Posts

The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor

Posted on February 26, 2022

It’s tax time of the year. As a new real estate investor and long-time DIY taxpayer, I’m always looking to systematically educate myself about various tax benefits I can use. I stumbled upon this book on BiggerPocket: “The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor”. It has... [Read More]

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Personal Finance

Secure Home Network: Enable Hardware Offloading on EdgeRouter

Posted on January 17, 2022

Since I started tinkering my home network, even before I started writing about it, the speed of residential Internet has increased in the US, or the price-per-Mbps has gone down. You can get more than 500 Mbps for the same price of 250 or even 100 Mbps 3-5 years ago,... [Read More]

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Secure Home Network: Add Remote-Access VPN to EdgeRouter

Posted on August 22, 2021

In the era of work-from-home, it is rare of a need to access your home network from outside of your home. In the rarest occasion when we need something from your digital home, from accessing files in your NAS to viewing security camera footage, while being away, it is very... [Read More]

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Identify Unnecessary Homebrew Package Installations

Posted on June 26, 2021

As a Mac user, Homebrew is a must-have to install development packages and keep them up-to-date. And with Homebrew Cask, it can install and update GUI applications, too. However, after a few years of usage and frequent updates, the number of packages installed has increased a lot. Some are due... [Read More]

Secure Home Network: Disable EdgeOS SSH and GUI Access from WAN Interface

Posted on June 7, 2021

Today, I accidently accessed the standard HTTP and HTTPS endpoint at my home’s DNS name after setting up DDNS, and the EdgeOS GUI shows up. In addition, I can SSH to my DNS name and access EdgeOS from terminal. I have set up firewall rules to block any access from... [Read More]

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Secure Home Network: Access Your Home Assistant from Internet

Posted on June 6, 2021

Home Assistant is great for home automation. I set it up on my Synology NAS in a Docker container and have been gradually adding more integrations and automations to it. Home Assistant’s iOS app is another powerful way to add input to my home automation. It can provide my location... [Read More]

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Secure Home Network: Create Your Own Syslog Server on Synology NAS

Posted on May 27, 2021

Syslog stands for System Logging Protocol and is a standard protocol used to send system log or event messages to a specific server, called a syslog server. It is primarily used to collect various device logs from several different machines in a central location for monitoring and review. It was... [Read More]

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Fix the Map Module in Lightroom 6

Posted on May 10, 2021

In my previous post, I went over my photo management and editing workflow using the perpetual Lightroom 6. But since December 1, 2018, the Map functionality in Lightroom 6 stopped working. It’s largely Google’s fault than Adobe’s fault, as Google decided to make breaking changes to Google Map’s pricing model... [Read More]

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Photography

Import New Lens and Camera Profile into Lightroom 6

Posted on May 10, 2021

In my previous post, I went over my photo management and editing workflow using the perpetual Lightroom 6. However, it is not longer updated with newer lens and cameras. While Sony FE lenses can bake lens corrections into the RAW file, as do the Tamron FE trinity, it would be... [Read More]

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Photography

My Photo Management and Editing Workflow

Posted on May 9, 2021

I’m a casual photographer. I know how to use a (proper) camera and other gears. I go out and take random photos in my leisure time and on trips. I’m not a heavy user; I don’t take photos daily or edit them very frequently. Once or twice a month, I... [Read More]

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Make Your Home Security System Smart with EnvisaLink

Posted on April 2, 2021

You probably have a security system in your home, mostly from Honeywell or ADT (they’re pretty much the same thing). The system has dumb-looking keypads or less likely, a touch screen system. But you still need to learn how to use them (they’re not entirely easy to use) and be... [Read More]

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Secure Home Network: Add Security Cameras

Posted on March 19, 2021

Home security is important to everyone. Security camera, once expensive, has now become very accessible, both in terms of unit price and ease of deployment. IP cameras that runs on IP network (in other words, require no special cabling) can be an effective addition to your home. [Read More]

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Automate Docker Container Updates on Synology NAS

Posted on January 30, 2021

Using Docker on Synology NAS is quite straightforward and can be accomplished via a nice web UI. Deploying a new container comes down to a few simple steps: download the image and launch with required parameters. I have quite a few containers running, including Pi-Hole and cloudflared Home Assistant HomeBridge... [Read More]

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NAS

Secure Home Network: Configure Link Aggregation for Synology NAS and UniFi Switch

Posted on January 18, 2021

My Synology NAS (DS920+) has two Gigabit ethernet ports, and I have enough ports on my switch (UniFi Switch 8), I have configured link aggregation to fully utilize the bandwidth of the NAS device and get automatic failover in case either port fails. [Read More]

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Secure Home Network: Make Your IoT Devices Compatible with Apple HomeKit with Homebridge

Posted on January 17, 2021

Update May 10, 2021: Home Assistant has since greatly improved its usability for non-hardcore users with more UI-based configurations and it has native HomeKit support. I have migrated from Homebridge to Home Assistant. [Read More]

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