I’m Keith, an avid tech junkie with an insatiable curiosity for all things IT. I spend countless hours learning, studying, and tinkering with my home network. My passion for technology spans all its facets, which is why I started this blog.
I wanted to experience firsthand what it takes to build my own (admittedly basic) website. I believe there are two primary ways to learn: theoretical—through books and class room or distant learning—and practical—by building, breaking, and troubleshooting things.
As an example, I experimented with both Jekyll and Hugo as my first blogging platforms. However, knowing next to nothing about what went into setting them up and becoming ever more frustrated, I eventually settled on this—a humble little WordPress site running in Podman on a tiny Oracle virtual machine with just 1 vCPU and 1GB of RAM.
Building this site required some learning, but the exciting part was applying that knowledge in practice. I figured out how to buy my own domain, alienlabs.win (the story behind the name is for another post). I discovered Podman—an alternative to Docker I hadn’t encountered before. I navigated Oracle Cloud Compute, managed instances, and adapted to a new CLI—an interesting challenge since I’ve been accustomed to Ubuntu my whole life.
This blog is a reflection of my journey, and I’m excited to share my experiences as I continue exploring the ever-evolving world of technology. I also hope to share what I’ve learned over the past seven years in IT—breaking down concepts like networking and security, showcasing new configurations in my lab, and sharing what I’ve been working on. My goal is to educate, inspire, and maybe even spark new ideas for fellow tech enthusiasts like you.