Matt Gedye

Rediscovering Computers

About eighteen months ago I followed this guide to create my own remote server. This was after a many, many year absence from working with computers other than absolute necessities (Word, Powerpoint, Excel and web browsing) for work. Initially, I was attracted to the idea of having more independence and control over things that I’d long assumed needed to be out-sourced to large corporations (email, cloud storage, calendar, website etc.). I don’t consider myself tech-savvy, and needing to engage with my remote server, which runs OpenBSD, necessitated the development of some basic knowledge of working in the terminal. What has followed, particularly the last six months, has been among the most enjoyable, interesting and satisfying things I’ve immersed myself in in a very long time. The process has looked something like this:

  1. Created remote OpenBSD server using Derek Sivers’ tutorial on my personal home computer (an old MacBook).
  2. Learnt a bit of HTML and enjoyed briefly hosting my own website and email. I loved the simplicity, but was largely intimidated by OpenBSD and didn’t try anything else or do anything with my server for many, many months.
  3. Eventually decided to try again. So got a ‘new’ laptop. A refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T480. It cost about $200 and was running Windows.
  4. Deleted my old remote server and started fresh on the ThinkPad.
  5. Back up everything from my old MacBook and an external HDD to OneDrive.
  6. Wiped the MacBook and installed Ubuntu. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it, but knew I wanted to learn more about working in the terminal and this seemed like a good start.
  7. Realised I should have installed Ubuntu on the ThinkPad as this is the computer I SSH into my remote server with.
  8. Proceeded to wipe Windows and install Ubuntu on the ThinkPad (because it was still ‘new’ there was nothing to back up yet).
  9. Purchased How Linux Works and watched a series of helpful YouTube videos on basic Linux / Unix commands.
  10. Started to feel much more comfortable using the terminal on both the ThinkPad running Ubuntu and my remote server running OpenBSD, so started to make and organise file directories on the ThinkPad.
  11. Began downloading, renaming and meticulously organising all documents from OneDrive in these directories on the ThinkPad.
  12. Purchased a 4TB external HDD and began downloading, renaming and meticulously organising all media files from OneDrive (and also iCloud) on the external HDD in similarly organised file directories (my remote server’s storage is capped at 40GB (gets expensive otherwise) - plenty for my documents, but not enough for media).
  13. Started to utilise the magic of rsync to mirror and back up all documents in my new, much more organised file directories on the ThinkPad to my remote server.
  14. Got too ambitious and tried to install OpenBSD on the MacBook (wiping Mac OS in the process) to use it as a local private server. But I did something wrong and now the computer wont boot properly.
  15. Discovered BearBlog for my website. Loved it from the get-go and moved many previous blog posts over.
  16. Transitioned from pen and paper to plain text files for all of my writing, other documents, and most of my spreadsheets for three reasons:
  1. More portable.
  2. Easier to back up to remote server.
  3. The power of using commands to interact with files directly in the terminal.
  1. Continuing to archive decades worth of files (steps 11 and 12 above) that were hopelessly organised over the years. It’s laborious, and I expect it will take months if not years as, at the moment, I can only do little bits at a time. But it’s very satisfying to see the progress.

When you don’t know what you don’t know, it’s very hard to ask the right questions to get the answers you’re hoping for. It’s taken over a year to figure out even these basic concepts. But I feel like I’m over that first hurdle and now there’s so much more I want to dive into. Just a few examples include:

P.S What I’m doing now.