Tech Blanc

~zampano

I do very much appreciate the kindness of strangers.

Once upon a time, I had to go into an office some weekdays. Due to the nature of my job, I could not do any kind of personal stuff on my work computer, and so I needed to bring something else. I eventually decided on an iPad, since it gave me the most options between reading, writing, drawing, and the like. But of course, I don't have any kind of internet access at work for a personal device except my phone. Plus I have a computer in my home office, and another one elsewhere in the ol' box.

So I needed a way to keep things synchronized between them. I wanted to be able to write something at work and have it show up on my desktop or laptop once I was home. (What can I say, I collect electronics despite my living conditions.) I don't trust major service providers like Google or Amazon, and I couldn't get Cryptomator to behave.¹ I eventually settled on Nextcloud,² which I would have to self-host. So I found a pretty inexpensive hosting company, Vultr, and spun up an instance. After a lot of searching, reading, typing, and profanity, I had a working setup.

This kept going for a couple of years. But recently, I wanted to expand what I do online, and also to move as much data as possible out of US-based companies. I'd long ago switched to Protonmail for e-mail and Write.as for the occasional blogging, so it was the next logical step.

After more searching, I decided on 1984 Hosting, based in Iceland.  They're super privacy-focused, use all renewable energy, and have a good sense of humor. I hadn't previously bothered with a domain name, but since I wanted more options (and to stop having stuff yell at me about an "invalid" certificate.³ I found Njalla, a domain registrar based in the Caribbean and co-founded by one of the old Pirate Bay people. It has a good reputation, and while I don't plan on hosting a pirate site, it's nice to know that they'll have my back more than most would.

Now it was time to actually set up the server. In addition to Nextcloud, I decided I wanted to run BookStack, a sort of document/own-book setup (similar to ReadtheDocs). It doesn't install easily, though, and so it was that I had my first encounter with Docker.

The idea behind Docker is a good one. Each docker (lower-case d) is basically a virtual computer within your computer, and can only communicate outside itself to the degree you let it. It theoretically allows for really fast setup and deployment, and is safer since an attacker can only break the app they hack, not use that to get into the rest of the server.

In practice, it ended up being beyond me. I don't learn well from documentation; I need to see it done in practice and then work backwards. Rather than giving up, though, I decided to start looking on various fora for chat rooms where I could get some real-time help. I eventually came across a reddit user who advertised a container-focused Discord server, and he himself had offered to help a redditor who was having trouble. I decided what the hell, sent him a message, and figured we'd see.

I continued to beat my head against the wall, but made little progress. Eventually, the aforementioned Guy messaged me, and proceeded to spend *hours* helping me get set up, complete with an SSL proxy that will be usable by all my containers. I'm starting to get a feel for how Docker works, and I certainly understand the appeal more now than I did before!

I don't yet have Nextcloud on there, but my savior said we can go through that the next time our schedules align (we're in nearly opposite time zones). I was very surprised at the amount of time he was willing to put in, which is saying something, but he said it was fun to problem-solve in this way. And I certainly get it, as I'd feel the same way if it were something I was much more competent with.

So, when another patron asked if we have a home page, I guess I do now.

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¹ This is a program that ostensibly creates an encrypted file container within an unsecure file service like Google Drive, Dropbox, or whatever. When I tried to use it, it did everything but the "encrypted" part. But it's a great idea, and I don't think my experience is typical.

² Nextcloud is a fork of Owncloud, which I don't know much about. But Nextcloud is entirely open-source and maintained regularly, and was perfect for what I needed.

³ I had to self-sign the SSL certificate on my Nextcloud server, since I didn't have a domain and no third-party authority is okay with that. It wasn't the best security practice, but fine for my purposes, even if it did get annoying.