What I am doing now
Updated: 10 June 2024
Back to OpenBSD
I am re-building my modest cloud offering, away from the central server being an old Ubuntu 16.04 VPS on Digital Ocean, with supporting Debian VPs for reverse proxying, to using OpenBSD and FreeBSD as the key components. At this point, I really like httpd in preference to nginx whose much broader function-set and sprawling documentation puts me off.
Writing Django applications again
I forget how awesome Django is, and Python in general. For getting a project done, with the minimal amount of fuss, with everything you need built-in, Django is great. My insatiable curiosity has taken me to Rails and Go in recent times; the former too magical and the latter too bare-bones (at least for web development). Django is a great balance and I really love it.
I am developing a basic e-commerce site for my awesomely talented wife, Joanna Lemon.
Exploring self-built cloud infrastructure (May 2024)
I’ve used Linux for years but only now getting a feel for what I want to use it for to build my personal cloud infrastructure. I have a very modest home server running mostly Debian containers using LXD. These provide various services to me and my family, such as Adguard, Radicale, Minecraft, Mumble, PostgreSQL, syncthing and taskd amongst a few other things.
I have recently had to learn OpenShift and I really dislike it. Obviously, for big enterprise applications I appreciate the benefits but for me - for now - Docker containers feel like an additional layer of complexity that you still have to get through before the benefits are realised. Certainly for doing projects at may scale.
I want to do more hands-on work with PostgreSQL as part of this.
I am also continually interested in the BSDs - OpenBSD and FreeBSD in particular - and want to make use of them where I can.
VMWare Workstation Pro (May 2024)
A lot of people in the homelab/hacker space were no doubt excited to find out recently that VMWare Workstation Pro became free of charge. It’s not free/open source of course but in terms of performance, it is a lot better than VirtualBox which I never really took to anyway, and KVM. Just starting to set up a playground for my networking aspirations using FreeBSD and Devuan.
Moved back to Spotify (May 2024)
I’m generally wary of any kind of dependence on a cloud service but we tried Amazon Prime Music Unlimited recently when Spotify put their prices up. A bit like with Django, sometimes you need to move away to realise how awesome the thing is you just left: Spotify’s UI, music discovery, desktop and TUI application options and focus on music rather than trying to ram podcasts down your neck - is what was important.
[This page is created under the wise instruction of Derek Sivers….]