https://shimmin.co/logs Personal engineering log, systems architecture, homelab infrastructure, and automation notes by Graham Shimmin. en-gb Sun, 25 Oct 2026 15:22:18 GMT https://shimmin.co/logs/meshbeacon-smart-tvs-wireguard-go https://shimmin.co/logs/meshbeacon-smart-tvs-wireguard-go Fri, 23 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Running VPN clients on Smart TVs is a recipe for broken standby handshakes and family complaints. Notes on building Meshbeacon: a 6MB local LAN gateway in Go, directing an LLM through unfamiliar syntax, and the reality of dependency rot in abandoned networking libraries. Networking & Linux https://shimmin.co/logs/interactive-web-terminal-search-portal https://shimmin.co/logs/interactive-web-terminal-search-portal Sun, 18 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT The terminal on the front page is a fuzzy search over these posts, plus a few commands that tell you what the site runs on. Notes on how it works and why a search box would have been worse. Homelab & Hardware https://shimmin.co/logs/repurposing-dell-precision-proxmox https://shimmin.co/logs/repurposing-dell-precision-proxmox Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMT Why a refurbished workstation tower makes a better home hypervisor than a rack server: noise and power draw, plus the things it does worse. Homelab & Hardware https://shimmin.co/logs/automating-home-assistant-zigbee-ansible https://shimmin.co/logs/automating-home-assistant-zigbee-ansible Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT Home Assistant, Mosquitto and Zigbee2MQTT deployed with Ansible and the config kept in Git, so a bad upgrade or a dead disk doesn't mean starting again. Homelab & Hardware https://shimmin.co/logs/mergerfs-snapraid-silent-array https://shimmin.co/logs/mergerfs-snapraid-silent-array Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT Replacing a cooked mini-NAS with a used Dell Precision tower, 24TB of pooled storage, an SSD cache, and a USB fan to solve the airflow. Homelab & Hardware https://shimmin.co/logs/modern-audio-production-linux-vs-mac https://shimmin.co/logs/modern-audio-production-linux-vs-mac Sat, 15 Apr 2023 00:00:00 GMT PipeWire and REAPER have made Linux audio a serious option. Ableton Live, which is what I write in, still isn't one, and that keeps me on the Mac. Music & Audio Tech https://shimmin.co/logs/blockchain-music-industry-dissertation https://shimmin.co/logs/blockchain-music-industry-dissertation Fri, 28 Oct 2022 00:00:00 GMT Smart contracts can execute split payments in seconds, but they cannot fix corrupted ownership data. An empirical look at why blockchain failed to disrupt the UK music industry. Business & Notes https://shimmin.co/logs/audius-decentralised-music-field-notes https://shimmin.co/logs/audius-decentralised-music-field-notes Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 GMT Audius built the slickest decentralised streaming client on the web, but its direct-artist upload model cuts out the back-catalogues that actually drive listener retention. Music & Audio Tech https://shimmin.co/logs/transit-reality-hong-kong-shenzhen https://shimmin.co/logs/transit-reality-hong-kong-shenzhen Tue, 10 Aug 2021 00:00:00 GMT A site that loads instantly in Hong Kong can crawl a few hundred metres across the border. How the mainland network and the Great Firewall behave, how ICP filing works, and how to pick a Hong Kong host that routes well. Networking & Linux https://shimmin.co/logs/wireguard-death-of-openvpn https://shimmin.co/logs/wireguard-death-of-openvpn Wed, 15 Apr 2020 00:00:00 GMT WireGuard went into mainline Linux with 5.6 last month. Notes on OpenWrt travel routers, why it won't get far behind the Great Firewall on its own, and trying Tailscale as a ZeroTier replacement. Networking & Linux https://shimmin.co/logs/benchmarking-mandarin-hsk4-shenzhen-hanping https://shimmin.co/logs/benchmarking-mandarin-hsk4-shenzhen-hanping Wed, 12 Apr 2017 00:00:00 GMT Using the HSK 4 exam in Shenzhen as a baseline check, and why offline mobile tools like Hanping solve the hardest part of intermediate language acquisition: real-time vocabulary extraction. Business & Notes