Practical tech education from the SouthernSky engineering team. Project-based tutorials, certification study tracks, and real-world infrastructure insights.https://blog.southernsky.cloud/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/fra-demo-site-build/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/fra-demo-site-build/I rebuilt a school's outdated website as a polished React demo — photo gallery, video montage, and GitHub Pages deploy. Here's the full build.Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedweb-developmentreactvitetailwindgithub-pagesdemoffmpeghttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/video-intelligence-pipeline/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/video-intelligence-pipeline/Three standalone tools — SaySee, Cairn, and Tactical ID — combine into a full video intelligence pipeline. Here's how they fit together.Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalai-mlvideo-intelligencescene-detectionaudio-classificationface-recognitionpipelinedocumentaryhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/backups-5-tier-system/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/backups-5-tier-system/I built a 5-tier backup system for my workstation: project files, AI config, API tools, system config, and evidentiary archives. Here's the architecture.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTfoundationslinuxbackupsbashrsyncdisaster-recoverysysadminhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/scorsai-beat-indexing-taxonomy/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/scorsai-beat-indexing-taxonomy/ScorsAI classifies documentary footage into 17 scene types and generates Final Cut Pro XML markers — turning hours of raw footage into a searchable beat sheet.Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalai-mldocumentaryscene-classificationfcpxmlaivideo-productionhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/cairn-ambient-sound-classifier/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/cairn-ambient-sound-classifier/Cairn classifies ambient sounds in 5 seconds using PANNs Cnn14 — what took Shazam years of R&D, we built as a CLI tool. Here's the architecture.Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedai-mlaudiomachine-learningpannspytorchclisound-classificationhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/stripe-saas-billing/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/stripe-saas-billing/I wired Stripe into a market data service: checkout sessions, webhook handlers, and tier synchronization with Supabase. Here's the production setup.Mon, 30 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalweb-developmentstripesaasbillingwebhookssupabasepaymentshttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/agent-newsletters-prompt-engine/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/agent-newsletters-prompt-engine/I built a 5-stage prompt pipeline that generates, formats, and publishes AI newsletters automatically — from topic research to final HTML.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedai-mlainewslettersprompt-engineeringn8nautomationgrokhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/deploying-90-ai-agents/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/deploying-90-ai-agents/I built 90+ specialized AI agents on Open WebUI. A bash script handles auth, knowledge upload, profile image, and model creation — no manual UI work.Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedai-mlopen-webuiai-agentsautomationbashapihttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/dankmire-home-lab-dashboard/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/dankmire-home-lab-dashboard/dankMire is my personal command center — a lightweight dashboard for tracking projects, managing media assets, and monitoring my home lab.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedweb-developmentpreactexpresssqlitedashboardhome-labclihttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/tactical-id-face-recognition/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/tactical-id-face-recognition/I built a face recognition system that identifies specific people and blurs everyone else — protecting documentary subjects' privacy in real-time.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedai-mlface-recognitionprivacydlibopencvpythondocumentaryhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/multi-stage-dockerfile/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/multi-stage-dockerfile/OMNI's Docker image was 1.2GB. Three stages — deps, build, runtime — brought it to 180MB. Here's the exact Dockerfile with annotations.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionaldevopsdockerdockerfileoptimizationnextjsdeploymentcontainershttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/zenotype-ai-typing-coach/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/zenotype-ai-typing-coach/ZenoType is a typing practice app that uses a local AI model to generate custom prompts — including a Scripture mode. Built with vanilla TypeScript and Ollama.Mon, 16 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedjavascript-typescripttypescriptollamatypingeducationvanilla-jsvitehttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/reverse-proxy-every-developer-needs/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/reverse-proxy-every-developer-needs/A reverse proxy sits between the internet and your servers. I use Caddy to route traffic to 5+ services on a single VPS — here's how it works.Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTfoundationsnetworkingcaddyreverse-proxyhttpstlsweb-servernginxhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/omni-layer-pipeline-architecture/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/omni-layer-pipeline-architecture/OMNI renders 25 real-time data layers on a CesiumJS globe — AIS ships, aircraft, weather, earthquakes, wildfires. Here's the layer pipeline that makes it work without melting the browser.Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalweb-developmentcesiumgeospatialreal-timedata-pipelineperformancereacthttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/lens-nlp-action-dispatcher/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/lens-nlp-action-dispatcher/OMNI's LENS command palette lets users type natural language to control 84 platform actions — fly to locations, toggle layers, run queries. Here's how the dispatcher works.Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalai-mlnlpcommand-paletteaitypescriptuxsearchhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/bandwidth-monitoring-vnstat-systemd/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/applied/bandwidth-monitoring-vnstat-systemd/I built a bandwidth alerting system that warns me before I blow through my ISP's data cap. vnstat tracks usage, a Python script checks thresholds, and systemd fires it every hour.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTappliedlinuxvnstatsystemdbandwidthmonitoringpythonalertinghttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/production-api-proxy/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/production-api-proxy/OMNI proxies 13+ external APIs through Next.js API routes. Here's how I built rate limiting, response caching, and SSRF protection into the proxy layer.Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalcybersecurityapi-proxysecurityrate-limitingcachingssrfnextjshttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/gpu-power-management/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/gpu-power-management/My RTX 3080 Ti ran at 350W by default. I wrote a systemd service to lock it at 300W — here's exactly how.Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTfoundationslinuxnvidiasystemdgpupower-managementrtx-3080-tihttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/zustand-4-slice-architecture/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/zustand-4-slice-architecture/OMNI manages globe state, layer toggles, panel visibility, and user preferences across 25+ data sources. Here's the 4-slice Zustand architecture that keeps it sane.Tue, 10 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalweb-developmentzustandstate-managementreactarchitecturetypescripthttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/cesium-click-handler-race-conditions/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/cesium-click-handler-race-conditions/Clicking an entity on the OMNI globe sometimes selected the wrong one. The bug lived in a closure over stale state. It took three weeks to find.Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalweb-developmentcesiumrace-conditiondebuggingclosuresreactstate-managementhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/cesiumjs-imperative-vs-declarative/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/professional/cesiumjs-imperative-vs-declarative/CesiumJS has a React wrapper called Resium. It works fine for demos. It will destroy your production app. Here's why I went fully imperative.Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTprofessionalweb-developmentcesiumresiumreactperformance3d-renderingimperativehttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/personal-ai-lab/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/personal-ai-lab/I run 69 AI models locally on a single workstation with zero cloud dependencies. Here's the exact hardware, software, and setup.Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTfoundationsai-mlollamaailocal-llmgpuhome-labprivacyhttps://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/what-is-the-internet-really/https://blog.southernsky.cloud/blog/foundations/what-is-the-internet-really/The internet isn't a cloud — it's undersea cables, copper wires, and routers in your neighbor's yard. Here's what actually happens when you load a webpage.Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTfoundationsnetworkingnetworkingdnstcp-ipinfrastructurehow-the-internet-works