This blog runs on a server in my basement. The data lives on drives I can physically touch. The firewall rules are ones I wrote. Nobody is collecting metrics on you reading this. There’s no “privacy policy” because there’s nothing to have a policy about - I don’t capture your data in the first place.

This isn’t an accident. It’s a choice.

Why Another Self-Hosting Blog#

The internet doesn’t need another tutorial on deploying Nextcloud or configuring pfSense. Those exist. They’re good. Use them.

What’s missing is the why behind it all, told from an unusual angle.

I’ve spent years as an enterprise architect. I’ve been in the rooms where executives decide to “migrate everything to the cloud.” I’ve watched organizations trade independence for convenience, calling it modernization. I’ve seen companies architect themselves into gilded cages, then wonder why they can’t leave.

And through it all, I’ve run my own infrastructure. Not as a hobby. As an act of resistance against a future where all computing happens in someone else’s data center, on someone else’s terms, under someone else’s surveillance.

The Convergence#

Something interesting happens when you understand both worlds:

You see how the same patterns that trap enterprises - vendor lock-in, surveillance capitalism, centralized control - are the patterns being sold to individuals as “convenience.”

You realize the arguments against self-hosting (“too complex,” “can’t compete with scale,” “security is too hard”) are the same arguments enterprises hear, and they’re mostly bullshit designed to create dependency.

You notice that the organizations most trapped by their vendors are the ones who stopped believing they could run things themselves.

The personal is organizational. The technical is political.

What This Blog Is About#

Building infrastructure you control. Proxmox clusters. OPNsense / pfSense firewalls. Self-hosted services. The practical reality of running production systems on hardware you own.

Digital sovereignty. Not as an abstract concept, but as a technical practice. What it actually takes to be independent of cloud providers, immune to terms-of-service changes, and free from surveillance.

Privacy by architecture. Not privacy policies or promises, but systems designed so that surveillance is technically difficult or impossible.

Learning from enterprise mistakes. I’ve watched organizations lose their autonomy through technical decisions. Those lessons apply to personal infrastructure too.

The cypherpunk tradition. We defend our privacy with cryptography, anonymous systems, and code. Not by asking permission, but by making surveillance expensive.

Who I Am#

By day, I architect enterprise systems. I know how to talk ROI and compliance frameworks. I understand TOGAF and Zachman and all the acronyms.

By night - and honestly, more importantly - I run a homelab that would make some small businesses jealous. Five-node Proxmox cluster. pfSense handling routing and VLANs. Proxmox Backup Server for backups. TrueNAS for storage and more backups. Everything from communication to document management to media streaming runs on infrastructure I control.

I hold these in tension: the pragmatism of enterprise reality and the idealism of digital sovereignty.

Most people see the homelab as a hobby. I see it as proof that the excuses are lies. We don’t need the cloud providers. We don’t need the surveillance. We don’t need to trade our privacy and autonomy for convenience.

We’ve been convinced we do. There’s a difference.

What You’ll Find Here#

I write about:

Infrastructure I actually run. Proxmox. pfSense. TrueNAS. Self-hosted alternatives to Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. What works, what doesn’t, and why.

Privacy and security practices. VPNs, Tor, encryption, compartmentalization. Not theory - implementation. The stuff that actually protects you.

Lessons from enterprise architecture. Because watching companies architect themselves into dependency teaches you what not to do with your own systems.

Critiques of centralization. The cloud isn’t neutral infrastructure. It’s a business model built on dependency and surveillance. Let’s talk about what it’s really costing us.

The politics of technology. Every technical decision is a choice about control. Who can read your data? Who can deny you service? Who benefits from the architecture?

What This Blog Is Not#

This isn’t:

  • Enterprise thought leadership
  • Vendor-neutral analysis of cloud services
  • A LinkedIn-optimized personal brand
  • Content designed to not offend anyone

This is opinions, shaped by watching the same patterns destroy organizational autonomy and personal privacy.

If you think self-hosting is impractical, the cloud is inevitable, or privacy is only for people with something to hide - this blog probably isn’t for you.

If you’re interested in reclaiming control over your digital infrastructure, welcome.

Why Now#

We’re living through a consolidation. Computing is being recentralized. The internet’s original promise - a network that couldn’t be controlled by any single entity - is being systematically destroyed by companies that benefit from centralization.

They tell us it’s inevitable. That scale and complexity make independence impossible. That only corporations can run secure, reliable systems.

They’re lying.

The tools to resist have never been better:

  • Hardware is cheap
  • Open source has won
  • Encryption is strong and available
  • Container technology makes deployment trivial
  • Knowledge is freely shared

The only thing stopping people from running their own infrastructure is the belief that they can’t.

That belief is maintained by companies that profit from your dependency.

The Manifesto Is Still Right#

In 1993, Eric Hughes wrote:

“Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place.”

He was right. Nothing has changed except the scale of the surveillance and the sophistication of the rationalization.

“Cypherpunks write code.”

Still true. But also: cypherpunks deploy infrastructure. We run mail servers. We configure firewalls. We host our own services. We build systems that work for us instead of on us.

This blog is part of that tradition.

What’s Coming#

Over the coming weeks:

  • Deep dives on my infrastructure. How I built this stack. What I learned. What I’d do differently.
  • Practical self-hosting guides. Not just installation instructions, but production considerations. Security, backups, monitoring, maintenance.
  • Privacy architecture. VPN configurations. Tor integration. Encrypted storage. Anonymous payment systems.
  • Enterprise war stories. What happens when organizations surrender control. Lessons applicable to personal infrastructure.
  • Philosophical foundations. Why this matters beyond the technical details. Why digital sovereignty is worth fighting for.

A Personal Note#

I could host this on Medium or Substack or Ghost. It would be easier. Better SEO. More discoverable.

But those platforms exist to capture audience and sell ads. They’re surveillance machines with a publishing interface.

This site runs on my infrastructure because the message and medium should align. If I’m writing about digital sovereignty, the words should travel through systems I control.

No analytics. No tracking. No third-party scripts. You, reading this, generated no data I can monetize.

That’s by design.

Let’s Build#

The best way to predict the future is to build it. The best way to resist centralization is to run your own infrastructure. The best way to defend privacy is to architect systems where surveillance is technically difficult.

This blog documents that process. My infrastructure. My choices. My mistakes. Shared freely because cypherpunks don’t just write code - we share knowledge.

If you’re running your own infrastructure or thinking about it, welcome. If you think the cloud’s inevitability is bullshit, you’re in the right place. If you believe digital sovereignty matters, let’s talk.

Everything I write here is available to copy, modify, and improve. The infrastructure stack I describe is yours to replicate. The knowledge is freely given.

Because this isn’t about me building my systems. It’s about all of us building ours.