Mo'menths June 2026: I'll do it myself

June, the end of the first half of 2026 and a month that went quicker than I expected although it was because I was busy dealing with a locked Microsoft account, which was a frustrating enough experience to make me drop a lot of money on a homelab setup to take control of my own data and infrastructure. Outside of that, I got to see an old friend and made some new connections, and I also got to see a show with some friends which was a nice change of pace from my usual solo theatre experiences. This month's interesting fact: June used to be the fourth month of the year, not the sixth. Before Julius Caesar came to power, the calendar year only had ten months, and it was Caesar who added two more in 46 BC to make the Julian calendar, quietly bumping June two places down the list. Fitting, in a way, for a month spent rearranging my own systems from the ground up.

• A continuous problem in the form of a personal infrastructure project that felt like the right time to start, and a problem that I have chosen to take on because it is one that I can control and will benefit me in the long run.
• A trip to the British Museum, Avenue Q with friends, an architectural tour of a small slice of London.
• A month of rediscovering my music collection, and channelling some Thanos with the phrase "I'll do it myself".

Alright, this one is going to be a short one because this month felt like a bit of a blur and the main thing is about my self-hosting journey (see below). That said, I actually have this feeling that this month has been mostly a waste because a lot of things that I have been doing the past few months have ground to a halt because of the Microsoft account lockout and one of the realisations that I have had is how much reliance I have on that one account but the silver lining is that I had over the last few years been decentralising the services that used the account for authentication and that has meant the fallout was severely limited to the Microsoft ecosystem and not the wider internet.

I did finally get the chance to see an old friend which is always good but there's never enough time to catch up. Went on a kind of architectural tour of west London with a friend, taking the Thames Path from Westminster Bridge to Richmond. I didn't take enough photos, but it was a nice ride, although the last leg of the journey was entirely unpleasant because we decided to take the gravel path along the river, which on a road bike was decidedly not a good idea, but we live and learn.

This month is the first time I haven't worked on a project for the site, and not because there wasn't a planned project, but because the project I was working on is one that was technically a long time coming (recent events just made it a priority). Project Homelab, as I have named it just now, is something I have thought would be a good idea for a long time. It would be an incredible way to learn more about building and maintaining a self-hosted infrastructure, but it was also a project I had been putting off because it felt like a lot of work for something I wasn't sure would be worth the effort or the cost. After being locked out of my Microsoft account, though, I realised I needed to take control of my own data and infrastructure, and that meant building my own homelab.

It is still early days, but I have learned a lot about Proxmox, LXC containers, WireGuard, and Tailscale, and I am excited to see where this project takes me. That's not to say it has been without its challenges, but as Mark Manson puts it, every decision is a problem waiting to be solved, and I have chosen this one.

I did end up getting the NAS box up and running, and I have been able to get my media server, file sharing, and music server all configured. I have also been able to get my home network set up with Tailscale, which has been a great way to securely access my homelab from anywhere. It has been working like a charm for the last couple of weeks. The most immediate benefit of this is that I have rid myself of my Amazon Music Unlimited subscription, which I have been using for a while, but since changing to a self-hosted music server, with music that I have purchased and ripped myself, I found that I have listened to a wider variety of music than I have in a long time, almost like I am rediscovering my music collection. I guess it's the difference between a curated collection of music that I have chosen to listen to, and a much bigger library of music that I don't care about and where the ones I do care about can be removed from the library at any time (this has happened to me before with Amazon Music, where I have had albums removed from my library because they were no longer available on the service). I also have a lot of movies and TV shows that I have purchased over the years, and I will need to get them all ripped and added to my media server, the priority being Friends, of which I have till December to get all the seasons done, in time for my annual Friends Christmas episodes marathon.

I also had an idea of creating a local website that started off as a financial dashboard, freeing me from Excel spreadsheets and giving me an overview of my finances, and I even added my own income tax calculator. I have since expanded it into an Inventory tracker that also calculates asset depreciation. The dashboard will always be a work in progress, but I am excited to see where this project takes me. Maybe I will even be able to get it to a point where I can share it with others, but that is a long way off.

In films this month, 11 was the magic number, bringing the yearly total to 94 and marking the month with the least number of films seen. It was partly because of Project Homelab but there were also very few movies out this month. The standout was Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day which was enjoyable enough for me to have seen twice. The movie was a build up to a fantastic conclusion even if the alien design was uninspired to say the least. One movie that leaned heavily on the alien design was Supergirl, which I found to be great, despite its uninspired villain, who I couldn't wait to see get defeated because of how comically bad he was. Milly Alcock did an excellent job as the titular character, and I look forward to seeing more of her in the future and what her dynamic with Superman will be like, which to me looks promising.

In theatre, this month was different because I went to see Avenue Q with some of the Destiny crew which is a departure from my usual experience of seeing shows solo. The show itself was a lot of fun, very funny and some of the songs were memorable. I went into it not knowing much other than it's described as Muppets for adults, and the description is accurate, it was funny though it wasn't what I pictured when I think of a puppet show with the actors running around on stage with the puppets, but that doesn't mean it took anything away from the experience. The experience of seeing it with friends was a lot of fun, and I think I will be looking for more opportunities to see shows with other people in the future.

In books, it was a slow one this month but I continued with book 2 of Dungeon Crawler Carl: Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman, and which continues the story of Carl and Donut's adventure to the next level of the dungeon, it is still as engaging as the first and I found myself very much 100% agreeing with the mantra You will not break me. Hopefully I will be able to get back into the reading groove in July and get through a few more books, but I will see how things go.

In music, this month started with an obsession with Eternia (from "Masters of the Universe") by Daniel Pemberton & Brian May the movie itself was quite good but the soundtrack was out of this world (pun intended), which isn't surprising because it's by the same guy who did the soundtrack for Project Hail Mary. Cancelling Amazon Music Unlimited (mentioned above) came with its own small farce: in the process I found out I could have been paying £2 less because Audible, which I am already a subscriber to, and podcasts were included for an additional £2. Them only telling me this as I was about to cancel felt like a desperate attempt to keep me, but it made me more angry because I've been giving them more than I needed to. Moving forward, I will focus on buying whatever music I want to listen to because let's face it, I wasn't listening to much outside of my favourite artists and albums anyway. Sure it would take some adjustment when it comes to listening to new music but I believe it will save me more money in the long run and I will be more intentional about what I search for and listen to.

In July, I am looking forward to reuniting with the Destiny crew again for a weekend of fun and Spiderman. I am also looking forward to seeing The Hunger Games: On Stage, which looks promising and is apparently a "dazzling dystopia" and "spectacular". Outside of that, I am looking forward to continuing with Project Homelab and getting more of my media collection ripped and added to my media server. I also have a few other projects in mind that I want to start working on, but I will see how things go.

And with that wraps entry six of Mo'menths. July follows, You will not break me!