#daveknowstech — Public Fediverse posts

I've been working on the AI im my matrix server and understanding that the low footprint models on my 16Gb Mac Mini M4 are unfortunately hallucninating answers, so when I as intelligpt "What MCP servers do i have available" I'm getting details about my K8s cluster, if i use deepseek/clause sonnet on open router i get the right results

Wrote a post about it here: https://blog.safehomelan.com/2026/08/19/ollama-vs-openrouter-why-ai-behaves-differently-depending-on-the-model/

#daveknowstech #ai #blogpost

I've integrated my mastodon feed into my matrix server, there is a blog post here: https://www.daveknowstech.com/2026/08/19/bridging-mastodon-into-matrix-how-i-ended-up-tooting-from-element/ because there are a lot of options and not all of them work. #daveknowstech #matrix #blogpost

Going to start merging my matrix server, open claw, netdata this week and see what i can get out the other end

#daveknowstech

When did ubuntu become so slow?

#daveknowstech

The Samsung Z fold 8 arrived and I have some observations

- it's tiny, but it's not, it's strange it's physically smaller than the OG pixel fold, but when using feels bigger
- it's light, like really light
- this phone is not to be used without some form of case it's slippery
- the display ratio of folded and unfolded works (for me)

Now I need that case to arrive, get my esims ported over and Google wallet setup

#daveknowstech #zfold8 #mobiletech

I wanted to see what google did with thiier folding phone, and the square root of nada was the answer.. So I pulled the trigger on the Samsung Z Fold 8 on a contract..
Having been using the OG Google Fold for a while now I can say I am a person who opens the screen and uses the extra real estate (self justifying there)
Should be here tomorrow...

#daveknowstech #foldingphone

95% of an eclipse in my part of the UK tomorrow, had to mansplain to my wife it starts at 18:12 but the bit she wants to see happens about an hour later..

So we are now having a picnic dinner in a local park.

Considering most of these cosmic events usually get clouded out (as it did back in 1999 when this last happened here) I'm up for a couple of park pies and a Moscow mule in the park as this all unfolds

Excited

#daveknowstech #eclipse2026 #uk

Fascinating episode of the vergecast tonight about Eliza, a "chatbot" from the 1960s

How people reacted to it has parallels with AI today, and the guy who created it had a fascinating life

Worth a watch

Eliza Demo: https://elizaemulator.com/

https://youtu.be/vDq1y4wozqk?is=GicMMnv1LTtucU51

#daveknowstech #TechHistory #tech

I can't say I've ever noticed the mails from Amazon to this level, however thinking about Amazon keeping it's product mails purposely obtuse because it doesn't want Gmail/Gemini learning from them and providing a better experience

https://youtube.com/shorts/DALR4ZwFjcI?is=a9HwY0vSSS8onPY5

#daveknowstech #tech #Vergecast

I don't see my account as a hawking service to make any money.. it's just for thoughts and opinions. This however is a legit experience of this tech being a life saver..

I'm a forgetful person at the best of times, I am also wanting to know where my dog is, if I was an iPhone user I would be using Airtags everywhere, I'm not I'm Team Android.. so I've been using the Chipolo tags, on our keys (my wife is always forgetting where she puts hers), on the dog, and most importantly in luggage..

On a recent trip to India my bag ended up in New Delhi, I was in Bangalore. The guy at the lost luggage counter had no idea where my bag was, I told him specifically where it was in New Delhi airport.. got it back early the next day, I tracked it to the hotel.

So I just bought 2 more for luggage and I can use on the dog again. I got a QR code printed on a waterproof sticker so it's on his collar

There is a link here, and I get a free Chipolo tags if people buy from it, not money.. I don't want money, a free tag sounds nice..
http://ssqt.co/meUwf2K

#daveknowstech #findmy #usefultech

If you are into longer reads and remember the Internet of the 90s this is an interesting article as they say, we learn from our past

Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment

https://flip.it/M3Qp_-

#daveknowstech #internet #history

I was trying to think of something pithy to post, but jetlag kicked in and I can't..

#daveknowstech

More lessons from travelling in India

1) my travel sockets didn't work there, three pin US like plug missing

2) the USB sockets in the hotel were not powerful enough to charge much,😔 same on the plane.. however glad there were USB power sockets

3) plane wifi rocks and is reasonable price for a long haul flight

4) having not just a data plan but a mobile number in India seems essential, for a country used to giving companies like meta a hard time they love your email/phone with everything

5) Ubers are strange, other than Uber black every other option is the same crappy car and impatient driver

#daveknowstech

We can put reasonably priced usable WiFi in a plane, we can server warm food, we can provide a stream of food and drink.. why can we not install a chair where the idiot who needs 15degrees of recline to get no extra sleep thar reduces your legroom not mine?

And in doing so doesn't recline in such a way to almost crush my tablet

(Rhetorical question)

#daveknowstech #travel

Airport waiting time is 100% sysadmin of my homelab time. Alway a blast doing it remotely, however as I improve my setup each time i do this, less and less breaks..

Todays fun will be rebooting my Kubernetes cluster (I need to add a failover master node first

#daveknowstech #homelab #selfhosted

As i sit on the Bangalore office on Day 4 of 5, some valuable lessons I think I knew but had forgotton because of the lack of travel..

1) My work Windows laptop the HP Elitebook people who use outlook edition has 3hrs battery life.. I had to charge it twice.
2) USB2.0 is king outside of my tech bubble. While all of my (and probably most of your) devices are new USB3.0 the outside world still relies on USB2.0 connectors in planes and power strips in offices.
3) I've moved my work life for this trip to my Samsung tablet (Onenote, Outlook, Teams and Edge) because its easier to take hand written notes in meetings.
4) No one likes the smart arse with the little rectangle thing recording the meeting and transcriing it with AI..
5) Having plex and youtube media downloaded to the same tablet is a life saver..
6) Saily, Nomad choose what you will, a local eSIM is a requirement... especially with tethering..

Some other things ive noted about India in no particular order
- Paying with a QR code is a thing.. had an issue paying for the Uber from the Airport to the hotel because only Revolt provides such a service
- Doing anything from buying a McDonalds to getting a vistors visa requires a local phone number..
- Potholes take priority over actual usable roads in Bangalores suburbs
- I've eaten soooo much local food, and its all soooo good.

#daveknowstech #travel #techtips

I went for a nomad esim on this trip instead of a Daily one, what I completely forgot was my Honest backup esim is international. Both linked to Airtel when we landed in India and we're up and running upon landing. Seem to be getting 5G speeds out of Nomad. I got the 10 day unlimited esim

#daveknowstech #esim #traveltech

Flight to Bangalore was uneventful other than having plex local downloads was well prepared as the inflight entertainment system didn't work. The wifi on the flight was usable and £29 unlimited.

#daveknowstech #travel #tech

If the taxi gods align, i should be in a taxi to Heathrow and a flight to Bangaolore, India tomorrow for the week.. Last time i was there was August 2000.. I'm expecting its changed..

#daveknowstech #travel

I don't care what anyone says, for my internal network vibecoding rocks I've just put together a small container which pulls my workdpress block post into open-notebook and then exptended it with a plugin framework as i figured i'd be needing it at some point.

#daveknowstech #vibecoding #homelab

So i built a thing.. I vibecoded it, its called AIlog - https://github.com/mightywomble/ailog and its kinda morphed into something more than the sum of its parts. I'm a huge beliver in logs for monitoring, and I wanted to use AI to read linux server logs and tell me what was wrong and how to fix it.. and tbh AILog here does that.

Turns out thats not however what i wanted. What I wanted was something to proactively tell an AI, hey I've got an issue.. the AI pulls data from the servers and then says "Hey, Dave, this is the problem, can i do this to fix it?" And that it turns out is possible with a Matrix/Element server, MCP Access to tools like Nextcloud, proxmox, netdata, managelm and patchmon.

So I've got this AI Chatbot in MAtrix working quite well now, its connecting to MCP servers for Netdata, Nextcloud, Proxmox, ManageLM and Patchmon, so i can use a .ai prompt in matrix to ask questions in natural language about each of these servers. The next step is to get the alerts from netdata going into matrix and have intelli-gpt in matrix go and find out via the MCP Servers whats wrong and suggest me fixes..

This isn't a normal blog post, its me putting all my nodes while building because i didn't do my usual method of documenting while building this.
https://www.daveknowstech.com/2026/07/25/building-a-private-ai-powered-matrix-server-with-infinigpt-and-mcp/

The next steps are to have netdata/managelm push its alerts into Matrix, and see if i can have that message generate the Diagnostic AI response..

then...

Have a yes reply generate an action based on that response..

This is just a fun project, its in the "it works for me" catagory, however if anyone wants to collab, its nice to have other minds to work with..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #observability

I found ks‑aur‑scanner.. Which seems useful considering the recent issues with AUR in arch.. Seems to work..

At its core, ks‑aur‑scanner is a Rust‑based static analysis tool for AUR packages. It doesn’t try to be clever by executing PKGBUILDs or simulating makepkg. Instead, it reads the files, inspects the scripts, and looks for the sort of nonsense that keeps sysadmins awake at night — obfuscated commands, suspicious network calls, unexpected privilege escalations, and the classic “curl | bash” anti‑pattern that should have been outlawed years ago.

Further Reading: https://www.daveknowstech.com/2026/07/24/a-sysadmins-take-on-ks-aur-scanner/

#daveknowstech #arch #linux

Termix hit 2.5.1 this week, and its a long way from the early buggy versions..
Read more about it here: https://www.daveknowstech.com/2026/07/23/ditching-termius-for-termix/

#daveknowstech #techblog #blogpost

Well that didn't last long, Fedora begone and CachyOS be back.. There was an inherent battery issue on my Dell laptop i've not seen on Cachy os any other distro, So I was for some reason getting 1hr of battery life. Strange, tried a few tools, however eventyally life got too short.

I have however mixed it up and gone Cosmic Desktop, and early days its really nice, its got just the right mix of Gnome and KDE for me..

#daveknowstech #linux #cachyos

When the Fog Rolls In

There’s a kind of heaviness men carry that doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t look dramatic. It doesn’t stop you from getting out of bed or going to work. It just settles in quietly, like fog, until one day you realise you’re moving through life half‑present.

It starts with small things.
You wake up tired, even after a full night’s sleep. You sit at your desk and stare at the screen a little longer before you start. You forget what you were about to do. You lose your train of thought mid‑sentence. You feel undervalued, or invisible, or like you’re doing everything right but somehow still falling short.

And you keep going anyway. Because that’s what you’ve always done.

Days become checkboxes.
Tasks become motions.
Life becomes something you endure rather than something you experience.

Men don’t often describe this as depression. We call it burnout, stress, being “in a rut,” or just “having a lot on.” But the truth is simpler: it’s the slow erosion of yourself. The parts of you that used to feel alive — your hobbies, your curiosity, your spark — start to dim. You stop looking forward to things. You stop wanting things. You stop feeling much at all.

And you tell yourself it’s fine.
You tell yourself it’ll pass.
You tell yourself other people have it worse.

But inside, you know something’s off.
The Feeling of Being Undervalued

There’s a particular sting in feeling like you’ve done the slog — years of effort, loyalty, responsibility — only for the rug to pivot beneath you. It hits men hard because so much of our identity gets tied to being dependable, capable, steady.

When that’s shaken, even slightly, it rattles everything else.

You start questioning your worth.
You start wondering if anyone sees what you carry.
You start feeling like you’re running on empty but still expected to deliver.

It’s isolating. And it’s exhausting.
Finding Your Ground

Here’s the part that isn’t a lecture: there’s no universal fix. No one routine, no magic habit, no “just do this” solution. Every man’s mind is wired differently. Every man’s pressures are unique.

But what does help — what genuinely shifts something — is finding one small thing that’s yours.

Not a grand project.
Not a reinvention.
Just a grounding point.

For me, it was walking the dog.

It wasn’t about fitness or mindfulness or productivity. It was about having one moment in the day that belonged to me. A quiet space where I wasn’t performing or proving anything. Just moving, breathing, existing without expectation.

That’s what grounding is.
A foothold.
A place to start.

Your version might be a walk, a book, a cup of coffee outside, a few minutes of silence, a hobby you abandoned years ago, or something entirely different. It doesn’t matter what it is — only that it’s yours.
You Are the Turning Point

This is the part that needs to be said plainly: nothing changes until you do.

Not because you’re the problem.
But because you’re the only one who can feel the fog from the inside.

You’re the only one who knows when you’ve had enough.
You’re the only one who can decide that the way things are isn’t the way they have to stay.
You’re the only one who can take that first small step toward feeling like yourself again.

And that step doesn’t have to be dramatic. It just has to be deliberate.

Men’s mental health doesn’t improve through perfection. It improves through action — small, human, honest action. Reaching out to someone you trust. Taking a moment for yourself. Allowing yourself to feel what you feel without shame. Choosing one thing each day that pulls you slightly closer to the person you want to be.

You are not stuck.
You are not alone.
You are not defined by the fog.

You are the conduit for change.
And the moment you take even one step — however small — the path forward begins to open.

#daveknowstech #metalhealth #depression

I thoguht i'd get through the year finally after 25 years by finally using one distro on my laptop for a year. I have been using CachyOS and I love it.. However my inquisitive brain kicked in last night at 10pm and I went full on Fedora KDE spin..

I've no idea why, CachyOS was working OK, I blame it on the Linux Podcast i was watching.

I'm sure I'll end back on Cachy before the weekend, if only because the shiny arch sticker on my laptop feels wrong now.. (I did order a fedora one)..

It however does make the argument that the distro is dead as i've got up and running in an hour..

The only difference, and I need to check i've noted is the battery doesn't seem to last as long..

#daveknowstech #linux #fedora

The blogs up https://www.daveknowstech.com

ITs wordpress of which the irony today of all days is not lost on me, I had no end of isues getting alternatives running on my kubernetes cluster..

Its not AI Slop, however i'll put my hand up that I do use AI as part of my process. I have a brain that has a lot of ideas, and i write like i think. Thats not great for a blog. So i write the post I want, and then ask my ollama to use that data and present it in a chohernet blog post. I then go over that output which is written far better than I can and make sure it flows..

I belive thats called an editor in the real world?

#daveknowstech #blog #technology

Its been a bit slow on these posts this week, new job and all, however This evening I've got a new wordpress site setup on my K8s cluster with an Internal tailscale domain and a public cloudflared tunnel on a different dns domain..

This was more tricky than i thought, but worked far qucker than the Ghost insall i tried for some reason..

I'll get a few blog posts up, and then publish the URL..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #homelab

I think there is a huge plus for using AI to help solve issues, unfortunately the troubleshooting to turn from a PoC to usable can be long..

I do however wonder if the major AI players were charged by the consumer each time a model hallucinates so I get credits of equal or greater value back how quickly this hallucinating issue would be resolved..

There you go EU, you can have that

#daveknowstech #homelab #vibecoding

And in todays MCP servers accessed via Martrix/Elements following the connectivity to ManagedLM and Patchmon, I've also got Nextcloud MCP providing access to my notes, Files and other Nextcloud services..

A solid afternoon (see my last 2 posts) of work..

#daveknowstech #selfhosted #homelab