My home server is a place to experiment with useful software: a personal health app, a media library, and a Minecraft world. Each project brings a different kind of work, from designing an interface to keeping an existing service running.
This journal collects the project stories, screenshots, and lessons along the way.
A personal health app
Nom brings together food tracking, recipes, meal planning, groceries, and household chat. I used AI to help build it around those connected workflows.
The health-app writeup includes a narrated demo and screenshots of the interface, using staged data.
A media library with Jellyfin
Project history: September 2026, based on setup notes.
Jellyfin provides the media-server software. My part is configuring and hosting it on the home server, organizing the library, and maintaining the setup.
It is a different kind of project from writing an app: the work is in making existing software fit the way it will be used, and understanding the maintenance around it.
Willowmere Hollow
Project history: September 2026; the server notes record a September 16 upgrade.
Willowmere Hollow is a Minecraft Java world hosted on the home server. The setup includes server controls, backups, and proximity voice chat.
A game world is persistent, so changes need care. Preserving it through an update and being able to restore a backup are part of the project, just as much as getting the server started.
What the projects have in common
Home server projects involve more than the initial setup. There are updates to plan, backups to maintain, and practical questions about how a service behaves when it restarts or loses its connection.
Those are the details I want to keep documenting here: the choices behind the setup, the functionality that makes it useful, and what I learn as it changes.