Configuring a CentOS 8 LAMP Stack at Linode

Posted on February 5, 2020

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post documenting how I installed a LAMP stack on a Linode VPS running CentOS 7. This set up has been serving me well in the intervening years, but recently CentOS released version 8 of their Linux distribution, so I wanted to investigate what the set up of a similar LAMP stack would look like on CentOS 8. The good news is that setting up a modern stack is a lot easier on CentOS 8 than it was on CentOS 7. For ...

Read More


My Pet Pig

Posted on July 12, 2019

Yesterday my brother was helping my parents clean out their basement, and he found a handwritten essay that my mom wrote in the second or third grade, describing her experience on the farm taking care of a pet. You might have to know my mom to fully appreciate the (unintended) humor, but needless to say, it pretty neatly explains my mother's attitude about pets and their role in the family. As they say, you can take the girl out of the farm, but ...

Read More


Building RelaNet: Email Marketing

Posted on June 15, 2017

This is the second installment in a periodic series about my efforts to launch RelaNet, my business that provides websites for accountants, along with other online services like email and client portals. First things first: I have my first RelaNet customer! And I must say, the exclamation point at the end of the last sentence doesn't do justice to my excitement. In addition to providing my first bit of revenue (sweet, sweet revenue!), this ...

Read More


Building RelaNet

Posted on May 30, 2017

In case you haven't seen me mention it on Twitter or heard me talk about it on Release Notes, RelaNet is my new business that provides domains, websites, email, secure client portals, and more to small accounting firms. I call it "managed online services," but you might just think of it as a full-service one-stop-shop for all the services a small accounting firm needs to market themselves online and protect their clients' information. I've ...

Read More


Segregating IoT Devices on an Isolated Network

Posted on March 13, 2017

While I was busy setting up my new router for my whole home VPN, I took advantage of that opportunity to make a few other changes to my network in order to make it more secure. In particular, I created a new WiFi network to be used exclusively by so called "Internet of Things" (IoT) devices in my home. If you've been paying attention to tech news, you've probably seen reports of IoT devices being hacked en masse. Everything from thermostats, ...

Read More


Whole Home VPN with an Asus Router

Posted on March 11, 2017

A few days ago, I was browsing Twitter (as I am wont to do) and came across a tweet from the ACLU publicizing their statement opposing a Senate resolution that would allow Internet service providers (ISP) to sell customer browsing data without the customer's permission. Unsurprisingly, selling your browsing data is something that the big ISPs have been wanting to do for years. This proposal would give them that ability and more, since they ...

Read More


Paint-by-Number Web Servers on Linode

Posted on January 13, 2017

In general, I'm a big fan of managed hosting. For example, all of my apps are backed by FatFractal, my preferred backend-as-a-service provider, and some of my websites are hosted on WPEngine. Outsourcing these sorts of functions allows me to spend my time where it can do the most good for my business – building software, handling marketing, and developing strategy – rather than using it to recreate commoditized services. But these managed ...

Read More


UIKonf!

Posted on May 23, 2016

I'm sitting here in a beautiful theater in Berlin, preparing for the UIKonf presentation that I'll be giving in a few hours, titled An Indie's Guide to Profitable Apps. If this sounds interesting to you, you can watch the live stream today at 17:00 Berlin / 16:00 London / 11:00 AM New York. If you'd just like to see the slides, please feel free to download them. Thanks to Engin, Maxim, and Sabine for hosting me in Berlin.

Read More