A PERSONAL ENGINEERING RECORD

Built at home.
Learned by
doing.

I’m Zachary Drake. This is a record of the systems I run, the problems I work through, and what I learn along the way.

Start with the family media project My work in enterprise communications →

DESIGN REQUIREMENTS

Use what I have.
Understand what I’m running.
Make it useful for the people using it.

SYSTEM OVERVIEWDL–01 / MEDIA

The family’s Jellyfin interface, with live TV, movies and shows together. — FIG. 01 The part my family sees.

There’s a lot behind the play button.

Linux, storage, networking, containers—and plenty of things I had to figure out the hard way.

REUSED HARDWARE. OPEN-SOURCE TOOLS.Inspect the system →

WORKING PRINCIPLES

01 Keep costs close to zero.

02 Keep control of the environment.

03 Make the experience simple.

THE MAIN PROJECT

A family need.
An unexpected education.

SELF-HOSTING / USABILITY / OWNERSHIP

A media experience
for my family.

It started with being tired of streaming subscriptions and disappearing catalogs. It grew into a hands-on education in building something people could actually use.

Getting a service running was one lesson. Making it easy for my mom and in-laws to use was another.

Familiar clients, simpler remote access, and a way to request movies and shows all became part of the engineering.

Read the case study ↗

Seerr’s requests interface showing movies and request availability in the administrator view. — FIG. 02 Requests, without another text message. Administrator view shown.

REFERENCE SECTIONS

The build.
The reasoning.
The record.

Follow the systems underneath—or the decisions that got them there.

Infrastructure

Ubuntu, containers, storage, media formats, and access.

↗B

Projects

What works today. What I want to explore next.

↗C

Journal

The mistakes, milestones, and lessons behind the setup.

↗

A NOTE ON THE PROCESS

Curiosity does most
of the connecting.

At work, I focus on unified communications and contact center technology. At home, I have room to explore, make mistakes, and figure out unfamiliar tools.

What I learn in one environment improves how I approach the other. DrakeLabs is where I keep that thread.

The professional side ↗

Platforms I’ve worked with