Skip to main content

Boring one person at a time!

I'm Adam. I'm a Canadian husband, dad, technology nerd and chronic tinkerer. I write about self-hosting, saving money, fixing things around the house and whatever other rabbit hole I've disappeared down this week. Occasionally it's even useful. Most of the time it's boring.

Photo of a young Adam Sooley and this is his personal blog about technology, home projects, travel, investing and everyday life
Mr. Nice Cream: The story of our Riverside South ice cream bikes.
Life & Music

Mr. Nice Cream: The story of our Riverside South ice cream bikes.

For a few summers, we owned a small fleet of old-fashioned ice cream bikes in Riverside South. It started with a Kijiji ad, ten bikes, two freezers and a U-Haul trip to Cornwall.

unRaid server performing local appdata backup and encrypted remote sync to a Canadian data center.
Self-Hosting & Homelab

How to Back Up unRaid: Appdata Backup, ZeroByte & Canadian Backblaze B2

Self-hosting on unRaid is great, but parity isn't a backup. Here is how I set up automated local appdata backups and encrypted, Canadian-hosted remote backups using ZeroByte and Backblaze B2.

Apparently 2026 became our year of live music
Life & Music

Apparently 2026 became our year of live music

Our Lady Peace, Cody Johnson, Angine de Poitrine, Sheryl Crow, Ella Langley, Shaggy, Gwen Stefani, The Wallflowers and Zach Bryan. Apparently 2026 became my year of live music.

Rustic Canadian lakeside deck at sunset with a smartphone, notebook, and mug reading “Boring one person at a time!” on a wooden table.
Personal Opinions and Reviews

I think we've forgotten how to be bored...

And I'm starting to think that's a problem. We used to be really good at being bored When I was growing up, being bored was just part of life, you'd sit there, you'd stare out the window, you'd go outside,

Canadian investment portfolio displayed on a laptop beside a calculator and Canadian maple leaf
Money & Investing

My new Canadian heavy investment portfolio and letting WealthSimple do the boring stuff

I finally settled on an investment portfolio that feels right for me: 56% Canadian, 28% international and 16% U.S. Using WealthSimple's Automated Investing, I can choose the companies and ETFs I want while letting the automation handle much of the boring portfolio maintenance.

Watch dog watching the home cameras
Smart Home

How to set up Frigate on unRaid with Reolink PoE cameras

Learn how I use Frigate on unRaid with Reolink PoE cameras to build a local, self-hosted NVR with AI object detection, Home Assistant integration and no mandatory cloud storage.

Setup Immich on unRaid. Self-hosting a Google Photos alternative
Self-Hosting & Homelab

Setup Immich on unRaid. Self-hosting a Google Photos alternative

How did you get here? If you have been following along to my blog posts and have an unRaid server sitting in your basement, office, or wherever you've managed to hide the growing collection of hard drives that started as "just one little server," you might

Canadian smartphone displaying a navigation map beside a maple leaf sign on a scenic Canadian mountain highway.
Technology

Maple Maps, a Canadian alternative to the others

Maple Maps is a new Canadian navigation app built specifically for Canada, with Canadian business identification, bilingual support, live traffic and Canadian hosted data.

Two Raspberry Pi Pi-hole DNS servers protecting a Canadian home network from ads and tracking
Self-Hosting & Homelab

Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi, and why you should have two

Pi-hole is one of those wonderfully boring pieces of technology that you install once and then mostly forget about, until you look at how much advertising, tracking and other nonsense it has quietly blocked. In this post, I explain how I run Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi, why I keep it off unRaid.

Remembering 9/11, and the power of friendship
Life & Music

Remembering 9/11, and the power of friendship

Twenty-five years ago, I was starting my final co-op term in Ottawa when September 11 changed the world and changed my life. Today, I reflect on Canada's and Newfoundland's extraordinary response, the friendships that grew from tragedy, and 25 years of working to protect Canadians.

Loading more posts…