Hello Small Web!

I am not sure why I have recently been drawn into this extreme computing

minimalism. Maybe it is because I am tired of the constant tracking on the web.

Maybe because I have been in this industry for too long and I have seen too many

stupid things. Maybe because it reminds me of my early days on the Internet.

Maybe because it is still underground.

Definitely because of its simplicity.

I have seen and worked on many complex systems and made extensive use of Apple,

Google and Amazon. I have used too many cloud services.

And during this pandemic, I took some time to think about all of that. The

amount of information sent to these monstruous, over provisionned data centers,

running overly complex applications.

All of that to turn a light on or setting the temperature.

I realized how ridiculous it was (I also had a fight with an e-paper tablet for

which I could not get something basic to work because of some dumb clouds

interactions).

Don't get me wrong. I love geeking around, remotely turning lights on and

shutting down the blinds. I love streaming my movies, listening to music, and

getting my pictures shared accross my devices.

But I could do all of that locally, privately and securely.

Then for the next year or so, that's what I did. Setting up everything from

scratch, using exclusively free software. On the road, I met some

interesting new technologies, including Gemini.

So here I am.

In the next entries, I will probably describe the infrastructure, then get into

more details of certain parts of it. To keep notes for myself and to help others

who might be willing to go down that road.