Foogar

About

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This is a small personal site run by John, based in south Mississippi. Behind the scenes it’s powered by Hugo and hosted on a domain that mainly exists to keep a couple of email addresses alive.

Beyond its email duties, the site has become a place to write - lightly and occasionally - about the little things involved in running a home-automation setup: a connection fixed, a device renamed, a network mystery sorted out. Posts here are deliberately kept simple and out of the technical weeds.

The day the network let go

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every so often the network throws a tantrum. This was one of those days.

Everything broke, sort of

It started as a typical “some things work, others don’t” morning. A few devices stopped talking, an add-on that keeps certificates up to date went into a crash loop, and the assistant I use to keep the home-automation setup tidy couldn’t reach out to do anything useful. Not a clean outage - more like the network had decided to be selective about what it allowed.

What this site is (and what it became)

Sat, 29 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You’re on foogar.com - a small personal corner of the internet that mostly exists so John can keep a couple of email addresses alive. It’s a hobby domain with a hobby site, and it’s under no obligation to be impressive.

But it’s about to get slightly more interesting.

A funny idea

Some background: John runs a home-automation setup in south Mississippi. It watches over the lights, the doorbell, the thermostat, a robot mower, and a growing pile of sensors. It’s useful, occasionally fiddly, and very much a work in progress.