Good evening, all. It's been a week since I posted something on Substack. The past week has been interesting, to put it mildly. I've spent a lot of time setting up some technical infrastructure for my local network and home lab. As I work through all the challenges, I am trying to document them as thoroughly as possible.
The idea behind my home-lab setup is two-fold. First off, I am leaning hard toward moving as much of my data, storage, and personal-use applications from the internet and vendor-specific formats/protocols to systems I can run on my own network. I want to be able to use servers I control, whether they're servers I run from inside my house or external VPSs I have full administrator access to.
Second, I fully enjoy technology and would like to make more tech-related content, but with a different spin. I want my technology work to be more about helping folks secure and privatize their own tech stacks. With the introduction of AI, on top of all the other data mining that happens to us, I want to give people the confidence and tools to help them take some of that control back.
To accomplish this, I need to get my own house in order. Doing so takes a lot of effort. As I plan out what I am doing and then execute on said plan, I need to do everything multiple times. Every software install, server setup, and network change. Anything that I plan to share with others needs to be run through at least twice to make sure it works.
I have to run through all the steps once to understand the process fully. During the first run-through, I have to capture the download links, the commands to run, and the step order. Once I feel I have the process fully mapped out, I have to run through it again to capture appropriate screenshots. When I encounter errors, I have to stop, document the error and the solution, and show that the solution works.
Once I have everything working and the documentation complete, I have to walk through the documentation to make sure the tutorial is understandable, easy to follow, and produces the right results. It's an intense process. When I started down this road, I knew it would be time-consuming, but I didn't realize how much.
I still love it. I enjoy playing with self-hosted technology almost as much as I love writing. My attempt to merge the two is proving harder than I thought, but also much more fun! There is nothing like the feeling I get when I finally get a piece of the puzzle working. Having the documentation to present to others is the icing on the cake.
I will check in more often. This first week was a doozy, and I spent more time than I expected putting my plan together. I hope that it will get easier the more I accomplish.
I will publish all the articles related to this self-hosting journey under the "Sharpening the Mind" category. For those of you who would rather read my spiritual content, I will be posting that as well. I have not figured out the exact scheduling yet, just look for the articles titled "Manna From Heaven".
I really hope you will take this journey with me. Stay tuned for more updates, tutorials, and maybe a few surprises.
—Daniel