About me

Self-hosting

In my early university years I followed a tutorial from the Linux Albacete association to set up a home server on Debian. I connected for the first time to an old machine — no monitor, no keyboard — over SSH to a minimal Debian install, adding only what I needed: web server, database, firewall, and little else. It was a wonderful experience.

Over the years I've tinkered with Raspberry Pi boards, VPS instances, and mini PCs. Self-hosting has always been a hobby; I've never been a systems administrator or anything like that.

These days I run a homelab with three nodes: kvothe, a low-power mini PC running Ubuntu with most services in Docker containers; elodin, a QNAP for data storage and backups; and kilvin, a desktop machine where I experiment with Podman and quadlets on Fedora, as well as local AI model inference.

Programming

My real passion has always been programming, and it's been fascinating to watch it evolve: from GW-BASIC with numbered lines, through serious efficient imperative languages like C, object-oriented programming with Java, the explosion of PHP frameworks that enabled scaffolding and full application development, and in parallel CMS platforms like Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal — I've always had a soft spot for Drupal's robustness and stability.

Python came later: to me, a kind of PHP that could do everything, from scripts to desktop apps with PyQt or web apps with Django. Then I tried Node, with similar possibilities but the advantage of using the same language on client and server — that always fascinated me. In both cases I ended up somewhat disappointed when I saw how untyped code ages poorly in large applications.

I soon discovered TypeScript, possibly my favorite frontend language, and frameworks like Angular and NestJS that let you share the same language and a similar structure across backend and frontend, reducing the friction of switching between the two.

After that came Flutter with Dart — possibly my second favorite frontend language — and I got into mobile development, with the added benefit of a single codebase for iOS and Android.

The latest big discovery was Go: brutal performance, compilation to a single binary, and the ability to build Docker images of just a few megabytes — an order of magnitude smaller than Python or TypeScript equivalents. Go remains, to date, my favorite language for backend and infrastructure. Rust is on the horizon and promises to take robustness, efficiency, and stability a step further, while keeping the single-binary and small Docker image advantages that Go already offers.

We live in a fascinating moment: with AI assistance you can start a project in a language you barely know, or even migrate code between languages with relative ease, and pick the technology that best fits each need. There's no excuse not to experiment — for example, with efficient backends in Go or Rust and frontends in Svelte or Solid.

Beyond code

I enjoy science fiction novels and personal productivity books. I'm also into board games — especially eurogames — though I don't always find as much time as I'd like for a long session.

I'm passionate about musical composition and harmony: chord types, scales, modes, and how they fit together. I play saxophone, guitar, and piano; I'm at different levels on each, but all three help me understand music from the inside.

This blog

Curiosity about understanding technology in depth — not just using it — is what drives me to write. On the blog I document in public what I learn while tinkering with self-hosting, programming, and digital sovereignty.

I'm a podcast fanatic, especially shows about programming, technology, and personal productivity. Whenever I can — cleaning the house, driving, or walking to work — I take the chance to listen to one.

If any of the above resonates with you, take a look at the blog or get in touch. I also keep lists of podcasts and books that have influenced me.