About

I’m Mikhail. Father first, airline pilot second, tinkerer third.

I live in the Laurentians, north of Montreal. When I’m not flying or chasing kids, I’m usually taking something apart or putting something together—physically or digitally.

Why This Site Exists

A few years ago I got frustrated paying monthly fees for software I could host myself. It started with budgeting (YNAB → Actual Budget on a Pi), and quickly spiraled into an obsession with self-hosting everything I could.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I wanted to write about it. Not for an audience, really—more as a journal. A place to document projects, share what I learn, and occasionally ramble about planes or parenting.

Why a Raspberry Pi?

In an era of unlimited cloud compute and JavaScript frameworks that ship megabytes of code to display text, there’s something refreshing about constraints. The Pi Zero 2 W has 512MB of RAM and costs $15. It forces you to think carefully about what you actually need.

It reminds me of the old days of game development, when programmers squeezed magic out of hardware limitations. The constraint isn’t a burden—it’s the creative challenge.

Plus, it’s satisfying to know this entire site runs on less power than an LED bulb.

What I Write About

• Self-hosting — Running services on minimal hardware, taking back control from SaaS
• Aviation — Occasional notes from the flight deck
• Tinkering — Hardware projects, home automation, general hacking
• Life — Fatherhood, the Laurentians, whatever else seems worth writing down

Colophon

This site is served from a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W sitting on a shelf in my house. No frameworks, no build tools beyond a bash script, no tracking. Just HTML, CSS, and a Cloudflare tunnel.

The daily Pi Stories are generated by a 15-million parameter AI model running directly on the Pi at 3am.

See the colophon for live system stats and technical details.

Contact

Want to say hello? Email [email protected].