Field notes from a software lab: web platforms, automation, AI agents, and the systems around them.https://lesbass.com/https://lesbass.com/lab/old-ubuntu-pc-apache-guacamole/https://lesbass.com/lab/old-ubuntu-pc-apache-guacamole/How I reused an aging x64 Ubuntu PC as a browser-accessible development machine with Apache Guacamole, without consuming more resources in my Proxmox homelab.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTapache guacamoleubunturemote desktophomelabx64self-hostinghttps://lesbass.com/lab/admitting-i-dont-know-in-the-age-of-ai/https://lesbass.com/lab/admitting-i-dont-know-in-the-age-of-ai/Why working with AI makes uncertainty, good questions, explicit assumptions, and verification essential to reliable software engineering decisions and outcomes.Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTaicritical thinkinglearningsoftware engineeringai agentshttps://lesbass.com/lab/notion-tasks-ical-feed/https://lesbass.com/lab/notion-tasks-ical-feed/How a personal Notion companion service became Notion2Ical, a small, tested .NET library that keeps open tasks visible through a standard iCalendar feed.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTdotnetnotioncalendaricalopen sourceproductivityhttps://lesbass.com/lab/codex-aws-cost-optimization/https://lesbass.com/lab/codex-aws-cost-optimization/A practical story about using Codex to assess AWS spend, tune S3 lifecycle policies, absorb a transition spike, and reduce recurring cloud costs safely.Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTawscodexai agentscost optimizations3cloudhttps://lesbass.com/lab/five-years-in-a-learning-organization/https://lesbass.com/lab/five-years-in-a-learning-organization/A personal reflection on five years at Intré as a learning organization, through guilds, community, AI, and a software culture built around growth over time.Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTlearning organizationsoftware engineeringcontinuous learningteam cultureai agentshttps://lesbass.com/lab/parental-controls-with-home-assistant/https://lesbass.com/lab/parental-controls-with-home-assistant/A Home Assistant and Node-RED workflow that grants Nintendo Switch screen time explicitly, resets exceptions overnight, and keeps family rules visible.Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThome assistantnode-redparentingautomationnintendo switchhttps://lesbass.com/lab/make-as-executable-documentation/https://lesbass.com/lab/make-as-executable-documentation/Why Make still earns a place in modern developer workflows as a compact way to name, document, inspect, and safely repeat local project commands again.Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTmakedeveloper toolsworkflowautomationdocumentationhttps://lesbass.com/lab/software-entropy-is-a-team-problem/https://lesbass.com/lab/software-entropy-is-a-team-problem/A reflection inspired by The Pragmatic Programmer, Uncle Bob, and sustainable development: software quality is a cultural and ethical practice over time.Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTsoftware engineeringtechnical debtcode qualityworkflowteam culturehttps://lesbass.com/lab/ai-agents-made-me-a-better-programmer/https://lesbass.com/lab/ai-agents-made-me-a-better-programmer/A personal reflection on moving from solitary discovery-based coding to a more explicit, agent-managed way of thinking about software work with Codex.Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTai agentscodexworkflowsoftware engineeringmarkdownhttps://lesbass.com/lab/how-this-site-was-built/https://lesbass.com/lab/how-this-site-was-built/Why I chose a minimal Astro site based on Markdown and Git, designed to work well with Codex while staying fast, simple, and almost free to run today.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTastrocodexcloudflaregitperformanceseohttps://lesbass.com/lab/my-proxmox-homelab/https://lesbass.com/lab/my-proxmox-homelab/How I organize a home infrastructure around Proxmox, LXC containers, Docker Compose, Home Assistant, a NAS, Cloudflare tunnels, backups, and experiments.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMThomelabproxmoxdockerself-hostinghome assistanthttps://lesbass.com/lab/one-pr-a-day-ai-company/https://lesbass.com/lab/one-pr-a-day-ai-company/A field report on building a small Paperclip company that discovers issues, opens focused open-source pull requests, and follows up with human review.Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTai agentspaperclipopen sourcegithubworkflowhttps://lesbass.com/lab/running-umbraco-behind-cloudflare-or-a-reverse-proxy/https://lesbass.com/lab/running-umbraco-behind-cloudflare-or-a-reverse-proxy/How forwarded headers, public hosts, canonical URLs, and authentication callbacks interact when Umbraco runs behind Cloudflare or another proxy in production.Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTumbracocloudflarereverse proxyaspnet coredeploymenthttps://lesbass.com/lab/seo-infrastructure-in-umbraco/https://lesbass.com/lab/seo-infrastructure-in-umbraco/A pragmatic Umbraco SEO setup for generating sitemap.xml and robots.txt, managing legacy redirects, and preserving crawlability during site migrations.Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTumbracoseositemaprobots.txtredirectshttps://lesbass.com/lab/custom-urls-in-umbraco/https://lesbass.com/lab/custom-urls-in-umbraco/How to combine IUrlProvider and IContentFinder so Umbraco can publish custom editorial URLs and resolve every incoming route through the same routing rules.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTumbracoroutingcontent architectureurlshttps://lesbass.com/lab/structured-data-in-umbraco/https://lesbass.com/lab/structured-data-in-umbraco/How I replaced fragile Razor JSON-LD with serialized, tested structured data in Umbraco 17, then validated the output by crawling rendered pages locally.Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTumbracoseoschema.orgjson-ldvalidationhttps://lesbass.com/lab/auth0-backoffice-authentication-in-umbraco-17/https://lesbass.com/lab/auth0-backoffice-authentication-in-umbraco-17/How to register Auth0 as an OpenID Connect backoffice provider in Umbraco 17, including configuration, auto-linking, and the new login button manifest.Sun, 07 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTumbracoauth0openid connectbackofficedotnethttps://lesbass.com/lab/home-assistant-automations-node-red/https://lesbass.com/lab/home-assistant-automations-node-red/Why I use Home Assistant as the smart home system of record, but keep complex workflow logic, branching, timers, and JavaScript control in Node-RED today.Wed, 15 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMThome assistantnode-redsmart homeautomationhomelabhttps://lesbass.com/lab/n8n-road-trip-agent-planner/https://lesbass.com/lab/n8n-road-trip-agent-planner/A field report on turning family road-trip planning into a small n8n organization of specialized AI agents, shared memory, and travel-specific knowledge bases.Mon, 16 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMTai agentsn8nworkflowtravelautomationhttps://lesbass.com/lab/auth0-backoffice-authentication-in-umbraco-12/https://lesbass.com/lab/auth0-backoffice-authentication-in-umbraco-12/A legacy Umbraco 12 field note on using Auth0 for backoffice SSO, including setup, callback URLs, auto-linking, version limits, and migration guidance.Sun, 04 Aug 2024 00:00:00 GMTumbracoauth0ssodotnet