Caffeine, Code, & Chaos

Systems engineer. Robotics geek. Maker of shiny things. Part race car, part glitter. Powered by caffeine and curiosity.

Token Optimization for AI-Assisted Development

Your AI coding tools burn tokens on every interaction. Here’s how to get better results with fewer tokens - from writing effective instructions to choosing the right interaction mode.

GHEC to GHES Migration: A Practical Planning Guide

A comprehensive reference for planning a migration from GitHub Enterprise Cloud to GitHub Enterprise Server, covering feature parity, identity, Actions, infrastructure, and the items that are easy to overlook.

GitHub Actions Runner Scaling Patterns: GitHub-Hosted vs ARC

Scaling GitHub Actions runners requires different architectural patterns depending on whether you’re using GitHub-hosted runners or Actions Runner Controller. Here’s why the approaches are essentially opposite—and how to get each one right.

Hacking the Data Bus in a Chinese Solar Generator

How we tapped the internal RS485 bus in a GRECELL H1200, decoded Modbus RTU traffic, and pulled real telemetry into Home Assistant.

Building an Off-Grid Camera Relay System for a Rural Road

A practical build guide for a solar-powered roadside camera relay using Ubiquiti gear, proper solar components, and a Raspberry Pi monitoring stack publishing to Home Assistant via MQTT.