Hello,

I'm new to this place and I'm just exploring. I saw this fancy little box that allowed me to write something inside of it, so I have decided to do just that. What am I doing here, you might be asking? But I'm asking the same question. I haven't had anything resembling modern social media for the last 5+ years.

Why am I here?

How I stumbled upon this place was by diving into the rabbit hole that is Linux. I’m here to explore this niche corner of the internet. My goal is to discover and explore self-hosting, modifying equipment, and playing with Linux.

My tech story...
I've been an Apple guy since I bought my first MacBook back in 2007. I didn't get a smartphone until way later, and it was a Nexus 5 that I customized the hell out of. Due to my MacBook starting to have some issues in about 2011, I started exploring Linux. I started with Ubuntu, and before I knew what ricing was, I was doing exactly that. I remember going to forums and various websites to learn how to install a bunch of garbage to make my system look cool! Anyway, I got into the workforce, and things settled. I used my custom Ubuntu MacBook laptop for several years until I bought a gaming pc and had to put Windows on it.

I exclusively used that machine with Windows until I got the M1 iPad Pro. I used it frequently, but I found myself returning to my gaming PC for more work-related tasks. In my opinion, iPadOS isn’t particularly suitable for work, even with a Magic Keyboard. Not too long after, Apple released the iPhone 12 Pro Max, which, like the iPad, I pre-ordered. I was told that I was missing out on the beauty of the Apple ecosystem because I only had one peripheral device. I needed the core device, the iPhone. My evangelized Apple friend was right. Getting the iPhone significantly improved the iPad experience. However, I still used Windows for work and serious tasks, such as writing lengthy research papers for my master's program, working with Raspberry Pis, and other tasks that require a structured file system and multiple floating windows. I tried using the iPad for these tasks, but it never felt comfortable. It was clunky, uncomfortable, and felt slow.

Fast forward a little. I had been thinking about getting a MacBook for a while. Apple announced their M2 Pro laptops; it released... it got great reviews, and maybe 2 or 3 weeks after it released, I bought my first MacBook in over a decade. Then my Windows PC started gathering a lot of dust. I would still use it for gaming, but games lost their appeal again for me. Not a big deal; I go through phases. Sometimes I play games a lot; sometimes I don't.

The MacBook took over my digital life. I had the necessary devices. I had the triforce of Apple products, plus some extras (Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod). Life was good in the Apple ecosystem. Then I stumbled across self hosting...

My self hosting journey...

Let me begin with stating my bachelors and masters education has nothing to do with technology. Tech, has always been a hobby. Something I do for fun. I have a raspberry pi 3b+ arcade cabinet sitting in my house that I built with help from a friend who has a CNC machine. I got tired of music subscription services deleting music from my playlist and I bought an iPod 5.5 and customized with RockBox and upgraded flash drive. Then I got a Ugreen NAS.

I kept the Ugreen OS on there for a solid 2 months before my desire to modify and customize took over. It eventually got TrueNAS Scale thrown onto it, and I tried self-hosting stuff on it, which infected me with that homelab bug. I think some of you reading this might understand what I'm talking about. Less than a year later, I bought a mini pc, I started off with Proxmox, then CentOS, and now I'm using Alma Linux. I have two servers currently. I have had 4 servers up and running at one time, but then I gave one to a friend. I wanted a buddy in this self-hosting journey.I wanted a buddy in this self-hosting journey. I couldn't run 2 mini PCs as a cluster, so I disconnected one and just kept one mini pc server and one NAS.

Like most n00bz to the space, I tried self-hosting everything early on with some success and a lot of failure. It was awesome. My TrueNAS toaster currently has 45TBs of usable space (that's after ZFS takes its cut), and my server currently hosts a bunch of stuff that my family and friends mostly use but somethings I use too. I love Obsidian for note-taking and documenting stuff, so I self-host a sync of that for myself. I self-host my own music as well. I've dwindled down my self-hosting of stuff to core things to eliminate my need/want for big tech subscriptions.

Self-hosting is great, but playing around with TrueNAS Scale, Proxmox, CentOS, Alma Linux, gave me that Linux itch. I already had a separate drive on my gaming PC running Fedora. I played around with Pop_OS, Ubuntu, Arch, Mint, and more, but I settled on Fedora. That happened well before I started my self-hosting journey. For some reason, I had some issues using my MacBook early on with managing my servers through SSH. I found myself using my desktop again regularly, not just once every other month for a random gaming session with a buddy. I was using Linux.

Why was my MacBook not able to work well with my self-hosting setup, you might be wondering? I honestly have no idea. It was a lack of knowledge thing. I now do everything from my MacBook. I fully manage my servers with my MacBook. I haven't turned on that poor gaming PC in over 6 months now and I tinker around with my homelab almost every day.

Linux journey begin anew...

What happened? California happened. California and the EU are forcing tech companies to include government spyware into every OS. Lawmakers are welcome to do illegal stuff and protect themselves behind privacy screens, but the general population is the real danger apparently. I can complain about this law and politicians all day, but it doesn't matter. This was the real catalyst for my current Linux journey that led me to this place. I started exploring privacy measures I could take (think VPNs, password managers, authentication applications, data encryption, etc.).mI started exploring Linux options again to take back my privacy from the government and big tech companies where I can. A simple script can easily rip out age verification spyware easily enough on linux. Not so true with MacOS.

I played around with many new-to-me distros (CachyOS, Bazzite, etc.) but landed again on Fedora. It's familiar, and I understand it well enough. I've been a GNOME guy for a while, but I decided to go with KDE and do some customization. While exploring optimizations, customization, and garbagization, I came across this and Neocities. I knew I wanted to be a part of this.

This (cyberspace.online) is also pretty low effort in comparison to Neocities. While I know a little HTML, CSS, a simple website would probably take me a couple of weeks to put together, and I do want to connect with some cool people that are doing things differently without putting in that much effort.

What's next?

I will probably be using this to dump my thoughts out into the world. Who knows, maybe this will inspire one more person to do something, maybe it'll inspire a million, or maybe I'll feel better after writing something like this out and dumping it onto the internet. I can say that I do feel better after writing everything I did. I do hope it reaches someone. Please feel free to message me here, let me know your thoughts, share your story, whatever story that might be. I am interested in learning about the different people that use this platform.

Ramblings of an old codger!

I know this was a ramble. While I tried to keep things cohesive, I went off the rails. This wasn't edited heavily, and organization was on the fly. Thank you for reading this far. If you made it to here and liked it or not, send me a message. Give me your thoughts, or like I said before, share your story.