A year passed… the second post! 🤭

So a year has passed since I posted my initial “First post on my new website!“… this is my second post… Yeah, I should feel ashamed… and actually, I am a little 🤭

So what happened?

Well, multiple things blocked me a bit:

• I didn’t really enjoy using Hugo, which powered my initial site. While I do enjoy a static website, it isn’t really something you just jump into and write.
• My domain was “Frenck.nl”, I had that domain for many, many years. Nevertheless, it doesn’t look quite international, meh 😒
• I’ve been very, very, very busy developing all these Community Hass.io Add-ons.
• And mainly, I didn’t give myself enough time actually to start using Home Assistant personally on a serious level

I agree, most of those points listed above, bad excuses. But it really didn’t help. I did do tons of mind maps and wrote down ideas to write about things I would like to write about, nevertheless, still didn’t write anything.

The fixes

So addressing those issues was needed to get my mind released from this imaginary and brain blocking prison I created for myself.

Google came along, releasing the “.dev” top level domains. What a fit for me! 😍 So got one, and you are looking at it. Really, this was the kick starter for me to get up, and get stuff done.

I was determined to fix my personal website! And yes, you are now looking at it 😎.

I’ve replaced Hugo with WordPress. Although I kind of dislike WordPress on a technical level, from a user perspective (and I am a user right now), it is really friendly to use. So decided to make the jump and install WordPress.

So far, WordPress is working well for me. And I would never imagine I would ever say this: It is rather impressive!

The time aspect

I’m still very busy on developing the Home Assistant Hass.io add-ons, but I’ve lowered the pace a bit lately. With the number of add-ons available today, I genuinely believe Hass.io is now a fantastic piece of software for any home automating and home lab needs.

This gives me the time to work on my own Home Assistant setup a bit, and I’ve been having tons of fun setting it up! I am sharing my full configuration publicly on GitHub (well, I did leave out the secrets file of course 🤪).

And from now on…

From now on I will be posting at least weekly on this website.

No, I’m not making promises: That seems a bad idea. I do feel like this is going to be fun! And that is the main drive I need to get me moving. 🚀

So what can you expect? Oh man… do I have some things in store for you! I’m planning on writing:

• About my Home Assistant setup (configurations, automations, used hardware, DIY, general experiences).
• Maybe I’ll throw in a product review from time to time since I do get my hands on a lot of stuff. Some I like, some I don’t. Let me share that.
• My open source development experiences. If you follow my GitHub, you probably know: I do some 😉.
• I like to fiddle with DevOps, servers, network cables, routers, firewalls, those kinds of things. Some of these experiences are pretty useful in a home lab as well!
• Strong opinions. I’m slightly assholic, but that is mainly because I have a strong opinion on a lot of things. I like to be honest and straight to the point without the fluff.

So yeah, I’m going to focus my personal website around the Internet of Things, with a strong focus on Home Assistant.

In conclusion

I’m happy with the current state of my website. Some things need tuning but in general: 🤗.

I genuinely hope you like what I did to my site. If not, well, feel free to contact me to suggest improvements.

That leaves me, with just one question:

What do you want me to write about?

../Frenck