People and Blogs: Christian

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hey there, my name is Christian. If you know me from any of my websites, I'm a blogger, privacy and security enthusiast, avid self-hoster, and… maybe an Org mode evangelist? Hard to describe myself as just one thing – I tend to be a jack of all trades.

Most of what I do online comes back to the same few interests: making useful things, learning in public, and trying to keep some version of the old, weird, personal web alive.

Professionally, I'm an IT Audit Manager at one of the Big Four accounting firms (KPMG, formerly EY), where I am responsible for leading IT SOX audits, SOC 1–3 reports, and other attestation projects. I also serve as the firm's subject matter expert for AWS, DevOps, GitHub, GitLab, and Linux.

I'm from the US and have lived in places around the Midwest my whole life, including various cities within South Dakota, Minnesota, and Nebraska. For the last decade, I've lived in Lincoln & Omaha, Nebraska.

What's the story behind your blog?

I started my blog in 2016, as I began my second semester of college. I was originally a Chemistry major, but switched to Accounting with a Software Development minor after my first semester ended. I loved chemistry; I just couldn't see myself spending the rest of my life in a corporate lab.

Anyway, as I began my computer science education, I used my blog as a platform to write things out as a post-study technique. I would try to rewrite what I had learned and act as a teacher to theoretical blog readers, which helped cement my understanding and find flaws in what I had retained.

Unfortunately, any blog posts between 2016 and 2018 were lost to time (i.e., I deleted them because they seemed silly at the time). You can still see my two posts from 2018 (The C++ Compiler and AES Encryption) as examples. Looking back, I wish I had kept them around, even if they were awkward. There's something valuable about being able to see the rough edges of your own learning.

Overall, this blog serves as my home on the web. It's a place for me to put my thoughts out into the world and has evolved from learning and tutorials into a blog where I can rant about the world, share my opinions, and create useful tutorials for others.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I have a straightforward and simple process, depending on where the inspiration for a post comes:

Emotional Writing

If I'm inspired by another person's post online, current events, or other influences we can call “emotional” for the purpose of this post, then I simply sit down with a blank slate and start writing out all of my possible thoughts. These are usually the posts where I am reacting to something about privacy, the personal web, self-hosting, or the way people talk about technology online. Once I have worked through the initial emotional response, I go back through my draft to fix errors, correct grammar, and restructure as needed. In most cases, I only go through a single revision before posting.

Planned Writing

In other cases, I'm not providing opinions or commenting on a situation. Instead, I'm sharing knowledge, creating tutorials, or providing examples of something I've created. In these cases, I will start by coming up with a thesis first, followed by a set of headings. For example, if I were writing about my macOS setup, I might split it into the following sections: window management, utility tools, top apps, privacy and security configurations, and regular tasks. From there, I will write quick notes on what I want to include in each section and then start from the beginning to fill them out until I'm satisfied. Lastly, I'll go through a revision before posting.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

Yes and yes. Physical space absolutely influences my creativity. In my case, I strive for minimalism and when writing, I prefer a blank slate in an environment where distractions are reduced.

I am almost always sitting at my desk, writing blog posts on my MacBook. In certain cases, I will write blog posts while traveling for work as the inspiration sometimes comes at unusual times and in unusual locations.

When writing at home, I will keep a show or music playing in my headphones with noise reduction running to reduce any other sounds from leaking in. When concentration and accuracy are critical, I will opt for music like Chet Baker, as it's something I've listened to often and will become background noise – rather than a show or upbeat music that can potentially steal snippets of my concentration.

When possible, this leads to me writing on a single machine with noise reduction and no other objects on the desk. It makes the writing feel less like another thing happening in a busy day and more like the only thing I am supposed to be doing.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

My favorite part! This blog has been through many iterations in the last ten years.

Currently, my blog uses:

• Weblorg, a static site generator for Org mode
• Org mode, a markup language (like Markdown)
• Doom Emacs, an Emacs editor that works natively with Org mode and Weblorg
• Ubuntu & Nginx, the operating system and web server serving the blog
• build.py, my custom script to build and deploy the blog to the web server
• Cloudflare Tunnels, a method that securely connects any visitor to my server while protecting it from malicious attacks and without exposing my server's information
• SourceHut (Mirror: GitHub), where I host the source code and content for the site in a repository

With this, I simply make any edits to the site via the repository and then run ENV=prod BUILD=true DEPLOY=true uv run build.py to build and deploy the site to the production server.

The stack fits me because it keeps the blog close to plain text and source control. I like that I can understand the whole thing, rebuild it, move it, or fix it myself without depending too heavily on someone else's platform.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I would write more often. I was very nervous about sharing online, given my history with privacy advocacy, and therefore wrote rarely and without opinion. I stuck to technically accurate and non-opinion pieces. There is a strange tension there: I care a lot about privacy, but the personal web only really works if people are willing to show a little bit of themselves.

If I were to start a blog today, I would start sharing any thoughts whenever they popped into my head. I would choose the simplest possible platform – probably Bear Blog – and just start posting without worrying about the site itself.

Don't worry too much about the details. Just start getting things out there that you care about and the rest will come in time. As you post more, you will realize what you care about sharing the most, who likes your content, and where you fit in the web. I wish I had understood earlier that a blog does not need to launch fully formed. It can become itself while you are writing it.

Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate revenue? And what's your position on people monetizing personal blogs?

First, I make exactly zero dollars running my websites. That doesn't just include my blog, it includes every public service I host on Zero Labs and any other website I publish.

All of my work is open source and publicly available to reproduce. I've had a tips page on my site for a while, but I have never received anything there, and I do not mind that. Anything I would receive would go back into the costs of running the site.

If we're talking about the blog by itself, excluding the cost of originally building my server and the electricity required to run it, my website technically requires $11.86 per year just for the domain renewal.

The broader set of public services I host has some other monthly costs, which are optional and I pay them for additional benefits, but the site would run fine without them:

• $99.00 – Annual Apple developer license (for my open source iOS apps)
• $25.00 – Monthly Cloudflare Pro Plan (for additional security protections)
• $5.00 – Monthly Cache Reserve (variable, depending on traffic)

In general, I don't really need any tips or donations and certainly don't want to monetize my content. Rather, I prefer to donate my own money to others or contribute to indie devs, bloggers, and others online that I want to support. I like the idea of the web as a place where people make things because they care about them, and where support is voluntary instead of being forced through ads, tracking, or paywalls.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out?

This was tough to decide. I follow a ton of blogs and decided to limit this to just a select few of my absolute favorites:

• Absurd Pirate – personal web writing with a voice that feels very human
• Ava – thoughtful posts that feel intimate and carefully made
• Bradley Taunt – simple, practical writing about the web and technology
• Forking Mad – great personal blogging energy and links worth following
• Jeff Geerling – excellent homelab, Linux, and hardware writing
• Julia Evans – some of the clearest technical explanations on the internet
• Robert Birming – thoughtful personal writing and web experiments
• Sean Goedecke – sharp software engineering posts with real experience behind them
• Technically Good – consistently interesting writing about technology and the web

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

If you use private alternatives or front-ends, feel free to use my publicly available services on Zero Labs: zerolabs.sh/services. If you want me to host another service, just ask!

I maintain those services because I want people to have more options than the default web, even if it's only a small contribution.

If you are looking for any guides around self-hosting that don't exist yet – reach out and ask! I love testing new software and writing guides for them.

If you're a SourceHut user, check out Hutch – an iOS app for SourceHut I've created and maintain.

And if nothing else, email me if you enjoy my blog! I love hearing from people and always enjoy keeping up regular correspondence. Some of my favorite moments online have come from a quiet email from someone who read something I wrote and wanted to keep the conversation going. Thanks to everyone who has visited my site or emailed me in the past!