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: 16-Apr-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
- A basic 1080p Dell monitor
- 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
Twitter - I try to keep this tech related + some personal stuffNov 2022 Update: Removing my Twitter presence and working to follow the folks I want on other platforms- 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
- Sound input & output device chooser
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 ofcat
vim
- OSU OSL convinced me to give it a try, and although I’m pretty terrible, it does what I need it tonvm
- NodeJS version manager. Very helpful given how quickly the JS world seems to movegit-lfs
- Large file support for git. Used to manage images on this website and other larger filesesbuild
- 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
- Cloudflare as CDN/inline protection
- Golang back-end
- Currently don’t have any database preference
- I recently discovered Redis, oh boy, how wonderful
esbuild
as front-end bundling tool- Svelte for front-end development