iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 01/10/2026

Session stealers don't hack you. They become you. Mine skipped my 2FA, spammed my friends a crypto scam, then muted them all so nobody could warn me. Turns out it's not just me. Minecraft mods, Steam Workshop, even GitHub got hit the same way. #infosec #cybersecurity #discord Full write up:

blog.budget-engineer.com

Infostealer Hit My PC: Discord Hijacked, 2FA Bypassed

I got hit by a session stealer, then found thousands of others. How trust chain attacks work, why 2FA misses them, and what to do.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 10/09/2026

Built Blissboard: a shared corkboard for D&D that lives on the TV. FastAPI + WebSockets under the hood, so notes, images, videos, HP bars sync live to every tablet and laptop at the table. Local only for IRL games, Audio only on the TV. #dnd #homelab

Screenshot of a wood-panelled corkboard interface titled the party. Left side shows sticky notes reading Corvus got drunk and sang a song, said his real name is Sylas, Willow is in her winter state again, and Scribbles is asking for gears again, plus a pinned photo of a yellow brick road. Right side shows a Fantasy Tavern video thumbnail with a play for everyone button, and a party panel with HP bars for Corvus 80/80, Willow 65/65, and Scribbles 70/70, an add party member field, and a fireplace widget at the bottom.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 04/09/2026

Built LootGoblin, a Discord bot for D&D party inventory. Tracks loot, gold, locations. Pairs with a webpage using Discord auth tied to guild ID. No more "who's got the poison keg" arguments. #DnD #Homelab

Image 1 (inventory list):
Discord bot embed titled "LootGoblin Inventory — All Locations" showing party items with location tags: Midnight Tears at Shivera communal, Oil of Slipperiness at Wagon, Poison Keg at Wagon (note: 40 flasks or 160 vials contraband), Potion of Poison at Shivera communal, Red Wing Host ceremonial arm-band at Wagon, Red Wing Host whetstone at Wagon, Reinforced Shield at Wagon, River Survey Map at Wagon. Footer reads "Page 2/4 · 32 item(s)".

Image 2 (party gold):
Discord bot embed titled "Party Gold" showing 13pp 7gp 1sp 5cp, totaling 13715 copper.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 21/08/2026

Turns out you can just measure your HVAC instead of guessing whether it's knackered. Supply and return temps into Home Assistant. Every sawtooth is a cycle, delta stays 18-20F. ESP32s and temp probes. Now maybe I can catch it going bad before it's another 5k bill... #HomeAssistant #Homelab #hvac

A dark-themed Home Assistant line graph showing two HVAC temperature sensors from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM. The blue line is return air temperature, sitting between 68 and 73F, rising gradually through the afternoon to a peak near 73F around 5:30 PM before dropping back to 68F by late evening. The orange line is supply air temperature, running between 48 and 55F with a repeating sawtooth pattern where each spike marks a cooling cycle. The gap between the two lines stays roughly 18 to 20F throughout the day.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 21/08/2026

PSA: your PSU has a shelf life. Caps dry out or worse. When one goes it can take other components with it. The 80+ badge is efficiency, not lifespan. The warranty is the real number. Once it's up, treat the PSU as a maintenance item. Replace it on your schedule, not on its schedule. #pcbuilding

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 21/08/2026

Elizabeth Feinler (1931-present) Ran the ARPANET directory from 1974 to 1989. Her team invented .com, .edu, .gov and .org, and built the first WHOIS server. Every domain you own traces back to her filing system. #WomenInTech #Selfhosted

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 13/08/2026

Seeing all the post of the solar eclipse with people saying its their first one, makes my heart happy. Its a surreal moment. While I didnt get to see this one I was fortunate enough to experience one Apr 8, 2024. Here are the two best pics I was able to get on that one.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 07/08/2026

Well one thing good about esp32s and a Homelab you can see when your central AC fails in real time..... yesterday was a long day. #esp32 #homelab #hvac #selfhosted.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 21/06/2026

Personal projects are taking a backseat. I made one reddit comment that turned into a full on discord server and minecraft server build out. I have been working on a website for it. Fun little project tho. Will share the site when its done. Crazy how strangers can sometime meld into a team.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 12/06/2026

Genuine question: why are people still reaching for Raspberry Pi for homelabs? #homelab #selfhosted #raspberrypi

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 11/06/2026

One of my favourite scenes I've ever played. Mogwit gave a cursed quickling proper fey rites. Oak. Lavender. Salt. Sylvan spoken to the wind."Nobody deserves to die twice." #DnD #TTRPG

leaflet.pub

Nobody Deserves to Die Twice

One of my favorite scenes from the DnD game im playing.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 11/06/2026

What can A.I. really do? 17 A.I. models. 3 tasks. Single shot each no retries, no hand-holding. Web dev, Python, summarisation. Some failed embarrassingly. Raw outputs public. web/api and local. blog.budget-engineer.com github.com/Pctest-dev/a... #AI #webdev #Python

blog.budget-engineer.com

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 10/06/2026

Lynn Conway (1938–2024) Redesigned how microchips are designed at Xerox PARC. Her methods are in virtually every chip made since the 80s. IBM fired her in 1968. She rebuilt her career quietly, changed the industry anyway. Trans woman. The work speaks for itself. #WomenInTech #Pride

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 06/06/2026

All this talk about AI and a post I saw here on Bluesky got me thinking what can these models actually do? So many many hours later, learning curves, and reading here is what i found. Heads up none are really one shots like a lot of people say. blog.budget-engineer.com/ai-test-1-we...

blog.budget-engineer.com

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 05/06/2026

We spent years worrying about AI becoming conscious. We forgot to worry about it becoming competent. blog.budget-engineer.com/the-local-ai... #AI #Cybersecurity #LocalAI

blog.budget-engineer.com

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 04/06/2026

The Kratos fanbase has a very specific energy. Very attached to their big sad daddy... oof

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 02/06/2026

You don't need a corporation holding your passwords. Vaultwarden runs on your server, in Docker, costs nothing, and works with all Bitwarden apps. The one catch? You must use HTTPS or the apps won't sync. . Your data. Your rules. No subscription. No breach emails. #Docker #Selfhosted #Homelab

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 02/06/2026

Sophie Wilson (1957–present) Designed the ARM instruction set in 1985. ~95% of all smartphones run on it. Your phone, your tablet, probably your watch. Trans woman. Quietly responsible for the device you're reading this on. #WomenInTech #Pride

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 01/06/2026

Playing a Forest gnome druid in our current campaign. Forager type. Talks to moss. Rescues spoons. Bit odd, very sincere. His name is Mogwit Mosswit. What are you playing right now? #DnD #TTRPG

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 31/05/2026

Ordered 10 soil moisture sensors.(Stemedu V1.2 ) 7 arrived as decorative PCB art. The 3 survivors all need individual calibration because why would anything be easy. Anyway, 3 plants are being monitored so we're calling it a mini win. #esp32 #homeassistant #gardening

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 30/05/2026

New project unlocked: indoor edible garden 🌿 Re-potting today, then soil moisture sensors so Home Assistant can tell me when I've inevitably neglected them. Then of course get it hooked up to auto water. #esp32 #homeassistant #gardening #diy

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 30/05/2026

homelab / self-host / diy build people of bsky Where ya be? mutuals? if you're into tinkering, self-hosting, or just breaking things on purpose. I want to see real people making things. #selfhosted #homelab #esp32 #homeassistant #diy #tinkering #buildinpublic

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 28/05/2026

Mary Allen Wilkes (1939–present) Built software for the LINC in the 1960s. One of the first interactive personal computers. She took one home in 1965, making her the first person known to use a computer at home. She then quit computing and became a lawyer. The field's loss. #WomenInTech

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 28/05/2026

budget-engineer.com Built a personal site to house my projects, first live demo is the D&D battle map. Neon/CRT/Terminal aesthetic, live Bluesky feed baked in, and there's a Konami code if you're curious. 👀 #webdev #buildinpublic

budget-engineer.com

Budget Engineer

Making things. Breaking things. Occasionally on purpose.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 28/05/2026

Built a self-hosted D&D tactical map — Flask + SocketIO so terrain, tokens & AoE shapes sync live between DM and players. DM controls the session with login, players join via share link. No account needed. Runs in Docker. 🗺️⚔️ #DnD #TTRPG #Homelab

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 26/05/2026

Been working on a few different things.. nothing to show off yet. I did receive a Quality badge on the Weather station though. Uptime and accurate data! So thats cool. DIY Weather station is reporting accurate data compared to off the shelf stations. Makes the hours of work/fun even more worth it.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 02/05/2026

Been playing with custom workshop dash. It tracks everything from inventory levels for my ESP32-S3 builds to vetting salvaged 18650s with a built-in pack builder. Really helps keep the budget engineering projects on track. #homelab #tinkering #industrialgrunge #tinkerer #coding #budgetengineer

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 24/04/2026

ESP32 weather station → MQTT → Python → MIDI synth → speakers. Calm Rain atm. Also made a web UI. #Esp32 #midi #Weather

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 13/04/2026

ESP32 weather station → MQTT → Python → MIDI synth → speakers. the weather outside is literally playing music inside. calm morning so it sounds like this. wait till a storm rolls in. #Esp32 #midi #Weather

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 10/04/2026

Joan Clarke (1917–1996) Codebreaker at Bletchley Park. Worked directly with Turing cracking Enigma — the cipher the Nazis thought was unbreakable. She was paid less than the men doing the same job. The work was classified for decades. Without her, the war likely runs longer. #WomenInTech

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 07/04/2026

Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) Hollywood actress by day. Co-invented frequency-hopping spread spectrum in 1942 — the tech that underpins WiFi, Bluetooth & GPS. The patent expired before it made a penny. The entire wireless industry built on it anyway. They remembered the actress. Forgot the engineer.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 07/04/2026

Built a DIY weather station from scratch 🌤️ ESP32-S3 + BME280 + SparkFun wind/rain sensors. Solar powered, MQTT → Home Assistant dashboard → Esp32 Lcd display. Took way too long. Absolutely worth it? I think so! #HomeAssistant #ESP32 #DIY #HomeAutomation #WeatherStation

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 07/04/2026

Dr.Gladys West, the mathematician whose precise modelling of Earth's shape became the backbone of GPS, passed away this January aged 95. Her work was hidden for decades. Every sat-nav on the planet carries her legacy. Rest well. 🛰️ #WomenInTech #GladysWest

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 19/03/2026

My dnd group needed a combat tracker three weeks later: multi-user web app, live soundboard, full character sheets, encounter management, admin panel anyway. how's everyone else's 'quick little project' going

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 23/02/2026

Radia Perlman (1951–present) Invented Spanning Tree Protocol - the algorithm that prevents network loops and makes the internet actually function. Without her, the whole thing crashes. They call her "Mother of the Internet" but most people have never heard her name...

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 05/10/2025

Katherine Johnson (1918–2020) NASA mathematician who hand calculated the trajectories for the Moon landing. John Glenn refused to launch until she verified the computer's math. She worked through segregation, through being the only woman in the room. With out her space = no go. #womenintech

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 28/09/2025

Dr. Annie Easley (1933–2011) Rocket scientist, computer programmer, and energy conversion badass at NASA She started in the 1950s. While Black. While a woman. In tech building the software for rocket launch systems. She also worked on battery tech for early hybrid vehicles.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 26/09/2025

Home Lab!! Wait, What’s a “Home Lab”? Whoa! Don’t bounce yet. I know “Home Lab” sounds like a science fair project or some Linux guru’s basement dungeon, but hear me out. ko-fi.com/post/Home-La...

ko-fi.com

Home Lab!!

BudgetEngineer published a post on Ko-fi

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 25/09/2025

Grace Hopper (1906–1992) Invented the first compiler. Helped shape COBOL, a language that still runs half the world’s finance. She pulled a literal moth from a relay and called it “debugging.” They called her “Grandma COBOL.” We should call her the architect of modern programming.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 25/09/2025

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) Wrote what’s considered the first computer algorithm for Babbage’s Analytical Engine. She basically predicted general-purpose computing a century before actual computers existed. People thought she was just “helping out” Babbage. No, she was seeing the future.

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Budget Engineer @budget-engineer.com · 25/09/2025

Margaret Hamilton wrote the code that got us to the Moon. She coined the term software engineering when the world didn’t even think programming was a "real" field. Without her, half of us wouldn’t have jobs, and the other half would still be debugging punch cards.

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