[{"content":"The story of the garage home lab that took convincing, drilling and sweating.\nTLDR #I went from having a single server running at the foot of my bed to having a 42U server rack running with a 40Gbps ToR switch\nIn the beginning #I started out by buying an IBM X3850 M2 server back in 2016/7 when I was 12/13. While this is not a normal purchase for a very young teen, it is what type of person I am and if you know any of my friends or family then they would tell you exactly the opposite and that is exactly the type of person I am!\nI was inspired by Morten Hjorth (My PlayHouse) watching what I believe is the video I watched Four powerful Xeon Hex Core in a IBM x3850 M2 - 149.\nI watched the video over and over and over again until I convinced myself to buy my very first server and from there it was all over for mum as she then realised that the house I had grown up in was soon to become my home lab!\n","date":"26 June 2026","permalink":"/blog/home-lab/","section":"Projects","summary":"","title":"Home Lab progression"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/home-lab/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Home-Lab"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/homelab/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Homelab"},{"content":"I am a software engineer currently specialising in site reliability and am currently working as a SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) at Couchbase.\nAs well as my day job, I also do website and software on the side whether it be for myself, a volunteer role or a local business. I have spent many sleepless nights working on all kinds of things ranging from software engineering to system administration and network administration.\n","date":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Liam Burnand","summary":"","title":"Liam Burnand"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/blog/","section":"Projects","summary":"","title":"Projects"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/go/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Go"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/hugo/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hugo"},{"content":"This site is built with Hugo, a fast static site generator written in Go, using the Congo theme.\nWhy Hugo? #Static sites are fast, cheap to host, and simple to maintain. Hugo\u0026rsquo;s build times are nearly instant even for large sites, and the Go templating system is familiar territory.\nStack # Generator: Hugo Theme: Congo Hosting: Deployed as static files Source: COMTOP1/hugo-public-site What\u0026rsquo;s here # A profile homepage with links and a short bio A projects section (you\u0026rsquo;re looking at it) An about page The content is written in Markdown; Hugo handles the rest.\n","date":"1 January 2025","permalink":"/blog/this-site/","section":"Projects","summary":"","title":"This Site"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/web/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Web"},{"content":"A full-stack web application built for AFC Aldermaston to manage youth team development, player tracking, and coaching resources.\nOverview #This project involved designing and building a web platform from scratch to support the youth development programme at AFC Aldermaston. The system handles player profiles, training session scheduling, and progress tracking across age groups.\nTech stack # Backend: Go — REST API with clean separation of handlers, services, and data access Database: PostgreSQL for relational data (players, sessions, staff) Frontend: HTML/CSS with server-side rendering for fast, accessible pages Deployment: Linux server with systemd service management Highlights # Built the full backend API in Go, prioritising reliability and ease of maintenance Designed the database schema to support multi-season history and flexible squad structures Kept dependencies minimal to reduce operational overhead Source #View on GitHub\n","date":"1 January 2024","permalink":"/projects/afc-aldermaston/","section":"Projects","summary":"","title":"AFC Aldermaston Youth Development Platform"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/tags/postgresql/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"PostgreSQL"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/projects/","section":"Projects","summary":"","title":"Projects"},{"content":"Hi, I\u0026rsquo;m Liam — a software developer based in the UK.\nI enjoy building reliable, well-structured software. My main language is Go, and I work across backend services, web development, and open source tooling.\nSkills # Languages: Go, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, SQL Tools \u0026amp; platforms: Git, Docker, Linux, Hugo Interests: systems programming, developer tooling, clean APIs Get in touch #You can find my work on GitHub. Feel free to reach out via GitHub issues or discussions on any of my projects.\n","date":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"Liam Burnand","summary":"","title":"About"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories"}]