Niko's Webpage

Hi, I'm Niko. I like IT, coding, computing, radioing and everything related.

Socials

Hobbies

Feel free to contact me on any topic. :)

Computing

I like computers.

I daily drive a 2025 MacBook Air. I also have a legacy computer I built myself, with a Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB of DDR5, and an RX 9070.

I have a 15U rack in my bedroom with a home server running OMV. I use it for all sorts of things such as photo backups, a Git mirror, documents and notes, and various projects I work on. It's powered by a Ryzen 5 4500 with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe boot drive, 2x256GB SSDs, 2x4TB WD Red HDDs, and, of course, all Noctua fans. I love its existence.

I also enjoy messing with old, weird, and obscure hardware and software. Check out my blog where I write about some of it.

Gaming

I like games with a good environment and story. If I had to pick my two favorite franchises, they'd be Portal and Dying Light. I'm also a big fan of the Source engine in general.

As of writing this (2026-10-04), the most recent games I finished are Atomfall and Prey (2017), and I love both. I'm also currently reading the first Atomfall novel. I'm kind of a completionist, so I occasionally grind a game until I get 100% achievements. I'm currently very close to 100% in DL2 and Atomfall.

Programming

I mainly use Python, JavaScript, and Swift. I like bringing old software back to life, building tools for things I need, and occasionally making something just because I think it's cool.

I like always having a project to work on. As of 2026-10-04, I'm building a self-hosted platform to replace Google Sheets, Keynote, and Apple Notes for me. My own IP-KVM is also in the backlog. I already have all the hardware I need for it, I just need to design a proper 3D-printed case and polish the software a bit more.

Here are some of my projects:

Public / Released

Widget Porting Toolkit — Run OS X Dashboard Widgets on modern macOS natively

Website • GitHub • Blog

Portal 2 Beta Patcher — A tool to extract and patch old Portal 2 beta builds

GitHub

Portal 2 Beta Speedrun Leaderboard — A leaderboard for speedruns of Portal 2 beta builds

Website • GitHub

The Final Hours of Portal 2 preservation — A replacement server and patcher to restore broken online content in The Final Hours of Portal 2

Website • Patcher • Server • Blog

🌐

NikoWoL — Remote Wake-on-LAN client

Website • GitHub • Docker Image

🐤

Activation servers for legacy Rovio games preservation

GitHub

Custom server for Samsung S Voice using local speech recognition + local LLMs

Website • GitHub

A SwiftUI app for running dump1090 on macOS

Website • GitHub

🛰️

A N2YO-compatible satellite tracking API

GitHub • Docker Image

Private / Experiments

📄

A self-hosted document platform I'm building to replace Google Sheets, Keynote, and Apple Notes for me

💾

A self-hosted app for syncing game saves and screenshots with Steam integration

🥽

DIY night vision goggles using recycled hardware

📺

A Debian Linux port for certain old TV boxes that now sell for dirt cheap after being decommissioned

🔗

A self-hosted server for ShareX uploads, file sharing, short links, and Markdown pastes

🎮

An app to stream a controller connected to an iOS device to Windows as a virtual Xbox 360 controller

💬

A chat overlay I made because Ubisoft kept censoring messages between me and my friend

🗺️

A Randonautica clone that also uses true entropy

💻

An Intel ARK clone I started after Intel removed older CPUs from their website, with searchable specs, benchmark data, and an API

More projects on GitHub

Radio

I'm not a huge radio nerd, but I enjoy messing with my SDR. One of the things I like doing is receiving images from weather satellites. I'm hoping to learn some more and get a ham license in the future.