What is this?
You are accessing a website hosted on my personal Unraid server, which I have affectionately named, "The Electrifying Cloud." I Initially intended this as a simple network-attached storage (NAS) device to store my files, however in time, it has evolved into a versatile platform serving as a media, web, security, IOTT, and virtual machine server. Additionally, it is also a comprehensive testbed where I conduct various software experiments for both professional and personal development.
The aforementioned Unraid server, in conjunction with another more specialized Proxmox based server, constitutes my home laboratory. As such both are loaded with personal and third party content and various applications. It is important to note that all the content and apps hosted or residing on either server are purely intended for testing and educational purposes. Streaming audio and video is very demanding making it excellent task to thoroughly assess the server's capacity, bandwidth, and overall performance potential.
It is important for me to clarify that I do not derive any financial benefits from running this server. In fact, maintaining it incurs both time and financial costs. Nevertheless, the knowledge and skills I acquire in frontend and backend development, virtual technologies, and as a developer more broadly, make this endeavor immensely worthwhile.
A side note on social media…
To address my personal privacy and ownership concerns, I have largely moved away from traditional social media platforms and started hosting my own data here. As I‘ve been exploring all sorts of different server applications, it became clear that it’s probably in my best interest to just host my content myself and have greater control over my personal information. Negative aspects of social media, such as intrusive advertising algorithms and the growing prevalence of bite-sized TikTok videos, helped influenced this decision. I felt that these algorithms, dictating what content is displayed, contribute to the spread of misinformation and the reinforcement of biases. Additionally, I found the bombardment of TikTok type short-form videos everywhere to be annoying time wasting portals, it is a shame it’s just forced on to people from every direction these days. Personally, I did not want to support this system in any way, and the best way to do that was to refrain from contributing any more content to these services. Considering all of the above, I felt any future content is best hosted on my own server. In the end, this is all just an experiment and another learning opportunity for me. More importantly, it gives me content to freely distribute and experiment with… My own!