So, this is a fairly new section. The goal is to document my progress on certain projects and write more often. I’ll focus in IT related topic, but not exclusively. I don’t plan to follow a specific format or template, but instead write down what I’ve worked on in a loose way.

Coding with FastAPI

Coding has been a big challenge to me in the past. I’ve started multiple half-ass’ed attempts to learn coding, but never had the stomach to push through. Recently, I’ve got the recommendation to checkout FastAPI as I was looking for a ‘simple’ programming language for small webapps and APIs.

So, without a goal in mind I started the journey like two weeks ago and it has been a blast. I’ve decided to go with a simple webapp that provides a web frontend in form of an API and simple HTML website for information that are saved in an YAML file.

It is fairly easy to get overwhelmed as there is so much to do and learn and you don’t know where to start. Small steps and goals are the way.

How to setup the environment
How to start FastAPI
How to import a (YAML) file from the server
How to serve HTML resources
How to serve HTML content with variables
How to create templates with Jinja2
Hoe to run FastAPI in a container

For now, I am pretty happy with the progress.

This time, the main goal is to learn and understand what I am doing. I won’t add a new feature until I understand the status-quo functions.

That said, I am pretty happy with the current setup, but I have to slow down a little bit. Document more, and learn more about the current functions.

Automation of server onboarding and configuration

I’ve been using SaltStack for my servers for a couple of years now and decided to give Ansible a try. Ansible does not need an agent, seems to be more versatile and has less overhead over all from what I understand.

I began to create easy and common tasks that already exists within my SaltStack env with Ansible. Tasks like user creation, file transfers, file modifications, permission management, and so on.

With the current Ansible ‘playbooks’ I can onboard new servers way faster and the main components are in place. Some functions are still missing, like initial Wireguard setup and Zabbix agent installation. I’ll tackle this in the next couple of weeks.

XMPP & Matrix

I’ve decided to use XMPP and Matrix again. For now, I’ll go for managed solution as I want to give it another try before I learn all the caveats of self-hosting certain solutions.

The plan is to learn more about both protocols with time. Feel free to reach out - you can find the information at the bottom of this page.