My idea of semi-regularly posting on the “blog” seemed to have ended as quickly as it started. I had intended to post about the interesting Jfokus conference on Java development I in February attended in Stockholm. Maybe it’s not too late, and I suppose a quick review would run: it was cool and insightful, although I was disappointed in the lack of seating for food. (Can’t complain too much about free lunch, but it would taste better were we not sitting on a staircase.) Nevertheless, learning about AI, future Java features (including Project Valhalla!), Spring stuff, cybersecurity, etc., was neat.
I have some ideas on what I want to do on this website. Currently it is a static site and will probably remain so, since I find dynamic websites way too cumbersome to develop and maintain, although in time I might add some dynamic features. We’ll see. In general I am a bit prejudiced around frontend development, it just seems trivial and annoying compared to the interesting problems of backend development - servers, databases, security. So for me it is much more interesting to use a ready made theme for the frontend, tweak it a bit, and do the actual engineering on the backend. This does of course not necessarily preclude the usage of dynamic content.
I have ambitions to become a real backend king, and part of this about entering the domain of self-hosting. I have an old laptop that I used for school work, and a while ago transformed into a Proxmox server on which I hosted services such as Nextcloud. This website runs on DigitalOcean but the idea is to run it on said computer as well in the future. Unfortunately, I accidentally factory reset my router (due to some confusing phrasing in the router UI) and haven’t really bothered to get the server going yet. The dream is not dead though, and here is what I plan on hosting on it:
- This website
- Cloud storage, probably Nextcloud (it has a nice app)
- Media server, say Jellyfin
- PiHole or similar - I have a Raspberry Pi nano that I will use to run PiHole on my girlfriend’s network as well.
- “Cloud” services for photography, recipes, office space - one can do this on Nextcloud and it seems to work fine, though depending on the service I might want to instead use a dedicated app, depending on how satisfied I am with the Nextcloud integration.
This is of course partially as an interesting excercise in IT and cybersecurity as well. Fun!