Platform engineering, privacy, open source Zola 2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00 https://me.jolek78.dev/atom.xml 2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-30T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-30/

<p>📌 Late Thursday in Gourock. Heating still off for the season, the desk lamp on the warm setting, Blut Aus Nord's <em>777 - Sect(s)</em> in the headphones because the album's drone matches the mood of reading a kernel changelog at midnight. The kind of evening I was going to spend reading a novel and instead spent reading <code>apt-cache policy linux-image-amd64</code>.</p>

2026-04-26T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-26T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-26/

<p>📌 More than one night in Gourock, the heating off, the UM690L breathing hard. Xandria's <em>The Wonders Still Awaiting</em> in the headphones throughout - <em>Reborn</em> on loop while qwen3.6 spent four hundred seconds explaining itself to me one bash script at a time.</p>

2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-20T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-20/

<p>📌 Two nights, no sleep, and a novel finished. David Townsend in the headphones throughout.</p>

2026-04-12T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-12T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-12/

<p>📌 "The best time to degoogle was more than ten years ago. The second best time is before they make it impossible." - nobody famous, but somebody right -</p>

2026-04-11T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-11T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-11/

<p>📌 Soen in the headphones. NextDNS finally off the shelf.</p>

2026-04-05T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-05T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-05/

<p>📌 Spent the night writing about the homelab paradox. It will be published — sometime — on an external outlet. Listening Ghost, mostly. The playlist tracked the mood.</p>

2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-02/

<p>📌 Migrated this site from MkDocs Material to Zola tonight. The trigger was simple: MkDocs feels like a project running on inertia. Faun playing in the headphones throughout.</p>

2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00 2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/04/2026-04-01/

<p>📌 pfSense. Installed months ago. Never touched. Tonight that changed.</p>

2026-03-30T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-30T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-30/

<p>📌 Sent the letter to the solicitor this evening. Green Lung in the headphones throughout.</p>

2026-03-29T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-29T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-29/

<p>📌 Spent the night building centralised authentication for the homelab. Blind Guardian in the headphones. The goal: one LDAP source of truth for every host, no more per-machine root access.</p>

2026-03-22T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-22T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-22/

<p>📌 Updated wg-easy tonight. Twenty-two months of accumulated bit rot, compressed into a thirty-minute session. Kreator in the headphones throughout.</p>

2026-03-21T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-21T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-21/

<p>📌 Built a network monitoring setup tonight. Two LXC containers on Proxmox, ntopng for traffic analysis, ntfy for push notifications. Sakis Tolis in the headphones throughout.</p>

2026-03-19T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-19T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-19/

<p>📌 The site has two new pages now - Music and Books. Not because anyone asked, but because a personal site without those feels incomplete. They say more about a person than any CV ever could.</p> <p>Speaking of which - the CV is coming. Soon. Probably after the next sleepless night. Or maybe not...</p>

2026-03-16T00:00:00+00:00 2026-03-16T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/notes/2026/03/2026-03-16/ <p>📌 It's alive. It's alive! - Victor Frankenstein -</p> 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/about/ <h2 id="pen-fountain-who-i-am">🖋️ Who I am</h2> <p>Linux Platform Engineer and Privacy Advocate with roots in science communication. I spent fifteen years as a science journalist and radio/podcast producer before moving permanently into infrastructure. That background still shapes how I document things, explain systems, and think about complexity. I live in Gourock, on the Firth of Clyde in Scotland, since 2023.</p> <hr /> <h2 id="pen-fountain-what-i-do">🖋️ What I do</h2> <p>Managing hybrid infrastructure that spans legacy systems and modern stacks alike.</p> <p>My focus areas:</p> <ul> <li>Linux/Unix systems administration (Rocky Linux, RHEL, Ubuntu, Solaris)</li> <li>Virtualisation and containerisation (Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV, LXC, Docker)</li> <li>Object storage and distributed systems (OpenStack Swift)</li> <li>Identity and access management (OpenLDAP, LDAP netgroups)</li> <li>Web infrastructure (Apache, ModSecurity, reverse proxies, SSL management)</li> <li>Infrastructure automation and configuration management (SaltStack, Bash, Python)</li> <li>Legacy system operations (Solaris 9, Ingres, JBoss application servers)</li> <li>Self-hosted infrastructure and privacy tooling</li> </ul> <hr /> <h2 id="pen-fountain-what-i-learn">🖋️ What I learn</h2> <ul> <li>Local LLM inference - running and fine-tuning models (Mixtral, Mistral) on self-hosted bare-metal server via Ollama || RAG systems - building retrieval pipelines to make local LLMs context-aware without sending data to the cloud</li> </ul> <p>The goal is always the same: useful tools that run on hardware you control.</p> <hr /> <h2 id="pen-fountain-homelab">🖋️ Homelab</h2> <p>A self-hosted stack built around privacy-first principles and the conviction that you should own your data and services.</p> <table><thead><tr><th>Layer</th><th>Services</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td><strong>Virtualisation</strong></td><td>Proxmox VE (LXC containers), Docker</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Media</strong></td><td>Jellyfin, Navidrome</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Storage &amp; Sync</strong></td><td>FreeBSD NAS (ZFS)</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Cloud</strong></td><td>Nextcloud</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Web &amp; Search</strong></td><td>Invidious, SearXNG</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Dev &amp; Ops</strong></td><td>Gitea, RustDesk</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Networking</strong></td><td>Nginx Proxy Manager, Wireguard, pfSense, Pi-hole</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Monitoring</strong></td><td>LibreNMS, Heimdall, NtopNG</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Privacy</strong></td><td>Tor middle relay, Monero full node</td></tr> </tbody></table> <hr /> <h2 id="pen-fountain-background">🖋️ Background</h2> <ul> <li>🇮🇹 Born in Italy, living in Scotland since 2013</li> <li>📻 15 years in science journalism and radio/podcast production</li> <li>📖 Published science fiction and open source history</li> <li>🧅 Tor middle relay operator</li> <li>🌱 SolarPunk addicted - decentralization over convenience, privacy by default</li> <li>🎵 Music obsessive - prog metal, folk metal, jazz</li> <li>🧩 Twisty puzzle collector (20+ puzzles, daily driver: MoYu 3x3x3)</li> <li>🧠 Neurodivergent - wired differently, works as intended</li> </ul> 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/books/ <p>Non-fiction almost exclusively. A bias toward understanding systems - technical, political, biological - and a deep distrust of anyone who wants to hide how they work.</p> <hr /> <h2 id="books-what-i-read">📚 What I read</h2> <table><thead><tr><th>Area</th><th>Authors &amp; Books</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td><strong>Surveillance &amp; Privacy</strong></td><td>Shoshana Zuboff · Glenn Greenwald · Edward Snowden · Kevin Mitnick · Andy Greenberg · Ronald Deibert · Andrei Soldatov · Richard Kerbaj</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Hacker Culture &amp; Open Source</strong></td><td>Pekka Himanen · Steven Levy · Glyn Moody · Paul Graham · Gabriella Coleman · Linus Torvalds</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Science &amp; Rationalism</strong></td><td>Carl Sagan · Richard Dawkins · Steven Pinker · Sabine Hossenfelder · Daniel Dennett · John Gribbin</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Politics, Power &amp; Anarchism</strong></td><td>Noam Chomsky · Naomi Klein · David Graeber · Hannah Arendt · Karl Popper · Ruth Kinna</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Technology &amp; Society</strong></td><td>Evgeny Morozov · Adam Greenfield · Benjamin Bratton · Cathy O'Neil · Amir Husain</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Psychology &amp; Cognition</strong></td><td>Daniel Kahneman · Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Julia Galef · David Robson</td></tr> </tbody></table> <hr /> <h2 id="books-essential-reads">📚 Essential reads</h2> <table><thead><tr><th>Book</th><th>Author</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td><em>The Age of Surveillance Capitalism</em></td><td>Shoshana Zuboff</td></tr> <tr><td><em>Permanent Record</em></td><td>Edward Snowden</td></tr> <tr><td><em>The Demon-Haunted World</em></td><td>Carl Sagan</td></tr> <tr><td><em>The Selfish Gene</em></td><td>Richard Dawkins</td></tr> <tr><td><em>Manufacturing Consent</em></td><td>Noam Chomsky &amp; Edward S. Herman</td></tr> <tr><td><em>The Hacker Ethic</em></td><td>Pekka Himanen</td></tr> <tr><td><em>No Place to Hide</em></td><td>Glenn Greenwald</td></tr> <tr><td><em>Weapons of Math Destruction</em></td><td>Cathy O'Neil</td></tr> <tr><td><em>Thinking, Fast and Slow</em></td><td>Daniel Kahneman</td></tr> <tr><td><em>The Cuckoo's Egg</em></td><td>Cliff Stoll</td></tr> </tbody></table> 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/keys/ <p>🔐 <code>jolek78[@]jolek78.dev</code> → <a href="https://me.jolek78.dev/public/gpg-jolek78.asc">gpg key</a></p> 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 2024-01-01T00:00:00+00:00 jolek78 狼 https://me.jolek78.dev/music/ <p>Heavy, layered, often dark. A preference for complexity over simplicity, atmosphere over aggression, and vocals that carry weight.</p> <hr /> <h2 id="guitar-what-i-listen-to">🎸 What I listen to</h2> <table><thead><tr><th>Genre</th><th>Artists</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td><strong>Symphonic / Gothic Metal</strong></td><td>Nightwish · Epica · Within Temptation · Tristania · After Forever · Delain · Stream of Passion · Visions of Atlantis · Ad Infinitum · Charlotte Wessels</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Progressive Metal</strong></td><td>Opeth · TesseracT · Haken · Leprous · Soen · Devin Townsend · Rivers of Nihil · Everon</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Power / Symphonic Metal</strong></td><td>Symphony X · Kamelot · Sonata Arctica · Ayreon · Avantasia · Star One · Sabaton</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Modern / Alternative Metal</strong></td><td>Sleep Token · Spiritbox · Jinjer · Ghost · Gojira · Trivium · Avenged Sevenfold</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Folk / Pagan Metal</strong></td><td>Eluveitie · Faun · Ensiferum · Heilung · Wintersun</td></tr> <tr><td><strong>Oddities</strong></td><td>Igorrr · Psychonaut · Messa</td></tr> </tbody></table> <hr /> <h2 id="guitar-essential-albums">🎸 Essential albums</h2> <table><thead><tr><th>Artist</th><th>Album</th></tr></thead><tbody> <tr><td>Opeth</td><td><em>Still Life</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Nightwish</td><td><em>Once</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Leprous</td><td><em>The Congregation</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Epica</td><td><em>The Quantum Enigma</em></td></tr> <tr><td>TesseracT</td><td><em>Sonder</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Haken</td><td><em>Affinity</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Ayreon</td><td><em>The Human Equation</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Symphony X</td><td><em>Paradise Lost</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Rivers of Nihil</td><td><em>Where Owls Know My Name</em></td></tr> <tr><td>Sleep Token</td><td><em>Take Me Back to Eden</em></td></tr> </tbody></table>