DESIGN
DISTILLED.

Nice to meet you! Conrad Research is a research lab and design workshop. Our roots are in architectural design, where clarity, care, and craft are inseparable. We distill complex systems into simple, useful products and purposeful architecture.

Areas of Research

Design Distilled

A running journal of our what we've learned in design and technology.

Solved: Ollama Can't Pull Latest Model

ollama llm

August 11, 2026

We LOVE Ollama and use it to run both local and cloud-based AI models on our development laptops. That said we've run into a few issues with pulling the latest models over the past few months, so here's how to solve it.

Tailscale SSH Server Access on FreeBSD

freebsd tailscale networking

May 12, 2026

We setup all of our FreeBSD servers to be accessed via Tailscale's SSH so we documented it here for our quick reference in the future for new server setup. Hope it helps someone else as well.

Tailscale Exit Node on FreeBSD

freebsd tailscale networking

February 9, 2026

We needed a simple and secure way to run Tailscale as a VPN exit node on a FreeBSD server so we documented it here for future reference. Hope it helps someone else as well.

Adventures in Datacenter Networking

datacenter networking freebsd

January 29, 2026

Field notes from bringing our first datacenter server's networking online.

Immutable Software Deploys Using ZFS Jails on FreeBSD

freebsd caddy devops

November 6, 2025

FreeBSD’s native support for ZFS snapshots and jails provides a powerful foundation for immutable deployments. By creating a new jail from a ZFS snapshot for every release, we get instant roll‑backs, zero‑downtime upgrades, and a clean, reproducible environment. This article walks through the (very opinionated) flow that we use. From jails setup through running Caddy as a health‑checked reverse proxy in front of the jails.