About me [arf20]

Hello there, I'm arf20 [ä.ɛrɛ.ɛfɛ.veɪn.tɛ] (EA5JGX), a 17 year old bi femboy spanish student obsessed with linux.

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What I do

- I am the founder and main (and only) system administrator of the ARFNET project, responsible of maintaining all of theese services, hosts, and adding content.
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ARFNET +

- I love enterprise hardware and stuff, using it to provide services to the internet, like this very website, SSH, minecraft servers... et cætera. - Some time ago I got R720 off ebay, so that went nuts, it has 2x Xeon E5-2670 v2 clocked at 2.6GHz, and recently 64GB of RAM, running god bless Proxmox. - with a PERC H710p RAID controller with 7x 3TB HGST drives (18TB RAID5) and a 4TB Barracuda scored from ebay as well. - It combines with a DELL PowerConnect switch, I have 3 lol, and an old Cisco, but I don't use it. A year back I kicked my old ISP, Vodafone, god it was awful but now - I am a happy customer of Avanzafibra, with a 1000mbps FTTH backbone, with a separate ONT connected to my new router, a OPNSense VM. I used to use a Mikrotik RB2011UiaS-RM - but turns out it sucks (can't do NAT fast enough).

arf20

+ Hello there, I'm arf20, a 18 y/o bi femboy student from Spain + obsessed with technology, hardware and software. +

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+ My passions and hobbies are: Linux, systems programming, + servers (hardware and administration), networking, + electronics (analog, digital and radiofrequency), + and retrocomputing. I mostly find expensive professional + technology super fascinating. +

- But my real passion is programming (not in that cringe language so called python), I do C/C++, for graphical and cool networking shit. - I also did a little of x86 and Z80 assembly. Web applications are not my stuff (PHP, I hate JS, node.js), this website is just static HTML/CSS with some PHP. - You can have a look of my github, and the old VS archive here.
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Thats what I call a homelab! Now here is my workstation setup. - A Ryzen 7 3700x 3.8GHz, 32GB RAM DDR4 3200MHz, GTX 1660 Super, 1TB NVMe Crucial and 512GB, and a 1TB old HDD. Fair enough ;). - It's linked to the server via NFS, very convenient.

+ I really align myself with Free (as in Freedom!) and Open Source + and Right to Repair movements, trying to use free software wherever + I can. My favorite distro is Debian and I run it everywhere but + my phone. +

My next hobby is a classic one. Although I wan't born early enough to live it first hand, but I love retrocomputing, and old electronics in general really. - I was always interested in old Windows versions, my first laptop was a old Fujistsu Siemens Amilo D something with Win XP, - old for the time, but still worked for what I wanted to do, learn BATCH and BASIC. Then I discovered VMs, specifically DOSBOX, it was fun. - But VMs wasn't enough, I wanted actual hardware, so my uncle gifted me a 486 VLB motherboard (486dx-33, 4MB 30-pin SIMM, all cache installed), - and gathering other stuff from ebay and my high school. I got a 2MB VLB Trident, a AT power supply, a PS/2 to AT keyb adapter, - a Multi I/O controller for a 3.5" floppy drive, and a 4GB hard drive (wayy to big for a 486, but I didnt have a older one). So I installed MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1, but - lacked RAM to run some stuff. Borland C++ 4.5 worked tho, where my 2 hobbies overlap, I learned Win16 API. I also got a 10mbps NIC, and connected my almost 30 year old 486 to the - actual internet, but I couldn't do much apart from FTP, Telnet, IRC... Most of the internet nowdays is HTTPS forced, with TLS 1.2 required, - which not a lot of old browsers support. Thats why I allow bare HTTP in my webserver, you ain't gonna fill forms here anyways. - The funny thing is that I made all of that whithout even having the 486 in a box. Now the 486 is a bit abandoned though.

+ I'm currently studying Computer Science at Universidad de Murcia since 2023, + first year. I think this is my place tbh, nice people, great projects. +

And finally, I'm into RF, ham radio, SDRs... I got a CB radio (I thought it was still popular) but I was really dissappointed to hear just static everywhere. - I was inspired by the Thought Emporium channel to get a RTL-SDR v3 and listen to weather satellites, and so I did. I got generic telescopic antennas - so I didn't pick much aside from the commercial FM bands. So I started looking antenna designs, and apparently the double cross antenna was a good option, - Then built it, and it was very fun receiving NOAA and METEOR pictures, so I decided to make a permanent automatic station.
- And a bit later I fanally took the exam and became a licensed ham radio operator, callsign EA5JGX, and immidiately got a Baofeng. - Next, I should get a PlutoSDR for the L band parabolic antenna I did.

Technologies

+ Pretty fluent in C/C++, MIPS, Z80 and x86 assembly, + some Java too. I usually use CMake or Make as build systems. + In terms of web, I know PHP, SQL, HTML, CSS and a + bit of JS. Good use of Git version control. +

+ I'm knoledgeable in system administration of Web hosts using the + linux/nginx/mariadb stack, email with postfix/dovecot and a number of others. + I am familiar with Proxmox virtualization as well as linux containers, + systemd and general linux administration but also *BSD and Solaris. +

+ About network administration, I'm ok at OPNSense/pfSense firewalling, + segregation, VLANs, tunnels, VPNs, etc. +

+ Hardware-wise, I've come knees deep with DELL R-series server hardware + and its management, and of course a fair bit of PC building. + In terms of networking, Mikrotik, Cisco and DELL PowerConnect I experienced. +

And how leave aside electronics! My father encouraged me in it from an early age. As I like old computers I got into digital stuff, some old Z80s and SRAM chips off ebay but they were bad, so the project is in essence paused. - I also encounter fun high voltage and high power electronics, I made some dangerous stuff with TV flyback transformers, and dangerous MOTs too. - God I love when my hobbies fuse together, like spark gap radio. It has HV and RF transmission and it is the first method of radio transmission, that goes back to the end of the XIX century, when Marconi itself made it reliably.

Updated as of 04-03-2023

Misc

+ I am a native Spanish speaker, and I've been told I'm pretty + good at English too, although oficially I currently only hold a B2 by OIE. +

+ Random things I have are, HE IPv6 Certification, CEPT Radioamateur License (EA5JGX), + ARPA membership on SDF, and interestingly Galileo Mastermind prize and HackUPC 2024. +

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Last updated 12-05-2024