My Personal Infrastructure

Below is a list of the infrastructure (both digital and physical) I use on a regular basis.

As a result of my current infrastructure setup, a critical failure on part of Cloudflare, Backblaze, Azure or Google would cripple my online presence. This is something I am actively working to defend against by slowly moving to infrastructure that I have direct control over. Cloud services are incredibly convenient which has slowed that transition.

List Last Updated: 11-September-2023

Hardware:

• Dell XPS 7590 (Intel i7-9750H, 16GB RAM, 4k OLED display) running Pop!_OS 21.10
• Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra running Android 13
• Logitech M570 Mouse
• Yamaha P125 Piano Keyboard
• Yubikey 5C NFC (for two-factor authentication)
• Garmin Forerunner Smart Watch
• Various external hard drives

Cloud Services:

• Backblaze - Used for backup and long term archival storage
• Azure - Hosts most infrastructure for Ethan M. Hampton Technology Consulting
• Cloudflare - Provides DDoS protection and other helpful services
• Google - Email, other random document storage, calendar, some domain registration, etc.

Other online tools/services:

• Bitwarden - The best password manager. I use the premium version
• TickTick - A fantastic task manger and todo list service. I use the premium version
• GitHub - Git repository management for most all my projects
• NPR - National Public Radio is a awesome neutral source for news
• New York Times - College provides free subscription, great for general news and reading
• HackerNews - Good for tech related news and info
• Google News - Stay up to date on general news
• Instagram - Never post, always view (and like)
• Snapchat - This used to be (and maybe still is) the de facto messaging app for college students
• WhatsApp - Primary messaging app while studying abroad, used to keep in touch with folks from that part of my life
• Discord - Group projects, OSU CS server and a few relating to personal interests
• Wikipedia - I monitor several low traffic pages I care about, great for general research
• Netflix - I watch more than I should, but less than I could
• Nebula - Support digital creators instead of using YouTube
• YouTube - I try to keep this to educational content, I like creators who focus on quality over quantity
• Spotify - Used to swear I’d never use it, but I started and never looked back
• Signal - Secure and private messages
• Phoronix - Linux news and updates

Local applications and tools:

• Firefox - Exactly what I need, without the sketchiness of browser lock-in that is Chrome
• Jetbrains IDE suite - Free for students and provides significant assistance when I want it
• VS Code - For JavaScript, Golang and other related development
• Ghostwriter - A simple markdown editor, which I use quite frequently (I’m using it to write this)
• Obsidian - A more featured markdown editor, I manage a lot of private notes and writing in my Obsidian vault
• Terminator - Easy to configure and use terminal emulator
• Audacity - Simple audio projects
• Blender - Very flexible 3D rendering, 2D rendering, video editing, special effects application
• GIMP - Image editing
• Inkscape - Vector image editing
• SimpleScreenRecorder - Easy to use screen recorder software
• Kdenlive - Video editing
• DigiKam - Photo library management
• Thunderbird - Local email browser
• TexStudio - My preferred LaTeX editor
• Wireshark - Packet capturing and other useful analysis
• Gnome Tweaks - Better settings for the GNOME desktop environment

Browser Extensions:

• Bitwarden
• Facebook Container
• Feedbro
• HTTPS Everywhere
• “New Tab - Moment”
• Reddit Enhancement Suite
• uBlock Origin
• Firefox Translation

GNOME Shell Extensions:

• corecoding/Vitals
• Removable Drive Menu

CLI Programs/Tools:

• emh - My custom command line tool that deals with what I do every day. For example, configure settings on computer startup, update apt packages, connect NFS mount to school system, SSH into various external systems, create custom aliases for commands I never remember, run backups to different locations, easily create consistent journal entries, etc.
• Hugo - A static site generator, what this website runs on
• bat - a better version of cat
• vim - OSU OSL convinced me to give it a try, and although I’m pretty terrible, it does what I need it to
• nvm - NodeJS version manager. Very helpful given how quickly the JS world seems to move
• git-lfs - Large file support for git. Used to manage images on this website and other larger files
• esbuild - The best JS/TS bundling tool, dare I say ever
• Plenty of others I am forgetting

Preferred Tech Stack

I’m hesitant to list this, as it is likely to change frequently but I’ll give it a shot

• Hosted on a virtual machine (could be containerized), served via Nginx
• Golang back-end
• Currently don’t have any database preference
• Redis for caching
• esbuild as front-end bundling tool
• Svelte for front-end development