I’ve been on the sidelines about self-hosting push notifications for a while. Along the way I’ve been watching Gotify and ntfy. Given my requirement to have push notification sent to my iPhone, ntfy became my only known choice. The ease with which I was able to configure it was a bonus. Prior to this I had Uptime-Kuma pushing notifications to email, which worked fine via SMTP, but it got a bit too much. While still using Uptime-Kuma with ntfy for…
I stepped away from Cisco over three years ago, and even with what I’m about to share, I’m still proud to have represented them—I truly believe Cisco is the best place anyone could work. I know many of these points might already be fixed or made easier with AI. Cisco is a networking powerhouse for good reason—their flexible, advanced solutions tackle real challenges for all kinds of companies and governments around the globe. Sadly, their licensing got so layered and…
Normally, I’m an AI fan, but my experience with Claude AI today serves as proof that
Singularity is in a future far far away!
For several years, I utilized Pi-hole with Unbound for internal Domain Name System (DNS) and Network-wide Ad Blocking. However, as my DNS requirements evolved, I found myself outgrowing Pi-hole.
My first encounter with Vim was in 2000 when my then employer decided to port our main product (Bandwidth Control System) from Windows NT to Linux. Linux was a fresh experience for me, and it opened the door to diving into Emacs and Vim for text editing. I recall reading an Emacs vs. Vim article in a magazine or trade-rag a while back that really piqued my interest. Even now, Emacs still feels a bit out of reach for my…
Lab fun with Docker, Pi-Hole, Nginx Proxy Manager, and Cloudflare Tunnels. My goal was to create a DNS over HTTPS Docker-compose stack that is portable and easy to deploy. With DNS over HTTPS (DoH), DNS queries and responses are encrypted and sent via the HTTP or HTTP/2 protocols. DoH ensures that attackers cannot forge or alter DNS traffic. DoH uses port 443, which is the standard HTTPS traffic port, to wrap the DNS query in an HTTPS request. DNS queries…
A little over 50 years ago, a few weeks before emigrating to the United States, I unwittingly stole a book from the Southerton Primary School library in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe.) Over dinner one night, my parents announced that we were going to America in the next few months. Having just gotten used to living in Rhodesia after moving there from my native Portugal, America was not only a shock but a disappointment to this 12-year-old. Rhodesia was a British colony…
I get a lot of compliments on my homemade bread so I thought I’d share how I make it…
I recently read the excellent Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet. Beyond the great history lesson, I especially enjoyed the parts about how the core Internet protocols were created. Although cool then, the fundamental building blocks of the Internet are so much more impressive with today’s hindsight. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I’m re-reading Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide: Help for Network Administrators with renewed appreciation and awe. The better part of…
Digital cleaning can be fun…