During the day I write Oracle PL/SQL code and admin several test/development Solaris 10/11 servers and Oracle 12c/19c development databases. These are some of the things I am currently doing during my free time.

  • ownCloud
    I have setup my own cloud service using ownCloud that syncs my files, photos, calendar, and contacts across my desktop, iPad and iPhone. It is like a cross between iCloud/Dropbox/Google Drive.
  • SearXNG
    SearXNG is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, SearXNG can be used over Tor for online anonymity. I setup search.ronmcgough.com on a Linode server and have it as my default search engine with great results.
  • RaspberryPi
    Configured one of my RaspberryPi 3s to boot from the SD card and then load and run the Raspberry Pi OS from a USB thumb drive. This seems to be much more stable since the USB drive is not as finicky about power outages as the SD card.
  • Unbound DNS
    Unbound is a validating, recursive, caching DNS resolver. It is designed to be fast and lean and incorporates modern features based on open standards. I have started playing around with Unbound.
  • AllStar Node
    Recently built an AllStar node (KE4JRM) from a Baofeng 888s, a RaspberryPi 4, and a ARA-1 USB sound card.
  • Pi-hole
    I am always monitoring/adjusting my Pi-hole installation. Pi-hole is a Linux network-level application which acts as a DNS sinkhole. This provides network wide advertisement & tracker blocking for my home network.
  • VLANs
    Re-wrote all the firewall rules for my Ubiquiti router to make the inter-VLAN routing work like I wanted. My home network consists of a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X and an AP AC Lite access point. The AP broadcasts 3 SSIDs with each being on a separate VLAN, (1) guests (2) IoT devices and (3) LAN traffic. A Netgear managed switch is also used since I already had it.
  • Cloud computing
    Always playing with cloud computing because it is something I’m really interested in. It is very common for me to have some project I am working on that needs a server spun up for a few days, weeks, or months. This website is running on a Vultr Ubuntu 20.04 instance. I have used Google Compute Engine, AWS EC2, Linode, and Digital Ocean as well.
  • Docker
    Experimenting with how to use Docker containers to package software into standardized units for development, shipment and deployment. My SearXNG site mentioned above is running in 3 docker containers.
  • WireGuard
    I setup a WireGuard VPN server that replaced my OpenVPN server. Wireguard seems very nice so I thought I would try it out for myself. WireGuard is running on a Raspberry Pi at my home.
  • Self hosting BitWarden
    Bitwarden is the open source password manager that I use daily. I am considering self-hosting a Bitwarden server at my house instead of relying on BitWarden.