High Availability on NanoPi NEOs with Corosync and Pacemaker
In my homelab experiments, I wanted to build something closer to production-grade high availability (HA) — but using only tiny NanoPi NEOs in my homel...
Home Again After a Newfoundland Visit
I just wrapped up a wonderful trip back to Newfoundland, the place where I was born and lived into my 30s before making the move to Ontario. This trip...
Closing the Chapter: My Newfoundland Adventure
As my time in Newfoundland comes to a close, I can’t help but look back at the journey with a mix of pride, laughter, and just a touch of sore fingers...
Picking Sea Buckthorn with Dad
This afternoon, Dad and I set out for a simple mission: picking sea buckthorn berries. What started as just another foraging trip turned into one of t...
When Clusters Struggle on the Move
Running a cluster in theory sounds like the perfect solution. Redundancy, scalability, and resilience—those are the promises. But in practice, I’ve fo...
Thanks for Listening: Discovering Memorex Memories
(Click the image to watch the official video) A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon an artist I hadn’t heard before: Memorex Memories. It felt seren...
Ouananiche Surprise in Hawke’s Bay
Back in the mid-80s, three families — the Lomonds, the Vincents, and the Bests — packed up for a trip around Hawke’s Bay. It was the kind of outing th...
Dad’s Homemade Bread: 60/40 Perfection
There’s nothing quite like walking into the kitchen and being greeted by the smell of fresh, homemade bread. At Dad’s house, that smell isn’t a rare t...
The Humber Runs Low in Steady Brook
The Humber River in Steady Brook is looking different these days. Where there’s usually a steady rush of water, now wide stretches of riverbed are exp...
Sea Buckthorn in Steady Brook
At my dad’s house in Steady Brook, nature always seems to have a way of showing off. One of the best examples is the bright orange burst of sea buckth...
Sour as a Plum Can Be
From a distance, these plums look like the perfect late-summer treat. Deep purple, plump, and hanging heavy on the branches — the kind of fruit you’d ...
Rolling Connectivity: From Springdale to Steady Brook
There’s something surreal about cruising along the open highway, the sun ahead, trees rushing past, and the hum of the road underneath — while running...
Starlink Speed Check: Ping to Google DNS
Breaking Down the Numbers Packets: 9 sent, 9 received → 0% loss ✅ Latency: Min: 37.7 ms Avg: 41.3 ms Max: 47.5 ms Jitter (mdev): ~3 ms What This Means...
Nice Day on Clothes
In Newfoundland, when the sun shines warm and the breeze rolls steady off the bay, there’s a familiar refrain you’ll hear: “nice day on clothes.” And ...
Starlink Trip: Newfoundland Cluster and Coastal Life (podcast)
a blog post of notebooklm audio about the trip and the blog
Ivan's Salmon scoff
There’s nothing quite like sitting down to a scoff, and Ivan surely knows how to do it right. On the table today was a true Newfoundland-style meal — ...
Morning Coffee by the Atlantic
There’s something magical about waking up to the scent of fresh coffee already made. No alarms blaring, no rush to grind beans or wait for the kettle—...
A Taste of King’s Point: Turkey Mess and Good Company
Our day trip to King’s Point, Newfoundland turned into much more than just sightseeing—it became a gathering filled with good food, laughter, and conv...
The Perfect Setup: Battery, Travel Router, and a Single Node
When you’re on the road, sometimes simplicity is the real superpower. After all the experiments with clusters, cables, and edge cases, I’ve finally di...
A Surprise Birthday to Remember
I thought I was just making the drive back from Newtown to Springdale, but little did I know what was waiting for me at Aunt Peg’s place. As soon as I...
Ivan’s Wonderful Breakfast
There’s something about a well-made breakfast that feels like a warm hug at the start of the day. Ivan truly outdid himself with this hearty and color...
Survival Cluster: Round 2 in Springdale
The fight isn’t over — but this time, I came out on top. Back in Springdale, I geared up for Round 2 with the survival cluster. The NanoPi trio had gi...
A Visit with Mae Vincent
Today we had the pleasure of spending time with Mae Vincent, the proud owner of the house that’s been under repair. Mae is an incredible 100 years old...
Final Strokes on the Roof
Today marks the last stage of the roof repair journey. The edge of the roof is getting a fresh coat of paint, the final detail that ties all the hard ...
Last Day in Newtown: Packing up the Little Cluster
Published the update this morning—success—and let the kettle whistle while the bay outside stayed calm and grey. Today was about winding down: tidying...
ETCD Cluster - how to do CRUD Operations
# Use on ANY node export ETCDCTL_API=3 export ETCD_ENDPOINTS="http://192.168.8.242:2379,http://192.168.8.194:2379,http://192.168.8.103:2379" alias etc...
Standing Up etcd on Three NanoPi Neos (and Escaping the Election Loop)
I stood up a 3-node etcd v3 cluster on tiny NanoPi Neo boards running Debian. It’s now humming along at: node1 — 192.168.8.242 node2 — 192.168.8.194 n...
More Tar in Newtown
Work carries on here in Newtown, and today the crew has officially entered the tarring phase of the roof job. With the strapping in place and progress...
Discovering the Barbour Living Heritage Village in Newtown
Tucked away along the rugged coastline of Bonavista Bay lies Newtown, Newfoundland and Labrador, a community often called “The Venice of Newfoundland....
Roof Work Continues – Strapping Going Up
Work on the roof pressed on this morning with Calvin Jr., Calvin Sr., and Kevin back at it. The focus today has been on getting the strapping in place...
Roof Work Progress in Newtown
The roof project in Newtown is coming together well. Calvin and Kevin are doing a great job, and today the weather cooperated, making it a solid day f...
The cluster is up! Again..
After fighting to get all the nodes online, I have all three working off power now, so interruptions shouldn't be an issue going forward.
Part Two: The Work Begins at the Eaves
I thought my arrival in Newtown would be all sunsets and salt air. Turns out, the town had other plans for me. Before the kettle even had a chance to ...
Sunset Arrival in Newtown
I pulled into Newtown at exactly 8:00 PM, just as the sky began to work its magic. The road wound down toward the water, and the town unfolded in fron...
Peg & Ada’s Cabin Yarns
Murray and I were the ones who set out with high hopes for cod that morning. The sea was calm, the day felt right, and we figured we’d be bringing bac...
Whitecaps and Wobbling: A Windy Day on the Atlantic (a story)
Some days the Atlantic Ocean looks calm and inviting—like it’s welcoming you out for a lazy afternoon float. And then there are the other days. The on...
Cabin Onions: My Aunt’s Legendary Crop
Most folks come back from the cabin with fish, sunburns, or a cooler full of beer. Me? I came back with… bragging rights to my aunt’s onion harvest. T...
Windy day on the water
It's a beautiful day, but as you can see from the Whitecaps, no fishing in boat today until the wind dies down.
Springdale Survival Computing: When the Cluster Fought Back
When I set out for Springdale, Newfoundland, the plan was simple: take my portable mini-cluster off-grid, fire it up in a cabin overlooking the water,...
What a beautiful view
Sometimes you just need to marvel at the beauty.. the simplicity of the view, the smell of the salt water and the wind whipping by.
Sometimes one is all you need
Well I'm at the cabin and performance is pretty good. I'm a little bummed about the fact I'm down to one host, but I'll have the others up shortly. Re...
And then there was one...
Well my cluster idea fell down when 2 of the 3 nodes decided to quit on me. So we are down to one node, and that's ok. I can make one node work just a...
Survival Computing: Experiments at the Edge (Part 3: Packing Up the Edge)
By the final morning at the summer house, I knew it was time to shut the cluster down. The batteries had been pushed to their limit, the Starlink dish...
Survival Computing: Experiments at the Edge (Part 2: Living With Limits)
After the first day of setting up my cluster, I thought I had it all figured out: Starlink was up, the batteries were humming, and the dashboard showe...
Survival Computing: Experiments at the Edge (Part 1: A Cluster by the Sea)
This weekend I packed up my little cluster, Starlink kit, and a few deep-cycle batteries, and headed out to my father’s summer house by the Atlantic. ...
A Cluster by the Sea: Running Edge Compute on Starlink and Batteries
This weekend I packed up my little cluster, Starlink kit, and a few phone batteries, and headed out to my father’s summer house by the Atlantic. The h...
Running services at the edge
This trip is a POC for running a standalone cluster unfortunately without kubernetes. These devices do not support groups, so docker and containers ar...
USB-Backed, Peer-to-Peer File Replication on Tiny ARM SBCs with Syncthing
Want a resilient, “just works” way to mirror a folder across a few tiny single-board computers (SBCs) using cheap USB sticks? Syncthing is a great fit...
Central vs Edge: What Each Cluster Brings to the Homelab
In my homelab journey, I’ve ended up with two very different kinds of clusters: A central cluster in Ontario (running on beefier Proxmox/Ceph hardware...
Seamless Remote Access for a Portable Mini-Cluster with Tailscale
When I started building my portable NanoPi Neo mini-cluster, one big challenge was how to connect and manage the nodes while on the road. I didn’t wan...
Mini cluster time!
Every adventure starts with a story. This story tells of three nano pi neo sbc's found in my desk drawer collecting dust for a couple years. I purchas...