Building a Self-Hosted Server on a Mac Mini with Docker Mac Mini · Docker Desktop · Docker Compose · Nginx Proxy Manager · Self-Hosted Services A modern Mac Mini makes an excellent small self-hosted server. It is quiet, compact, energy efficient and powerful enough to run a surprisingly large collection of

Installing, Securing and Updating Mail Relay Mac Mini · Docker · Postfix · Brevo A small internal Postfix relay provides a single, reliable SMTP endpoint for Docker applications. Applications send mail to mailrelay:25 without needing individual Brevo credentials; Postfix then authenticates to Brevo over encrypted SMTP and handles delivery. This keeps application

Installing, Securing and Updating Immich Kiosk Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · Immich Immich Kiosk is a lightweight web application that turns an Immich library into a continuously running photo display. It is particularly useful on a dedicated tablet, Raspberry Pi, smart display or browser window. In this setup, Kiosk

Installing, Securing and Updating Nextcloud + Collabora Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · MariaDB · Redis · Collabora This guide describes the recommended deployment of Nextcloud with MariaDB and Redis, fronted by Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM), with Collabora Online providing browser-based document editing. The design deliberately keeps HTTPS termination at Nginx Proxy

Installing, Securing and Updating Nginx Proxy Manager Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · Cloudflare Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) is the front door to the Plainshawk homelab. It terminates HTTPS, manages Let's Encrypt certificates and routes requests from your public domains to the Docker containers behind it. That makes

Installing, Securing and Updating Vaultwarden Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · Mailrelay Vaultwarden is a lightweight, self-hosted implementation of the Bitwarden server API. It allows the official Bitwarden desktop, browser and mobile applications to use your own password vault rather than Bitwarden's hosted infrastructure. This guide installs

Installing, Securing and Updating Homebox Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager Homebox is a self-hosted inventory application for keeping track of the things you own, where they are stored, and useful information about them. This guide installs Homebox on a Mac Mini using Docker, stores its data on an

Installing, Securing and Updating Calibre + Calibre-Web Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager Calibre and Calibre-Web provide a powerful combination for managing and reading an ebook collection. In this setup, Calibre provides the full desktop application through a browser-based KasmVNC desktop. It is used for importing books, editing

Installing, Securing and Updating Uptime Kuma Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager Uptime Kuma provides a simple way of monitoring all the services running on my Mac Mini Docker server. It monitors the services from inside the Docker network where possible, sends notifications through my internal Mailrelay container, and provides

Installing and Securing Paperless-ngx Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · PostgreSQL · Mailrelay Paperless-ngx is my self-hosted document management system. It provides a searchable archive for scanned documents, PDFs, correspondence, bills and other important paperwork. This installation runs on a Mac Mini using Docker, with PostgreSQL providing the

Installing and Securing Ghost Mac Mini · Docker · Nginx Proxy Manager · Mailrelay Ghost is the publishing platform behind the Plainshawk blog. This guide documents my current self-hosted installation: Ghost running in Docker on a Mac Mini, backed by MySQL, with Nginx Proxy Manager providing external HTTPS access and a separate

Immich is a powerful, self-hosted alternative to cloud photo services such as Google Photos and Apple Photos. It provides photo and video storage, automatic mobile backups, facial recognition, smart search, albums and a web interface, while keeping the underlying library under your control. This guide documents how I installed

I have a fairly advanced case of "Gear Acquisition Syndrome", which has led to me owning two Canon camera bodies (which I use a lot) and - gulp - 11 Canon lenses (some of which I don't use anywhere near enough). One of this morning's little

A nice one hour walk around Horsbere Brook wetland area The 50 acre Horsbere Brook flood storage area was created in 2010 following a series of flash floods that affected more than 300 homes in Gloucester.  The £1.5m project involved creating a huge ‘depression’ capable of accommodating the equivalent

A walk to The Roman Villa at Great Witcombe Unfortunately, English Heritage have closed the site, including the car park, until further notice, as the site is in need of repair and preservation. The site has now been closed for a couple of years, so it is unlikely to reopen

As a fairly keen birder, I use the Merlin mobile app when out and about to identify bird calls. I decided to try to set up a similar capability on my home network. Becoming a birder sneaks up on you. You start by enjoying a bit of birdsong, then (in

I've been reprocessing a few old RAW files with Lightroom recently, and uploaded one to my Ipernity photo group site as my 'picture of the day'. Since AI chatbots have been helpful in setting up my IT environment, I wondered how it would fare as a

The days of super-cheap digital storage are gone for now, so it’s tempting to clear out those old images that never got properly processed, and make room for the new stuff. I’ve been discovering that I can get some good photographs out of yesterday’s bad ones

Now I’m retired, I’ve started thinking about where I spend my money, and with the current state of the world, how much of it I want to give to huge companies and their billionaire owners. I’ve been a paid member of Flickr since 2008, and with my