Jake Howard 🍊
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theorangeone.net
Jake Howard 🍊
@theorangeone.net
Part Developer, Part SysAdmin, Part InfoSec. Avid self-hoster.
- All things Systems @torchbox.com.
- Core & Security Teams @wagtail.org.
- @djangoproject.com Security Team and Foundation Member.
Yesterday, the internet ground to a halt when Cloudflare went down.

Today, it's snowing outside my office window, so naturally the country is going to grind to a halt now too 🌨️
November 19, 2025 at 10:12 AM
#hugops to Cloudflare engineers right now. Can't be fun having half the internet screaming at you!

www.cloudflarestatus.com/incidents/8g...
Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues
Cloudflare's Status Page - Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues.
www.cloudflarestatus.com
November 18, 2025 at 11:51 AM
Turns out Syncthing gets very unhappy if something syncs its `.stfolder` to other devices, and syncs changes out from under it.

In _totally unrelated_ news, I've got a few shares to completely destroy and re-add to my devices... 😰
November 12, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Tonights dinner from Deliveroo: £33
The exact same meal, ordered direct for collection: £23

#SupportLocalBusiness is one thing, but I'm saving 30% for a 5 minute drive too!
October 26, 2025 at 5:23 PM
DST is a lie when you have kids - they don't know you're meant to have an extra hour in bed. They just get up when they feel like it and demand you be ready for it
October 26, 2025 at 9:00 AM
In April, Minio nerfed their web interface on the free version. Last week, they stopped building the free version entirely, requiring you to build it yourself: github.com/minio/minio/...

The very second Forgejo ships their Terraform backend, I'll be burning my Minio install with fire!
update README.md and other docs to point to source only releases · minio/minio@9e49d5e
github.com
October 24, 2025 at 11:53 AM
Hetzner have some new pricing tiers, presumably corresponding to CPU refreshes.

So I get a CPU bump _and_ a price drop? Sign me up!

www.hetzner.com/news/new-clo...
October 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM
After over 4 months of development, django-tasks 0.9.0 is out! 🥳

- Django 6.0 support
- RQ optimisations
- Dropped `enqueue_on_commit` support
- A number of renames and refactors to match upstream Django

A small set of changes, but one of the largest diffs to date!

github.com/RealOrangeOn...
Release 0.9.0 · RealOrangeOne/django-tasks
What's Changed fix: prevent IndexError: pop from empty list in RQ backend by @crgwbr in #183 Add support for Django 6.0 by @RealOrangeOne in #193 Add supports_priority feature Access RQ worker nam...
github.com
October 20, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Despite self-hosting it, I can't access my Bluesky account through the browser, because bsky.app is hosted on AWS, and their PDS doesn't expose a typical web interface.

For a fully self-hosted (and decentralised) social media platform, Mastodon is the way to go.

theorangeone.net/posts/self-h...
Self-hosting Bluesky
Bluesky is quickly becoming the "hot new" social network, growing by almost 1.6 users every second. "Recent events" have lead to a fairly large Twitter exodus, and people looking elsewhere seem to all...
theorangeone.net
October 20, 2025 at 8:53 AM
Happy Monday to everyone except `us-east-1` - everyone's favourite single point of failure.
October 20, 2025 at 8:41 AM
The Smart Home must grow!
October 16, 2025 at 8:14 AM
On Sunday, I, and several of my @torchbox.com colleagues ran the Oxford Half Marathon to raise money for Breast Cancer Now 🏃

theorangeone.net/posts/oxford...
I ran a Half Marathon
I'm not a runner, not by any stretch of imagination. But yesterday, I (and several colleagues) ran a half marathon - the Oxford Half Marathon. 13.1 miles, or 20 kilometers in non-freedom units. I'm cu...
theorangeone.net
October 14, 2025 at 4:47 PM
My @pyconuk.org talk is done! 🥳 Now I can enjoy the rest of the conference!

(Slides and recording to follow)
September 20, 2025 at 11:12 AM
You should never update firmware over hotel WiFi. But I did, and my travel router is alive again! 🥳
September 18, 2025 at 4:14 PM
On a packed train on the outskirts of London, heading to @pyconuk.org 🥳 Hopefully see some folks there tomorrow! 👋
September 18, 2025 at 10:09 AM
It's official - `django.tasks` exists! Coming soon to @djangoproject.com 6.0. 585 days later, the first step (of many) in Django's background tasks journey is finally complete! 🥳

theorangeone.net/posts/django...
django.tasks exists
As of today (well, technically yesterday), django.tasks is officially released upon the world! Mostly. <note> Note that django.tasks and django-tasks are in fact different, albeit by a single characte...
theorangeone.net
September 17, 2025 at 7:46 AM
First draft of my @pyconuk.org slides finished this afternoon. Now just practising and polishing.
September 12, 2025 at 4:36 PM
In my continuing journey to Terraform everything, my latest victim has been my home's DNS, using AdguardHome:

theorangeone.net/posts/terraf...
Terraforming AdGuardHome
I like to configure as much of I can on the things I host (of which there's a fair amount) using Infrastructure as code, especially if it's a critical service. I recently switched the DNS server in my...
theorangeone.net
September 9, 2025 at 9:16 PM
New house, and my server is back to running over powerline 😭
Might have to start taking a closer look at some of these walls...
September 8, 2025 at 3:35 PM
It's been a long few weeks, with my spare time spent a very long way from a computer, and there's still more work to go.

But, as of last weekend: I'm a homeowner 🥳
August 24, 2025 at 3:27 PM
I'm @djangoproject.com DSF member of the (last) month! 😱 🥰

www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2025/...
DSF member of the month - Jake Howard
Posted by Sarah Abderemane on Aug. 3, 2025
www.djangoproject.com
August 3, 2025 at 5:19 PM
Life goal completed:

We bought a house! 🏡 Picked the keys up on Friday 🥳 Now the painting, decorating and cleaning starts... 🙈
July 27, 2025 at 8:34 AM
My website, now brought to you over HTTP/3 🙌
July 24, 2025 at 8:23 AM