts. And running the same exact workload. And then so I was like āOkay, that worked out pretty well.ā Like, it was like a non-event. So then it was like āLetās migrate the other one.ā I migrated the other one, nine virtual machines, to another Intel NUC, and itās running. Same thing. It saved, I donāt know, around 100 Watts there.
So then I was like āOkay, well, Iām going to shut down my 1U servers, and maybe on Monday Iāll need them again, so Iāll keep it on standby.ā Well, it is now Wednesday, and I havenāt needed to turn my 1Uās back on.
Yeah. So Iām running Proxmox on two Intel NUCs. It has one terabyte NVMe, and a 500-gig SSD for the OS. All my virtual machines are running in there, 64 gigs of RAMā¦ You know, I was able to save a ton of power, and on top of that, things I didnāt realize - Iām also not using my A/C ur fans as much too, because now the temperature in my server room dropped by almost 10 degrees.
So then my fans are on less, so then my A/C is on less.
Thatās insane. So two 1U servers was generating 10 degrees? Thatās a lot. Wow.
Have you done the math on what that equates to, like kilowatts per month? I mean, you pay your power bill, and Iām like āManā¦ā My power bill goes up. And the A/C is the main user of that. And thereās even ways you can cool down your coils, and stuff like thatā¦ Because I live in Texas, so itās always ā like, itās common to beā¦ Well, itās same temperature as you, Tim. 95 degrees outside. So there you go. Different parts of the world, but same temperature.
But yeah, have you calculated what that 100 Watts or 120 Watts equates to for the full month when you run that? Like how much youāll save, or what the difference is kilowatts per hour?
No, I havenāt. So itās a total of 200 Watts that I save, total, running 24/7. I havenāt calculated it out. I should. I probably will.
Thatād be kind of cool.
Oh, yeah. For sure.
Like I said before, I never really thought about ā I mean, obviously, I pay my power bills, so I think about power consumptionā¦ But I never really considered āOkay, as Iām being curious with homelab things, and as I choose this deviceā¦ā You know, the Protectli stuff is low-power, fanless even, and so itās got that grate (or whatever you call it) on top to sort of dissipate the heat, and whatnot. You donāt think about the consumption, and then really how that effectsā¦ Like, what if all the YouTubers in Minnesota did what you did, Tim? Iām just kidding, thereās probably not many of you up there. But what if everybody considered āHow can I shave off 200 Watts of consumption 24/7?ā That might reduce the stress on the power grid. I mean, these are all utilities; you flip a switch, the lights come on. You expect that. Like, what happens whenever we stress the system to the point ā during insane heatwaves, or peak times in winters or summers, whenever itās too cold or too hotā¦ What if we all like consider a little bit that power consumption, in particular - like, 200 Watts is a lot, and 10 degrees in one room change by turning off two devicesā¦ Thatās significant.
It is. So yeah, it had this compounding effect of less power, which - you know, those servers then generated less heatā¦ And so I have an enclosed server, that enclosed server rack, and it has a temperature control unitā¦ So as the heat would get past, I think, 87 degrees, it would kick on those fansā¦ And so now that whole thing is no longer happening; itās all being passively cooled. Well, passively from the rest of my house, butā¦
Yeah, itās crazy to think about. I think about it more and more. When I first got into homelab, I thought I needed this huge, gigantic serverā¦ And it turns out very few things need a lot of compute. Like you mentioned earlier, itās going to be compressing, or compiling, or transcodingā¦ Other than that, most things run pretty okay on low-wattage processors.
Yes, yes. Well, I think weāre getting close to the length of ā weāre beyond what I thought we would actually go in terms of timing. The only question I had left for you, and I think you may want to answer this, because you said that you wanted to talk about the other topic, which was the business of YouTubeā¦ What are your plans for the future? I mean, you do a great job with your content. I appreciate the journeys you take to create the content you do, because in a lot of ways youāre the recon; youāre the recon team, and Iām the follow-up team. Iām just watching what youāre doing. Some things I just learn from, like with the PiKVM. I donāt really leverage that really much. I donāt have a lot of headless things where Iāve got to deal with that. I SSH into most things I need to, so I donāt need a visual for almost anything really, unless I have toā¦ And maybe then Iāll go back and watch it, and maybe implement a PiKVM, or something like that.
[01:24:15.05] Proxmox - youāve helped me get into that, obviously, considering low-power consumptionā¦ But things like that. So what are the futures for you in terms of like the business of YouTube? Do you plan to grow a team? Do you have an editor? Will you build an empire? Will you be the next Linus? Whatās going to happen? What do you want to do? What would be ideal for you?
Oh, that is a great question. I feel like Iām at those crossroads right now. So the last couple of weeks I decided to focus more on YouTube. Iāve had a full-time job outside of YouTube as a software engineer at this small startup for a long timeā¦ And since then, Iāve put less time in software engineering, and more time in YouTube. So Iām honestly trying to still find my way. I would love to find an editor at some point, only because editing takes a lot of time.
Iād love help with script-writing sometime. Everything I talk about are my own words, which - I always want my YouTube to be my own words, but it could use a little finesse sometimes, or it could use a little bit of help sometimes with some of my ideas.
Iām okay with it being a one-person show right now. Itās taught me a lot about how to write, how to produce, how to edit, how to do audioā¦ All of these things I didnāt know about before. How to teach. I donāt want to say Iāve taught, but Iāve mentored people at work, and outside of workā¦ And teaching people through video, through instructional material is a lot different. You know, zero feedback. Feedback is after the fact. And so itās taught me a lot how to teach.
So I think these next six months are really just going to be focusing on, like you mentioned, the business of YouTube. I donāt necessarily want to grow an empire. I mean, I would love to have some help at some point, but I want to keep it authentic to me, and just be able to make this a sustainable business for myself, to be able to support my family doing this, and support doing what I loveā¦ And thatās combining tech and learning, and teaching too, and exposing people to new things. So yeah, if thereās an audience out there for that, I would just like to capture more of that.
Yeah. Well, in terms of feedback, since I am a watcher/listener - I donāt know what the heck they call a person who watches somebodyās YouTube videosā¦ A consumer, or whatever. Subscriber? Maybe subscriber. Well, for a while there I think I didnāt even subscribe. The algorithm just would feed me your stuff, or other peopleās stuff even. So you would be a watcher of somebodyās and not really recognize that youāre not a subscriber, which does impact how the algorithm treats your contentā¦ And thereās all sorts of things that play into that.
But in terms of some direct feedback on your writing, I think you did a great job. I think the way you open up your videos - you ask a questionā¦ I donāt know if itās intentional fully, or how much you sort of like go back and re-examine the words youāve written to scriptwrite your processesā¦ I think your approach to it is really good. Your pace is good, your writing is goodā¦ So whenever you consider bringing somebody on for that, I would still do what you can to be the kind of primary writer, and not leverage too much from somebody elseā¦ Because I think your style is good already.
I do understand the burden that puts on you, because now youāve got to be cognitively available for every piece of the process of building the thing. Youād mentioned before, in the pre-call, that you released a video today. And half the battle is doing the thing, and half the battle is releasing the thing, and being there for the distribution process, and the questions that come from there, and the attention that comes from that. And I totally get that.
We have a saying around hereā¦ Three things, actually. So kind of three pillars that kind of guide us. āKeep the main thing the main thingā, āSlow and steady winsā, and āIf you feel like youāre going too fast, slow down and check yourself.ā So whatever pace you feel is your paceā¦ Just because you say āSlow and steadyā, that doesnāt really mean slow. It just means a pace at which you can go steady. So you can be going really fast, but still be going slow and steady, because youāre at a steady pace.
[01:28:06.04] So pick your momentumā¦ But if you feel like youāre not able to keep up, and the things that matter most to you, the main thing, āKeep the main thing the main thingā - if youāre losing your grip on that, slow down and check yourself. Thatās the rudders and the levers we tend to pull, having done this for 14+ years, and making a living doing it. This year has been the most unique year of all yearsā¦ But thatās our guiding principles, so to speak.
And then I think the last one is āListeners firstā, in our case, because weāre audio. So listener-first. Everything we do is based on the listener. If I donāt think theyāre a brand - if itās a promotional thing - that they should hear, Iām not going to work with them in any sort of business way. If itās a piece of content, or a topic that we donāt feel the listener is going to engage in, or if how we speak - like I mentioned before, we remove the explicit tag off our shows for that reason. We want people to be in the car with their moms, their grandfathers, their kids, their dogs, whoever may get offended by offensive speech; you may not offend us, but you may offend somebody else, and weāre gonna do our best to curb that, so that we can hit the widest possible audience.
We always even say too, the hacker generation doesnāt begin at 20. They may begin at nine, or five, or whatever. My kids are really into that. Iāve got a seven-year-old. Would I want my show playing? Yeah, he listens to my show when Iām QA-ing it. He doesnāt always listen to it, but Iām happy to play my content as a QA process while Iām driving my truck, or car, or whatever, because I know that itās safe. I know what the content is, and I want our listeners to have that same feeling. So listener-first, slow and steady, slow down and check yourself, keep the main thing the main thing.
I like it. Yeah, this is exactly what I neededā¦ So I appreciate your advice.
Hey, yeah, Iām happy to be ā not just come on our show, happy to be a friend. That feedback process is insanely challenging, even with our stuff. Only till a couple of years ago did we start doing certain things that sort of solicited to some degree, or invited that feedback process. I think sometimes when you do such a good job, like I think you do - you do a great job - you seemā¦ Not that youāre not approachable, but that maybe youāre too cool. That you wonāt say yes to coming on a rando homelab podcast. I didnāt think you would respond, honestly. I was like āTimās not gonna respond.ā And you responded so graciously, pretty quickly. And the email has that auto reply, so that may turn some people off; and I have no idea why you do that, you may have your reasons, butā¦ If you want feedback, you have to provide feedback mechanisms.
I watch a lot of your stuff, but Iām on zero of Twitch. So your live streams almost donāt exist to me. Maybe Iām missing out. I just donāt livestream with folks, ever, really, and I donāt know who ā maybe itās a thing with my age demographic or whatever, but Iāve just never done it with really anybody. And so I would just find ways ā if you want that feedback, or that friendship, or that loop, so to speak, of not just you in the echo chamber, but you with, like, in the YouTube comments, find ways to recreate that somewhere else. But again, thatās even half the battle too, because now youāve got maybe a Slack or a Discord youāve got to manage; now you got one more self-hosted thing youāve got to CI and test in Kubernetes, and all this good stuffā¦ So at every layer, Tim, thereās just a new battle to consider how to win.
Thatās right. Thatās right. Yeah, I really appreciate it. All great advice.
Cool. Whatās left? Anything left unsaid? Is there anything I didnāt ask you that you want to include here, right as weāre closing out this edition, this long edition of Changelog & Friends on homelabs?
You know, I donāt I donāt think so. Iām just super-appreciative of the time and sharing me with your community, and feeling like āHey, Tim is someone I want to share with your community.ā Because it means a lot. It means a lot to me. And Iām the same way, I donāt curse, so you donāt even have to say to me; I wouldnāt even have cursed anyway. I like to keep a safe and welcoming chat or dialogue with anyone, so that anyone can play me anywhere and not second-guess āDo I need to turn it down, or change the channel?ā
Yes, āWill he say something wrong?ā Super-quickā¦ I watched this YouTuber, Sam the Cooking Guy. I donāt know if you cook, Tim, but my side hobby is backyard barbecue.
I donāt love to cook, but I love to cook certain things. And I watch Sam the Cooking Guy.
Well, I love to eat.
Yeah, I love to eat. I love to eat good food. And so nobodyās making me good foodā¦ My wife makes me amazing food, but I donāt have a chef. I donāt have anything like that, so Iāve gotta be my own chef. Sam the Cooking Guy is amazing, but he is notorious for cussing. Itās a cooking show. Itās like Emeril, but way worse. Not on cable TV. But amazing food, amazing guy. I love his attitude, and I almost wouldnāt take Sam without the cursing, but I canāt watch Sam with my kids around. So I have to confirm when itās safe for me to watch Sam the Cooking Guy. And if I do want them to watch some of the stuff heās doing because itās entertaining - well, I have to be like pre-watching it. So yeah, anywaysā¦
But yeahā¦ Tim, I appreciate the content you produce. Keep fighting the good fight, keep being curious like you areā¦ Find a way to make it a sustainable business, and if you want a friend to help you along the way, Iād be happy to be that friend for youā¦ But thank you so much for coming on here and just sharing your time and sharing your homelab journey, and some of the opinions you have. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Adam. I appreciate it.
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