Techie Mike — Tech Tutorials for Students & Homelab Enthusiasts

Practical tech tutorials for Cambridge CS/ICT students and homelab enthusiasts. I break down complex topics — VirtualBox, Proxmox, ethical hacking, Python, and exam prep — into clear, hands-on guides you can actually follow. No fluff, just real skills.

Self-Hosted LLMs with Docker, Ollama, and Open WebUI
linux 12 min read

Self-Hosted LLMs with Docker, Ollama, and Open WebUI

# Self-Hosted LLMs with Docker, Ollama, and Open WebUI Cloud AI is convenient. Open a browser, type a prompt, get an answer. But it comes with three things that bug me: API bills that surprise you at the end of the month, rate limits that kick in when you're in the middle of something, and the know…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey
linux 7 min read

High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey

# High School to Homelab — A Student's Linux Journey Last week, a high school student posted on [r/homelab](https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/). i5-6500T. 40TB NAS. ThinkPad X13 running Proxmox. Looking for advice on his setup. The best way to learn is to try and fail.…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
Learning Docker by Building a Container Engine from Scratch
linux 13 min read

Learning Docker by Building a Container Engine from Scratch

# Learning Docker by Building a Container Engine from Scratch If you've used Docker for any length of time, you've probably internalized the vocabulary. Images. Containers. Dockerfiles. `docker run -d --name my-app nginx`. It works. You ship code. Everyone's happy. But here's a question: what actu…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
The Minimal Homelab That Actually Works
hardware 7 min read

The Minimal Homelab That Actually Works

# Am I Overcomplicating This? — The Minimal Homelab That Actually Works Scroll through r/homelab for ten minutes and you'll see server racks that look like data center colocations. 42U cabinets. Enterprise switches with SFP+ cages blinking amber. Dual Xeon boxes drawing 400 watts.…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
OpenCV 5 Computer Vision in Python for CS Students
Python 9 min read

OpenCV 5 Computer Vision in Python for CS Students

You've written Python programs that print to the terminal, read files, and maybe even scraped a website. But have you written code that can _see_? Code that can detect edges in a photograph or find faces in a group picture? That's computer vision.…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
1-Click GitHub Token Theft via VSCode Bug — Security Alert
Code 7 min read

1-Click GitHub Token Theft via VSCode Bug — Security Alert

Just by clicking a link, it's possible for an attacker to steal a GitHub token that can read **and write** to your repos — including private ones. This isn't a hypothetical vulnerability or a "theoretical risk" scenario. Security researcher [Ammar Askar](https://blog.ammaraskar.com/github-token-ste…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
Switch from pip to uv — Python's New Package Manager Guide
Python 8 min read

Switch from pip to uv — Python's New Package Manager Guide

# Switch from pip to uv — Python's New Package Manager Guide If you've ever sat waiting for `pip install` to finish building wheels in a Docker build, you know the pain. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Sometimes longer, depending on how many native extensions your project pulls in. There's a better way…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
9618 Paper 1 Theory Fundamentals — AS CS Topic Guide
Computer science 14 min read

9618 Paper 1 Theory Fundamentals — AS CS Topic Guide

The June 2026 Cambridge AS/A-Level Computer Science Paper 1 (9618) has just been sat. If you took it, you're probably wondering how you did. If you're preparing for a future sitting, you want to know what topics come up and how to score full marks. I've been teaching Cambridge A-Level CS for over a…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
Debugging Python for A-Level CS — Tracebacks & Fixes
Python 9 min read

Debugging Python for A-Level CS — Tracebacks & Fixes

Debugging Python for A-Level CS — Reading Tracebacks and Finding Bugs When your Python program crashes, it's not the end of the world. It's the start of a clue. I've seen students freeze when that red error text appears in their IDE. They stare at it, panic, and close the terminal.…
Techie Mike
Techie Mike
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Techie Mike
Techie Mike
Computer Science teacher in Thailand. 10+ years Cambridge IGCSE, 4 years AS/A Level. BSc Computer Science & Engineering. Ex-Intel, Virgin Media. Practical exam prep, past paper walkthroughs and tech tutorials.
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