Austin's Place

Starting something new

A new style perhaps?, November 4th, 2023

I am updating my blog to let any avid readers to let you know that I will try to post more about either some cool or scary tech news, tech things I find interesting, or anything else tech related. I can start with my first post by saying I started to use Open Media Vault on a NAS that I built using old computer parts from around our office that would just be sent to a technology recycling center. With that, I now have a 4TB ZFS pool with a single 8TB archive drive. I know, I know, this is bad tech practice to have one drive, however, I am looking to purchase 4 10TB drives to have a really nice ZFS pool with parity. So, if I would lose the correct 2 drives I would be able to get new drives in my NAS. I am looking for also starting to possibly run NextCloud as a FOSS version of OneDrive or Google Drive. Granted I would need to open some ports on the router or make a VPN into the network, I can always use a strong password and encryption to make sure that myself and my family would be able to access it. For now, that is it, but stay tuned as I hope to update this blog on a more regular basis.

I swear that I did not forget about you!

Finally, an update to this, September 12th, 2023

Hello World! I am finally updating my website after so long of nothing. I was busy with school, work, and living life, as one should be. However, it was always in my mind to update this. I have been moving to more FOSS and away from big tech and other medias. For starters, I got rid of Snapchat, Facebook, and Reddit. I have in turned started using Mastodon, Lemmy, and Instagram. I know, I know. Instagram, gross right? Well, I still need it in order to stay active in the Japan Association club. But, I would ideally get rid of it once done with school. However, Lemmy and Mastodon will be the main socials. The reason is since they are running on a fedaverse, meaning they are not running on a centralized service. So, no more big tech watching what I like or bookmark. Another update is I am using OPENSUSE. So far I am enjoying using it as a primary OS on an old laptop I have acquired. With this, I am able to use an OS that Microsoft cannot see what I am doing on, but work still requires me to use Windows 10. Another thing, I changed a lot of software from Spotify to Foobar2000 or from Google Photots to Ente. I am really enjoying getting into more FOSS and learning more about how much big tech actually monitors you. I will make another post about what FOSS I would recommend or another tab on the site. Keep watch to see what I do. That's it for now, see when I have the will to update this again.