The bliss of freelancing

Exactly a decade ago I decided to switch to freelance IT contracting. Looking back, that appears to be perhaps the best decision I’ve ever made in a lifetime. Integrity, freedom, and health, approximately in that order, are three vital aspects of human well-being that life has taught me to value …

No leaks in my VPN

Hosting a personal Wireguard VPN Server on AWS

The Problem With VPN Service Providers VPN services need no explicit introduction. An average internet user would most likely have used services of a VPN provider at some point or the other to access geo-restricted application, to throw a cloak of anonymity around their online activities, to hide IP addresses …

My Firewall @ Pi

There is something about firewalls and routers that has always managed to excite me. From being a rudimentary system comprising a lone BT router, emitting wifi for the family years back, my home network has grown into a complex system of switches, ethernet cables, modems, VLANs, and sunbets that quite often, and honestly, overwhelms its creator too !! A custom router, complete with load balancers, failovers, inbound and outbound VPNs and a sophisticated firewall is the latest addition to my labyrinth. Building this cunning piece of software and coaxing it to work on a rather inexpensive Raspberry Pi has been quite an experience, which I am delighted to share. If such networking experiments thrill you as much as they thrill me…..read on….

My PC – Just About Anywhere With Apache Guacamole

With significantly enhanced internet bandwidths now available to small businesses and households alike, the prospects of being able to remotely access powerful desktop environments off ridiculously thin clients (yes, even that tiny little Raspberry Pi) no longer seem to have necessarily remained confined to just the domains of enterprise computing. …

Running Google Drive on Linux

Grive – a Linux client for Google Drive Having recently I bought myself a brand new new android, within hours of unboxing it I found myself downloading dropbox and trying to link it up with my free, 2GB dropbox account. I was a bit put off when dropbox told me …

Hosting a website on your home computer

Introduction When you bought your PC you probably ordered some decent hardware including a powerful CPU, plenty of RAM and maybe four or five times the disk space you would normally need. Most of the computing power you spent your money on may well be idling away in an obscure …

The Sham Called Agile

I had begun to hear the rumblings of agile in about early 2008. I remember having mentally brushed it aside as another one of those stylish just-off-the-shelf pieces of IT jargon that people in the industry identify themselves with for some time, before they manage to stumble upon the next …

Hypnotized in Delawadi

In the din of the night a motorcade roared south. Two pilot outriders, comprising a scooter and a motorbike, both reeling under the combined enthusiasm of their rider-pillion duos and doubling up as much as our reconnaissance vehicles as our outward probes into the ethereal freedom that we thought lay …