Some history and stuff I play with
I both work in and play with IT technology. Computers as a hobby goes back with me all the way to the late 1980s and work in IT goes back to the early 1990s. Yes, I am indeed that bearded, grey haired, grumpy old man in the IT department who forgets that not everybody has 30+ years of practical experience making computers do cool stuff.
IT as a hobby?
Well yes, I was a founding member of the Computer Club at my high school, we got four Commodore 64 machines to play with. Not long after that started I somehow convinced my parents to get me a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128. I spent many, many, happy hours on that machine, writing software in BASIC and later in Assembly Language.
Through many iterations via stuff like an 8088 based PC/XT clone, a 286, and eventually all the way up to where I now have a dual-processor server machine sitting in my house as part of my home lab, I’ve pretty much always had some form of computer.
IT work
Way back in the very early 1990s, as part of my military national service, I started actually working on computers, back then in Lotus 1-2-3. In 1993 I got my first actual computer job, as a Clipper programmer on DOS machines. When my employer started looking at bigger clients, running Unix systems, we started doing the same application using Flagship. That’s where I developed my love for Unix and Linux.
Well, that was a long time ago, which is why I’m now that grey haired grumpy old man in the IT department, but that’s not what we’re here for.
What I’ve played with recently
SSO / Identity Providers
I think it’s known that I use Cloudflare for my web site stuff, including locking some pages behind ZeroTrust Access. For the Access stuff, I’m using my Google account to authenticate to pages I lock down.
I also have a self-hosted Nextcloud instance now, so I had this thought… Why depend on just Google for my Identity Provider needs on ZeroTrust Access? It turns out there is an OpenID Connect Identity Provider app for Nextcloud and it’s pretty easy to set up. Now I have the option to use either my Google account or my Nextcloud account to log in to pages I have locked down behind ZeroTrust Access.
Maybe I should be looking closely at using my Nextcloud as Identity Provider for other online services too, but I guess I’ll first have to move my instance to something other than my home lab. After all, my home lab availability is subject to the vagaries of Load Shedding and other factors involved in running computers in a suburban home in South Africa.
Remote access
I find I’m running quite a bit of stuff in my home lab, and on occasion I need to get at that stuff when I’m out and about. This is complicated a little by the fact that I’m on a dynamic IPv4 address here and ISPs in South Africa are mostly blissfully unaware of the existence of IPv6.
At the moment, my primary route in to my home LAN is by way of a little ZeroTier network.
But… I like playing with IT stuff, and I like doing my own stuff. So I’ve set up dynamic DNS updates of a FQDN in my domain (on Cloudflare DNS) using ddclient. I then created a Wireguard configuration on my router. Now I have the option of getting in to my home LAN using Wireguard instead of ZeroTier.
GIT
My use of git is split between my work stuff, which goes to properly secured and strongly authenticated enterprise grade repositories, and my own fun stuff.
My own stuff is very simple, it’s basically just backups and sync (laptop/phone/tablet) of my Obsidian Notes vault and some very basic little scripting stuff I do from time to time.
My git server is currently a Gitea server sitting on my home lab. I’m thinking of changing that to a Forgejo server, just to see what it’s like and what new fun stuff can be done with it. A recent toot by Jan Wildeboer is what got me thinking that my very simple use case would benefit from Forgejo.
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