---
title: "What I am doing now"
date: 20250520
draft: false
tags: ['now']
---

**Updated**: 10 June 2024

### Back to OpenBSD

I am re-building my modest cloud offering, away from the central server being an old Ubuntu 16.04 VPS on Digital Ocean, with supporting Debian VPs for reverse proxying, to using [OpenBSD](https://www.openbsd.org) and [FreeBSD](https://www.freebsd.org) as the key components. At this point, I really like [httpd](https://man.openbsd.org/httpd) in preference to [nginx](https://nginx.org/en/) whose much broader function-set and sprawling documentation puts me off.

### Writing Django applications again

I forget how awesome [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) is, and Python in general.
For getting a project done, with the minimal amount of fuss, with everything you need built-in, Django is great.
My insatiable curiosity has taken me to [Rails](https://rubyonrails.org/) and [Go](https://go.dev) in recent times; the former too magical and the latter too bare-bones (at least for web development).
Django is a great balance and I really love it.

I am developing a basic e-commerce site for my awesomely talented wife, [Joanna Lemon](https://joannalemon.com).

### Exploring self-built cloud infrastructure (May 2024)

I've used Linux for years but only now getting a feel for what I want to use it for to build my personal cloud infrastructure.
I have a very modest home server running mostly [Debian](https://www.debian.org/) containers using [LXD](https://documentation.ubuntu.com/lxd/en/latest/).
These provide various services to me and my family, such as [Adguard](https://adguard.com/en/welcome.html), [Radicale](https://radicale.org/v3.html), [Minecraft](https://www.minecraft.net/en-us), [Mumble](https://www.mumble.info/), [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/), [syncthing](https://syncthing.net/) and [taskd](https://taskwarrior.org/docs/taskserver/why/) amongst a few other things.

I have recently had to learn [OpenShift](https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/cloud-computing/openshift) and I really dislike it.
Obviously, for big enterprise applications I appreciate the benefits but for me - for now - [Docker](https://www.docker.com/) containers feel like an additional layer of complexity that you still have to get through before the benefits are realised.
Certainly for doing projects at may scale.

I want to do more hands-on work with PostgreSQL as part of this.

I am also continually interested in the BSDs - [OpenBSD](https://www.openbsd.org/) and [FreeBSD](https://www.freebsd.org/) in particular - and want to make use of them where I can.

### VMWare Workstation Pro (May 2024)

A lot of people in the homelab/hacker space were no doubt excited to find out recently that VMWare Workstation Pro became free of charge.
It's not free/open source of course but in terms of performance, it is a lot better than [VirtualBox](https://www.virtualbox.org/) which I never really took to anyway, and [KVM](https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page).
Just starting to set up a playground for my networking aspirations using FreeBSD and [Devuan](https://www.devuan.org/).

### Moved back to Spotify (May 2024)

I'm generally wary of any kind of dependence on a cloud service but we tried [Amazon Prime Music Unlimited](https://www.amazon.co.uk/music/unlimited) recently when Spotify put their prices up.
A bit like with Django, sometimes you need to move away to realise how awesome the thing is you just left: Spotify's UI, music discovery, desktop and TUI application options and focus on music rather than trying to ram podcasts down your neck - is what was important.

--- 

[This page is created under the wise instruction of [Derek Sivers](https://nownownow.com/about)....]