# Ben Matheja

> Ben Matheja is a product manager who still builds: he shares how he runs platforms at home and works with AI, and shows what he can do.

Every page and post below has a Markdown version: ask for the normal URL with `Accept: text/markdown`, or fetch the `.md` link. All posts in one file: [llms-full.txt](https://matheja.me/llms-full.txt).

## Pages

- [Home](https://matheja.me/index.md): Ben Matheja is a product manager who still builds: he shares how he runs platforms at home and works with AI, and shows what he can do.
- [About](https://matheja.me/about/index.md): About Ben Matheja, a product manager who still builds, and what this site is for.
- [How I work](https://matheja.me/how-i-work/index.md): How Ben Matheja uses Obsidian, a daily journal, one GTD-style TODO.md, OKF and Claude Code agents.
- [Lab](https://matheja.me/lab/index.md): The Mittbachweg platform, Ben Matheja's homelab, and the tools built on it.
- [Now](https://matheja.me/now/index.md): What Ben Matheja is working on this month, with the entries of earlier months.
- [Reading](https://matheja.me/reading/index.md): The books Ben Matheja has read, is reading and wants to read, generated from his Obsidian vault.
- [Work & Skills](https://matheja.me/work/index.md): Profile, skills and working style of Ben Matheja, a product manager who still builds.
- [Writing](https://matheja.me/writing/index.md): Posts by Ben Matheja on homelab and platform engineering, working with AI and productivity, since 2019.

## Posts

- [Self-Hosted Photo Management: Immich Behind Cloudflare Tunnel](https://matheja.me/2026/10/06/immich-photo-management-cloudflare-tunnel.md): How part of my family backs up their phones to a self-hosted Immich, and how a Cloudflare service token lets the mobile app through Access. (2026-10-06)
- [Breaking Data Gatekeeping: Extracting Wächtersbach Müllkalender to ICS](https://matheja.me/2025/12/29/waechtersbach-muellkalender-ics-extraction.md): The Wächtersbach waste calendar only comes as a PDF, so I had Gemini extract the dates and generated ICS files you can import into your calendar. (2025-12-29)
- [Homelab: The Next Iteration](https://matheja.me/2025/12/19/homelab-next-iteration.md): Where my homelab stands after 2025: custom 4U Proxmox servers, Talos with Terraform, Vault, Authentik, Renovate, and what comes next. (2025-12-19)
- [Replacing Root Tokens with SSO: HashiCorp Vault + Authentik OIDC](https://matheja.me/2025/11/20/vault-oidc-authentik-sso.md): After committing a Vault root token to GitLab, I replaced it with OIDC logins through Authentik, group-based policies and AppRole for automation. (2025-11-20)
- [Modular Backup Architecture: From Centralized to Application-Level with Restic](https://matheja.me/2025/08/15/modular-backup-architecture.md): My central Stackback setup could not see volumes across Compose stacks, so every application now gets its own Restic backup container. (2025-08-15)
- [Cloudflare: DNS Migration and Tunnel Integration](https://matheja.me/2025/01/13/dns-migration-cloudflare.md): Why I moved my DNS from Route53 to Cloudflare, how Terraform and Ansible handled the migration, and what Cloudflare Tunnel solved behind DS-Lite. (2025-01-13)
- [Reflecting on Progress: My Homelab Journey Since 2020](https://matheja.me/2025/01/02/homelab-update.md): A short recap of my homelab since 2020: shutter automation, my first Proxmox node, a rack server with IPMI, and two HP EliteDesk machines. (2025-01-02)
- [Infrastructure as Code: From Manual Provisioning to Ansible + Terraform](https://matheja.me/2024/04/15/infrastructure-as-code-journey.md): After a failed disk exposed my undocumented VMs, I moved my homelab to code: Ansible provisions the VMs and apps, Terraform manages Cloudflare. (2024-04-15)
- [Homelab - Part 1: Overview](https://matheja.me/2020/11/07/homelab-part1.md): The first part of my homelab series: a used Fujitsu server running docker-compose, Traefik, and trusted Let's Encrypt certificates for internal services. (2020-11-07)
- [Stop Trying to Make Hard Work Easy](https://matheja.me/2020/08/20/stop-trying-to-make-hard-work-easy.md): A recommendation of Nir Eyal's article: distraction is the main barrier to doing our work, and its opposite is traction, not focus. (2020-08-20)
- [Journey to Serverless - Migrated my Todoist Integration to Lambda](https://matheja.me/2020/06/15/transform-todoist-integration-to-serverless.md): Why I moved my Todoist webhook integration from a self-hosted Python app to AWS Lambda, and what got simpler with Serverless and GitHub Actions. (2020-06-15)
- [Getting Started with Minikube on WSL2](https://matheja.me/2020/04/08/getting-started-with-minikube-on-wsl2.md): My first attempt at running Minikube with Docker Desktop and WSL2, the error that blocked it, and the reboot and restart that fixed it. (2020-04-08)
- [Remote Work - Challenges ahead](https://matheja.me/2020/03/20/remote-work-new-challenges.md): What I expect to get harder when whole teams suddenly work remotely: informal talk, lost early hours, constant notifications, and what helps. (2020-03-20)
- [Showcase - Build your own Todoist Integration](https://matheja.me/2020/03/14/my-todoist-integration.md): How I built a Todoist integration that reminds me when to leave the office, after Zapier and IFTTT were too slow or too expensive. (2020-03-14)
- [How I'm using Todoist](https://matheja.me/2019/01/03/todoist-markdown.md): The Todoist habits I use since 2014: a shared shopping list, bold tasks as section headers, emojis, and a webhook that runs on AWS Lambda. (2019-01-03)

## Optional

- [RSS feed](https://matheja.me/feed.xml): all posts as Atom