Home Server

I purchased a Mac Mini to join the OpenClaw hype back when it was gaining traction, but when it came in, my inspiration left. I realized I wasn't that interested in running wrangling a bunch of agents to churn out endless slop. It was an impulse purchase at the time, but it lead to one of my favorite projects.

Now, in the past, I've always turned away from the home server thoughts. I have never considered myself much of a sys admin or a network-curious dev. I have friends with home servers and just assumed I'd get no value from it, but now I had this powerful computer that was going to turn into glorified paperweight. So, to double down on the impulse purchase, I purchased a 4-bay Direct Attached Storage (DAS) and 2 8TB NAS hard drives to turn the Mac Mini into a NAS.

I set up a home media server with Plex to host my own ripped DVDs and Blu-Rays. While digitizing my physical library was fun, I was worried that this was all the value I was going to get from the all cheddar spent.

I did some NAS inspired research and found some neat projects, like Immich, which allowed me to sync all of our photos and drop my iCloud subscription. Hosting game servers, websites, etc.

Then I learned about screen-sharing software called Parsec. This allowed me to log into my Mac from anywhere and this is what changed everything for me. Now I have my development machine everywhere I go, including my phone (thanks Steam Link). This was probably achievable without an expensive machine, but it worked for me and got me developing personally again.

It's an untraditional NAS and realistically isn't going to do super server activities, but I use it for projects, hosting servers, and learning about a side I have never explored.