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Learning about how technology is being utilized to take advantage of our data and use it to sell products
specifically to take advantage of others, I couldn't live with the idea of corporations stealing my data.
My journey to reducing my technology footprint, and protecting my data started in highschool. I bought my first domain, Starprograms.dev, and started using github pages to host my notepad++ made websites.
These pages were a way for me to push myself to start understanding DNS records and building my own websites.
Building off that engagement, a year after, Google started raising the price on their business membership from 5$ to 6$, and started implementing AI into their platform. With that I switched to Proton to host my Mail and use LibreOffice for my documents.
In 2022 I was browsing a Computer Surplus storefront and found a Dell Optiplex core i7 for sale for $125. I had bought this computer with the dreams to use it as a test bench to store malware. This turned out to not work out, instead sitting dust until 2024, when I brought it out to use as an Apache Server to self host this website.
In 2024 I configured and installed a self hosted VPN service (tailscale) to be able to play minecraft from my colleges library. This in turn became an important aspect to networking different services together beyond just playing minecraft. One such service is Cloud Flare Tunnels, with this I can access TCP ports on my server over the HTTP protocol, with the protections of HTTPS.
In 2025 While browsing the internet, I had come across an application to self host my passwords in a safe way, Vault Warden.
I was originally using the firefox password manager, which although is safe for many users, I never felt safe with it active. With the mozilla foundation introducing AI into Firefox I felt it safer to move all my data off of firefox and into Vault Warden. Vaultwarden sometimes crashes on my server so I set up a crontab that just restarts the vault warden daemon every morning at 7.
6 months later, I found an application named Jellyfin to store my 2 tb of movies, music, and TV shows. And bobs your uncle.
Throughout this endeavor key points to remember from this would be,
Reducing and protecting your digital footprint takes time, patience, and study. It won't be a single one and done project.
Cloudflares reverse proxies and tunnels are the greatest software created to get around networks that are not controlled by yourself
everything costs money, especially when it comes to protecting your data.
Projects
little-C Interpreter
Built in C++
Notable Features
automatic scoping
working parsing and lexing
utilizes multiple data types
BrainFuck Interpreter
Built in C
Notable Features
Working IO
Used in a capture the flag challenge
Recursive
Cheating Go-Fish Bot
Built in Python
Notable Features
Utilizes a string quirk of the python Interpreter to pull data from a class object without knowing the variables before hand.
