I am finally moving to actually filling out the content of this website following the instructions found on this YouTube video, by Tyler Moore, which is allowing me to quickly get something up. I’ll round out my knowledge as time goes on so hopefully this site will improve over time. My goal for this site wasn’t all that clear when I first started building it. Originally this domain and server were primarily focused on getting my own GitLab instance where I can store my own projects and a have full control over the administration. One big perk that I was really set on was to have private repos and the ability configure the hosting as I pleased. It was also about showcasing some of my own open source projects, with the added swag factor of having it being hosted on my own server. The projects are being mirrored on GitHub for visibility’s sake. After spinning up the GitLab instance I found a few perks that I wasn’t even aware of, the built in wiki pages and the Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment tools were the two that stood out most. I have a few projects that require a little more explanation and coaching to use so the wikis are a great way to store that information. I have also made a few libraries in order to interface with certain sensors and process scientific equipment data which I would like to publish on PyPi, to share my hard work with others and hopefully make their workload easier.
While getting that in order I got it in my head to make a WordPress site as well to learn about the most common platform used to make webpages, but at the time I wasn’t of thinking of making it anything more than a glorified About Me and resume page. As I was setting up this server and site I expanded my original vision to using it as a method to flesh out my projects and the motivations behind them. I would be able to add a more narrative based approach to my work and hopefully the write-ups would also allow me to analyze my projects in a different way to gather insights. It may also be used to drum up some excitement about my projects, if anyone stumbles across this site that is. Also since finishing my PhD I have not been writing anything and I would like to practice this skill, though blogs and project write-ups don’t have the same tone and style of academic writing. Hopefully this practice will make me enjoy writing more as it was the activity I disliked most during my studies and my weakest skill. The incredible patience and skill of my advisor was the only thing that made any of my manuscripts readable and coherent. As a side note if anyone wants to give me some constructive criticism about my writing I welcome it in the comments (in the rare chance anyone does show up).
Through the information I am consuming for the creation of this site I am learning about various technologies that are used in some of our internet infrastructure. It’s been a blast learning how to properly configure a SSH server and secure it against basic bot hacking attempts (I am that kind of nerd and I know I’m no pro so probably anything a little more directed than basic bot scraping will probably break my setup), configuring Nginx to host both a GitLab instance on a subdomain while having a WordPress site on the main page (which took me way too long to figure out that I only needed four lines in a config file), learning about Ansible and what it can do to automate setup so that if something were to ever nuke my server or workstation I would be able to restore them to working order, and of course learning how to mangle together a WordPress site. After I finish the page setup I will work on getting back into electronics projects involving sensors and microcontrollers and maybe even homebrewing an IoT setup.
Originally published 21-Feb-2021
Republished 30-Oct-2025 after I nuked my server trying to update Ubuntu
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