mauveRANT

mauveRANT

From Gitea to Forgejo: Migrating My Git Forge and Taking Ownership of My Code

From Gitea to Forgejo: Migrating My Git Forge and Taking Ownership of My Code

Breaking up with GitHub, one repo at a time The introduction I've been mirroring my GitHub repositories to a self-hosted Gitea instance for a while now. All of it synced to a server sitting in my house. It started as a backup strategy, but at some point I

Escaping Instagram: Building Migration Tools for the Fediverse

Escaping Instagram: Building Migration Tools for the Fediverse

The introduction I've been slowly pulling my digital life out of corporate platforms and into the fediverse. Matrix for chat, Mastodon for short-form posts, self-hosted where possible. But one thing still nagged at me: years of photos sitting on Instagram, locked inside Meta's ecosystem with no

Self-Hosting Pixelfed: Federated Instagram Without the Algorithm

Self-Hosting Pixelfed: Federated Instagram Without the Algorithm

The introduction If you've been following along, you know I've been building out federated services piece by piece. Matrix for communication, PieFed for news and link aggregation, and now: photos. Pixelfed is the fediverse answer to Instagram. It's an ActivityPub-powered photo sharing platform with

Self-Hosting PieFed: Building a Fediverse alternative to Reddit

Self-Hosting PieFed: Building a Fediverse alternative to Reddit

The introduction If you've been anywhere near the internet in the last few years, you've watched the slow-motion implosion of centralized platforms. Twitter became X. Reddit killed third-party apps and then IPO'd. Discord is perpetually one policy change away from making everyone jump ship.

Discord Alternatives: My Personal Deep Dive into Matrix, Zulip, Discourse, and Stoat

Discord Alternatives: My Personal Deep Dive into Matrix, Zulip, Discourse, and Stoat

Discord's recent announcement of mandatory age verification for all users has sent the community scrambling for alternatives. Search volume for "Discord alternatives" spiked 10,000% overnight, with Matrix seeing a 2,133% increase and the relatively unknown Stoat (formerly Revolt) jumping 9,900%. As someone who&

Self-Hosting Matrix: A Journey Into Federated Communication

Self-Hosting Matrix: A Journey Into Federated Communication

Taking back control, one Docker container at a time The introduction I've been running my own infrastructure for decades. Servers, containers, networks, the whole homelab thing. There's something deeply satisfying about knowing exactly where your data lives and who has access to it. But communication has

Why I'm Leaving Instagram for the Fediverse

Why I'm Leaving Instagram for the Fediverse

The introduction I've been thinking a lot lately about the tools I use and the systems I've allowed to become part of my daily life. As someone who has spent over three decades breaking, building, and tinkering with technology, I find it somewhat ironic that I&

Connecting My Home Network to 44Net

Connecting My Home Network to 44Net

By Nate, K0MVH After a 15-year hiatus from amateur radio, I returned to the hobby in 2025 with fresh eyes and a lot more networking experience under my belt. One of the things that caught my attention was 44Net, a piece of Internet history that's been quietly serving

Hackers on the Air

Hackers on the Air

I’ve been a licensed amateur radio operator (a Ham) since 2005. Despite that, I’ve held only the entry-level license for nearly two decades. But in 2025, I finally changed that. Along the way, I rediscovered just how vast and fascinating the world of Ham Radio truly is. In

When a Space Becomes a Folder

When a Space Becomes a Folder

While maintaining backups across several Linux hosts using rsnapshot, I ran into a deceptively simple but confusing issue: some directories from a remote host were being backed up into a folder literally named ' ' (a single space character). It looked like this: /backup/rsnapshot/alpha.0/my_folder/ / Inside

Ergonomic keyboards

Ergonomic keyboards

I’ve been typing on a standard keyboard for most of my life, whether for coding, writing, or just everyday computer use. But after decades of dealing with wrist strain, tight shoulders, and the general discomfort that creeps in after long sessions at the keyboard, I finally decided to try

Building my environment

Building my environment

I spend a significant amount of time in my home office, which needs to support various aspects of my life. The more my environment enhances my mental well-being, the better I can stay focused, organized, and productive. This article discusses that home office setup, in which I will cover various

Ubuntu rates a CRITICAL vulnerability as LOW?!

Ubuntu rates a CRITICAL vulnerability as LOW?!

Ubuntu recently classified a 9.8 CVSS rated vulnerability as "low priority". The first question would seemingly be, how could something so clearly identified as critical be reclassified to nothing? Well, that's an easy answer. Because that's the whole point of CVSS. But what

How I hacked a building with a can of coke

How I hacked a building with a can of coke

The introduction The following story is intended to outline a few different elements I've discovered in myself since receiving an ADHD diagnosis in late 2020 and reflecting on my life and childhood. I've long struggled to understand why I made some of the seemingly odd choices

Stop the Stigma

Stop the Stigma

The following is an old article I wrote and previously published on some of my social media. I am reposting it here as it will serve as the first of many posts in my Mental Health Series of writeups. Mental health is something I've struggled with, advocate for,

Hello World!

My name is mauvehed or Nate, depending on how you found your way here. I am a family man above all else and dedicated to my wife and children. By day I am an information security people leader (manager by title) and a hacker/tinker/maker by night. I'