technology
Connecting Splunk to Claude — Token Auth, Self-Signed Certs, and the Desktop Gap
22 Mar 2026
How to wire up the Splunk MCP server to both Claude Code and Claude Desktop in a homelab using token-based auth and mcp-remote as a TLS proxy.
About Riles
A builder with a bias for curiosity, leadership, and action.
I love being exposed to new paradigms and inspiring others to experiment alongside me. The best ideas often come at the intersection of different experiences.
Now building
Active work, not a frozen CV.
Three active domains that map to the pillars: family and wellbeing, professional leadership at Cisco and Splunk, and Cleverbits Technology.
Health
Me and my family
The personal foundation: family, wellbeing, and the life that makes everything else sustainable.
Lead
Cisco + Splunk
My professional career role—leading, evangelising, and helping teams grow inside Cisco and Splunk.
Build
Cleverbits Technology
Building Cleverbits: technology products, systems, and hands-on work that turns ideas into useful tools.
Primary pillars
Health, build, play, and lead in motion.
The themes overlap on purpose. Professional leadership, technical systems, hands-on projects, music, and wellbeing all come from the same mix of curiosity, craft, energy, and momentum.
Build
Systems and hands-on builds
AI tooling, homelab infrastructure, automation, home projects, and DIY work share the same builder's mindset.
AI, homelab, automation, DIY
Lead
Professional leadership
Leadership, people, process, and the work of helping others grow while moving useful ideas forward.
Teams, communication, strategy, growth
Play
DJ Riles
Music is the creative outlet: emotional, almost spiritual, and a place to explore energy and connection.
YouTube, Mixcloud, live mixes
Health
Health as foundation
Wellbeing, physical and mental health, diet, and exercise as the foundation that makes the rest sustainable.
Wellbeing, movement, nutrition, recovery
Build
Technology and hands-on making
Lead
Professional leadership
Play
DJ Riles
Health
Wellbeing and movement
How I work
Proof beats pedigree.
The work matters, but so does how people learn, decide, grow, recover, and keep energy for the next challenge.
Resumes tell people where you've been. Proof-of-work shows how you think, learn, and move.
About
How I show up in the work.
I like to discover many ways to approach a challenge, then learn as much as possible from the process. I care about the technical build, but I care just as much about whether the people around it are learning, contributing, and seeing new possibilities.
Health means protecting the physical and mental foundation underneath it all.
Build means making useful things visible, repeatable, and understandable.
Play means keeping creativity, energy, and curiosity alive.
Lead means helping people, teams, and ideas move forward.
Writing
Notes from the workbench.
Technical notes, experiments, and decisions—the proof-of-work archive lives on Build.
technology
Improving the Claude New Post Skill with a Dev Branch Workflow
1 Mar 2026
How I updated my Claude Code skill for creating Hugo blog posts to commit to a dev branch first, validate the live URL, and confirm before merging to main.
technology
homeaiops: Building a Production-Grade Homelab Platform
1 Mar 2026
An overview of the homeaiops project — its goals, architecture, three-domain structure, and where things stand today.
technology
Building a Home Assistant Integration for Ryde Council Waste Collection
1 Mar 2026
How I built a custom HACS-compatible Home Assistant integration that tracks bin collection schedules using Ryde Council's public API.