Angel Docampo

First things first

The first thing I did realize was I need to have a reliable yet affordable piece of hardware in my own home to be able to host anything I want. So, after reviewing multitude of options, I decided HP Microserver G8 was the perfect match for my needs.

I did bought it under 200€, and I upgraded it after a year with a better CPU and a bit more RAM. In total, I've spent less than 600€ on a enterprise-grade server with a xeon processor, 16GB RAM and 12TB on a RAID5 with a very low power consumption. As some friends also bought the same hardware, I'm syncing all the sensible data with them if someday one of us suffers a disaster at home like a fire or being robbed.

To maximize all the system resources, I dockerized all services, excepting some of them I had to fully virtualize through KVM. All data synced with friend's NAS, I created a encrypted LVM volume where friends can store their sensible data, and they do the same on theirs NAS. We also have a load balancer of some services we all have, so If my NAS is under maintenance or missing, all services are still up.

Hosting my own Cloud with Nextcloud

This incredible open source solution can cover almost all the needs anyone can wait for the typical cloud providers: cloud storage, desktop and mobile folders sync, calendar, tasks and contacts sync, password managers for mobile and desktop browsers, notes taking and sync, online and collaborative editors, spreadsheet and presentations, news reader server for desktop and mobile devices as well as web client, email web clients to connect to an IMAP server, OPDS catalog and EPUB reader, music and online radio web clients, chat and VoIP calls and mettings through your own server... and the applications catalog doesn't stop growing!

Besides it has addons for Thunderbird and Outlook to put a link instead of an attachment in the email client, supports 2FA and OTP protocols to secure the login, restrictions to brute force attemps to login, many ways to connect (OpenID, LDAP, SSO, SAML, SQL, Discourse, etc).

There are desktop and mobile clients. I'm on android, so I have Nextcloud client for access the files and photos auto upload, DavDroid and OpenTasks to sync contacs, calendar and tasks, Nextcloud News as a news reader, and Nextcloud Notes as note taking application. Finally Nextcloud Talk as a VoIP audio and video calls and Passman as Android password manager.

On the desktop, I have the Nextcloud client. I installed Passman for Firefox and Chrome and on Thundebird, I configured the CardDav and CalDav client to point to the Nexcloud Contacts and Calendar apps repectively, besides, I've installed Nextcloud for Filelink to add links instead large attachments on my emails. Finally, I created an entry on my file manager to access to all the user data though WebDav.

The Nextcloud instance is containerized with Docker, accessing the NAS filesystem natively, with the configuration stored on the NAS RAID5 itself and an apache reverse proxy, also dockerized, publish the service and it's in charge to handle and renew the Let's Encrypt SSL certificates. The Nextcloud administrator account needs to authenticate through TOTP. On android I use FreeOTP.

The best media streaming server

When we come to media streaming, we need to speak mandatorily of Plex. Despite Plex is a commercial product, it strongly relies on a multitude of open source tools and libraries. Its free version is pretty awesome and I'm considering to pay a lifetime support sometime just to support them for their awesome work.

It has clients for desktop, mobile devices, web interface and as a Kodi addon, besides SmartTV apps. It can also cast to another Plex client or Chromecast, you can share you libraries with friends and download any video to view it offline. It remember the viewing time to continue watching later from that moment and downloads posters, metadata and subtitles automatically from the Internet. It can also play nicely music playlist and media galleries.

I bought the Plex android app and usually cast the videos to one of my Chromecast, but when I go on holidays or travel somewhere, I first download what I want to see from the web interface from my laptop or mobile device. Premium users can do it more confortably directly from the Plex app.

Plex lies in another Docker container, accessing the NAS filesystem directly and with its configuration stored outside the container on the NAS itself. Just the plex port is NATed to the host and published to the Internet.

For all your reading needs

The swiss knife to e-book readers is called Calibre. It can handle virtually all e-book formats and convert them to any other format. It can also send it to any device. Its library manager can handle hundreds of thousands of books, and can find the metadata and posters and even remove DRM from books.

I wanted to access my library from anywhere, jusk like I used to do with Google Books. There is a cool calibre web front end called Calibre Web besides the official Calibre headless mode, which I selected for its clean interface and its simplicity

With Calibre Web, I can browse, read, updload, remove, or add metadata of any book on my library. It supports users, so I can create accounts for my family and friends with custom rights. It can convert to MOBI any EPUB and send it to the user's Kindle and EPUBS can be directly readed from the Web GUI epub reader. Besides that, its a OPSD catalog, so any mobile app with OPDS catalog support can connect with the user's credentials and download any book he/she has access. On Android I'm using the open source FBdroid, with the TTS plugin I can heard any novel if I have my hands on other things!

Just like my other services, a docker of Calibre web with no ports exposed has access to the NAS, where the library and its configuration lies, and the docker apache reverse proxy publishes the service and is the responsible for regenerating the SSL certificates.

Feeding Plex Media Server!

Here in Spain we have Netflix -which I love-, Amazon Prime video -which I have mixed feelings because I use chromecast and Amazon forces to us to use its FireStick, but I love their TV Shows- and recently appeared HBO and Sky with a very poor catalog. Besides that, spanish companies have the bad habit to buy a season of a TV Show, years later of its release and many times, they doesn't buy a second season or wait endless years to buy and dub another season.

So, as legislation in Spain lets do it whilst there is no economical revenue, and we can't access to many titles, and perhaps we never will, I donwload some TV shows I'm unable to view in my country. I also download Amazon TV Shows to see them through the chromecast, yet I could see them on the smart phone...

With sickrage, once configured, we can search for a TV show and it searches on NZB and torrent sites and auto download them on the TV Shows folder of Plex. Furthermore, you also get noticed when a new episode is released and downloaded through Telegram and magically appears once downloaded on the Plex Library. It can also fetch the subtitles, just like Plex does.

On Android, there is a open source app called ShowsRage which connects to the SickRage server and can add new shows -for example, when you are on the bar with a friend and he tells you he started a new amazing TV Show- and you quickly add it and forget about it.

Another docker is running this service, with direct access to the NAS filesystem, to store the shows and its configuration. The reverse proxy publishes the service through HTTPS with the LestEncrypt certs.

Browse anonymously and securely

To browse more anonymously and securely, there are some options out there. The usual is to pay for a reliable VPN provider who doesn't store any logs, preferably an European or South American provider and configure your devices through it. Tor network is another option, which is pretty secure but slow compared with the VPN solution. Using both adds a extra anonymity and security layer by encrypting everything twice and letting your ISP and VPN providers in the dark. So, with this technique, I can use my services at full speed while my browsing is yet very fast, encrypted and anonymous and the other tasks are slow, but I don't mind, as I used them occasionally.

I selected a mix of all the options. My published services are going directly to Internet through my ISP. All my devices uses the VPN provider I choosed which is pretty fast and anonymous, and offers double VPN encryption, and my dark services are going to the Internet through a Tor + VPN service, so my ISP only see I'm connecting to Tor, but when I stablish the P2P connection, I'm using the VPN address, on the other hand, my VPN provider sees the Tor output IP address.

Instead of buying a router capable of act as a VPN Gateway, I enjoyed creating a GNU/Linux gateway just for the fun. And it's great. I have a KVM virtual machine on the NAS which connects to my VPN provider and a docker container which is a Tor Gateway, which connnects itself to the VPN on the VM. I also set up a DHCP server on a docker container (because my ISP's router) is horrible and almost unconfigurable, and created some network segments to make the mobile devices and computers at home to use as default gateway the VPN Gateway, the published services like Nextcloud still uses the default router's gateway and the P2P services like Torrent or NBZ are using the Tor Gateway.

Finally, I'd set up another OpenVPN Server container which routes all incoming connections through my VPN server to my VPN provider, so I can connect from outside usign my own VPN server, or let a friend to try browsing anonymously through my own infraestructure ;)

The not-so-new addiction

Back in 2003 I didn't watch anything on TV. Movies were awful, and TV was even worse. So I spent my free time reading, playing role play games with my friends, or drinking some beers with them. One day, but, a friend of me downloaded Battlestar Galactica. Several friends went to his home each week just to see the show. That began an addiction for too long forgotten (since the days of my childhood), and it started a habit that I still do today. It seems that online platforms like Netflix and others have boosted this and nowadays, we're living a kind of TV Shows-mania: there are too much for us to see and many of them are pure crap, but there are many that are simply jewels.

I love sci-fi, fantasy, and thriller TV Shows. I love to see them with my wife or my friends, yet I see the freakiest ones by myself. I'm an avid consumer of them, and I'm subscribed to on-demand sites like Netflix, HBO, Showtime, or Amazon Video for their quality TV Shows. I always find time to see them: on the subway, while cooking, while eating at work...

A lifelong passion

I can't remember when I learned to read. Since I was a child, I loved to read. I remember I began to read all the few books present on my parent's house – including the Old and New Testament – some Spanish classical works, a large encyclopedia, and the Reader's Digest. I know that is a strange and awful reading, but I was just starting, and I was very avid to read… anything.

Years later, when I was 8, my cousin left me his copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. That work let me enter into a wonderful world full of magic. I began to play role play games at 10, after having read The Lord of the Rings twice and The Silmarillion four times.

Fantasy opened the hunger for reading about another worlds, and Sci-fi widened and filled that hunger for travel those worlds and knowing the fascinating ideas of their creators. I've read hundreds of books, being fantasy, sci-fi, history and thrillers my favorites genres.

Despite the great appreciation, respect and recognition that I have for Tolkien, I'm enjoying the new generation of fantasy writers: Brandon Sanderson, Brent Weeks, Joe Abercrombie or Steven Erikson and the beloved Sir Terry Pratchett (R.I.P.). All these not-so-young-already writers have opened a new era in fantasy works. I'm enjoying the reborn of a genre for a long time gloomed with cheap copies of the Tolkien's works. These new writers are even taking the genre to the Big Screen and TV Shows, which I'm not pretty sure if I like it or not.

Plant a tree, have a child and...

Said a wise that every man will be remembered for his works. In something that survives him, in something that will last after his death.

I have already planted a lemon tree, but living in a big city and not being good at planting anything, I doubt that tree will last me. I'm the proud father of one wonderful boy, and happily married with the best person I know, the strongest woman on Earth, both of them are the joy of my life. But since I was young, I loved reading those awesome novels which transport me to another worlds, and as couldn't be otherwise I decided to start writing.

I wrote many histories before, but merely to set up a world for my roleplay games sessions. I did loved to create a world, an idea, a story for my players to interact with. But recently I imagined a story, fragments of scattered and unconnected ideas I dind't see in any TV Show or readed in any novel. And I started to write them down on a notebook.

After starting the first phrase many times, I did realized that writing paragraph after paragraph was in fact pretty easy. When the first chapter was completed, I noticed that I had wrote wasn't any of the ideas I wrote on that notebook. Anyway, I liked the written so I began to modify those notes to adapt them to the chapter.

I write whenever I find a gap between the thousand things that fill my days. Weeks can pass between sessions, but the story keeps growing. I hope to publish it in the not-too-distant future — not because I need to be a well-known writer, but because I've come to believe this story deserves to be shared. And honestly, I simply love doing it.