Engineering

How I built fzlaunchpad: a fast, YAML-configured dashboard that puts my self-hosted services and their current status on one page.

How I added Google-authenticated comments to an Astro blog with Remark42, Docker, a dedicated comments subdomain, and Traefik.

How to resolve the same hostname locally at home and through a public route outside, using dnsmasq on a Raspberry Pi.

How I connected Cloudflare Email Routing, SMTP2GO, and Gmail so I could receive and send mail as contact@afzalex.com without paying for a hosted mailbox.

How I connected a static website form to a verified inbox using a small Cloudflare Worker, Turnstile verification, and an Email Service binding.

How Turnstile protects web actions from automated abuse with less friction, and why its server-side verification matters as much as the visible widget.

What I learned while replacing a server-driven push with an automatic Ubuntu-to-Mac pull, and the small details that made it reliable.

The best software for thinking gets out of the way. A short meditation on restraint as an engineering value.