Writings

In my day job, I work on workflow/data management-type software (B2B).

Over the past few days, I’ve been messing around with moving some of my self-hosted services off of cloud providers, and onto my home infrastructure. While my home infrastructure may not be as reliable as the cloud providers, it’s nice to know my data is in my control. I’ve always been a uncomfortable just aiming DNS at my home IP, and poking holes in the firewall. This post details a couple of methods for hosting Seafile using Tunnels to better protect my home IP and the server.

1. Cloudflare Tunnels
2. VPS + Tailscale

I’ve recently started using the overlay network Tailscale to provide connectivity between my various machines, regardless of where I am. It’s extremely easy to configure and “just works”. Tailscale also includes a feature called MagicDNS that provides name resolution for machines on my tailnet (i.e. so that ping server123 magically just works). MagicDNS also allows you to override local DNS settings and force a custom DNS server for name resolution machines on your tailnet. This post documents the setup of Pi-hole (accessible only to machines on my tailnet) to provide some level of DNS privacy and Ad Blocking for machines on my tailnet.

Ever since I moved away from platforms like Wordpress and Google Analytics, I’ve had limited visibility into usage of this website.

Every six months or so, when the position of the moon is just right, I flip-flop on the privacy/self-hosted vs. just-let-Google-handle-it issue. Today, I’ve flopped toward privacy and self-hosting.

This post, as most of my posts tend to be, is my attempt at documenting how I set something up so that future Jeff can do it again, or troubleshoot it when it inevitable breaks at some point in the, hopefully, distant future.

I’ve recently been working on a fun Advent of Code project for work and using some new (to me) technologies like FastAPI and Docker for deployment.

I recently came across a post on Mastodon about someone adopting a personal CRM (Monica CRM) as a way of keeping track of their personal relationships.

As part of my COVID friendly game project, werdz.ca, I’ve been working with GoLang, Create-React-App, WebSockets and NGINX (for production). Some of it has been “an adventure”.

This post is a set of quick notes about the problems I’ve encountered and how I worked by them.

I’m a huge fan of both privacy and cool technology, so it goes without saying that I’m also a huge fan of the Tor Project.