https://jaredrhodes.com/ Jared Rhodes - Microsoft Azure MVP and software architect building edge and hybrid cloud demos across Azure, AWS, and local infrastructure. en-us Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:46:03 +0000 Jekyll https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/teaching-a-bot-to-walk/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/teaching-a-bot-to-walk/ Mon, 05 Oct 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Navigation meshes, Detour routing, and a physics engine ported from a decompiled game client: how Westworld of Warcraft makes movement correct instead of merely plausible, and why I froze the pathfinding stack. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/activity-objective-task-action/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/activity-objective-task-action/ Mon, 28 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 The four-layer behavior hierarchy behind Westworld of Warcraft: what crosses the wire, why the objective enum is deliberately expensive to extend, and how objective sequences get generated from the world database at runtime. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/two-ways-to-wear-a-character/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/two-ways-to-wear-a-character/ Mon, 21 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 How Westworld of Warcraft drives characters two ways at once: CLR injection into a live game client as ground truth, a pure C# implementation of the WoW protocol as the fleet, and the parity discipline that keeps them honest. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/westworld-of-warcraft-a-server-that-plays-itself/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/westworld-of-warcraft-a-server-that-plays-itself/ Mon, 14 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Series opener for Westworld of Warcraft: why I am building a server that behaves like it has a thousand people on it, the 3,000-character population shape, the layered .NET architecture, foreground and background execution modes, and the invariants that survive every refactor. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/ai-on-the-edge-reference-architecture/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/ai-on-the-edge-reference-architecture/ Mon, 07 Sep 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Final synthesis for AI on the Edge: gateway, router, policy, RAG, IoT operations assistant, Azure governance, Azure Local lane, private cloud lab, Tenstorrent lane, and conference-ready flow. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/building-the-ai-on-the-edge-demo-system/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/building-the-ai-on-the-edge-demo-system/ Mon, 31 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Engineering wrap-up for AI on the Edge: repo layout, make demo-laptop through make teardown targets, seed, reset, and smoke tests, shared health endpoints, and a repeatable 45-minute conference flow. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/specialized-hardware-without-an-app-rewrite/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/specialized-hardware-without-an-app-rewrite/ Mon, 24 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 AI on the Edge Demo 6: registering a Tenstorrent or mock accelerator as an OpenAI-compatible gateway backend with capability discovery, health checks, fallback, and accelerator-preferred routing - no application rewrite. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/when-the-edge-has-to-stand-alone/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/when-the-edge-has-to-stand-alone/ Mon, 17 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Demo 5 of AI on the Edge: disconnected operation, backend failures, malformed responses, cloud-blocked mode, local-only denial, smoke tests, and reset controls. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/edge-ai-you-can-actually-operate/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/edge-ai-you-can-actually-operate/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Demo 4 of AI on the Edge: operating local AI with Azure Arc, GitOps, Azure Monitor, Managed Prometheus, Grafana, Key Vault, policy events, KQL, and dashboard evidence. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/from-camera-events-to-operator-guidance/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/from-camera-events-to-operator-guidance/ Mon, 03 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Demo 3 of AI on the Edge: turning the existing cameras/# MQTT contract into an operations assistant using simulated, MQTT, and Event Hubs input modes. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/private-rag-that-cannot-leave-the-edge/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/private-rag-that-cannot-leave-the-edge/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Demo 2 for AI on the Edge: document ingestion, local embeddings, vector search, citations, data classification, LocalOnly routing, and fail-closed cloud fallback. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/one-app-many-places-to-run-ai/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/one-app-many-places-to-run-ai/ Mon, 20 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Demo 1 for AI on the Edge: my .NET gateway, OpenAI-compatible facade, backend registry, route explanations, target backends, and LocalOnly denial behavior. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/ai-on-the-edge-local-ai-without-local-chaos/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/ai-on-the-edge-local-ai-without-local-chaos/ Mon, 13 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Why I built AI on the Edge: local execution, Azure governance, model routing, an IoT camera workload, my private cloud lab, and conference-ready demo modes. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-dataflows-onvif-connector/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-dataflows-onvif-connector/ Fri, 19 Jun 2026 12:00:00 +0000 Forward camera telemetry to the cloud with Azure IoT Operations data flows to Event Hubs, then onboard ONVIF cameras as AIO assets through a connector and a bridge - all with no change to the control plane. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-mqtt-broker-camera-fleet/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-mqtt-broker-camera-fleet/ Fri, 19 Jun 2026 11:00:00 +0000 Swap Eclipse Mosquitto for the Azure IoT Operations MQTT broker on Arc-enabled Kubernetes: a broker seam in .NET, TLS, per-camera X.509 identity, and attribute-based topic authorization. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-camera-control-plane/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/azure-iot-operations-camera-control-plane/ Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000 How a .NET camera control plane is built for Azure IoT Operations - the two camera classes, the MQTT control bus, and the per-property network model AIO plugs into. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-tenstorrent-buildout-multi-cloud-edge/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-tenstorrent-buildout-multi-cloud-edge/ Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Building out a basement studio and mixed Tenstorrent/NVIDIA lab for reusable Azure and AWS edge demo scenarios. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-utilizing-the-cloud-dynamic-vpn/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-utilizing-the-cloud-dynamic-vpn/ Mon, 29 Nov 2021 07:04:00 +0000 Home lab guide for dynamic Azure Site-to-Site VPN resources, covering VPN Gateway costs, supported routers, hybrid networking, and teardown. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/cant-access-truenas-freenas-over-vpn/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/cant-access-truenas-freenas-over-vpn/ Mon, 01 Nov 2021 07:09:00 +0000 Fix for TrueNAS or FreeNAS access over VPN by adding a static route when the VPN client CIDR is outside the storage server subnet. https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-keeping-costs-down/ https://jaredrhodes.com/blog/home-lab-keeping-costs-down/ Mon, 11 Oct 2021 07:04:00 +0000 Home lab cost guide focused on matching hardware to use cases, avoiding wasteful enterprise gear, and planning servers for media, storage, dev, and AI.