About

What is this place?

Who am I?

I go by many names, on here BitRot, but you may come across some of my other handles just by looking around. I prefer to be a faceless entity that walks many paths and speaks for the good of the unspoken. A devoted theologian upholding the sanctity of the internet and the open source software community. A freedom fighter protecting the many and their privacy from both themselves and the overreaching arm of the state. A mathematician fascinated by the numerical patterns we find all around us. An engineer that just has to know what makes everything tick. A malcontent that questions everything and always demands that society can be better. An anarchist that often just likes to tear everything down and watch it burn.

Hopefully that gives you some insights into my thoughts and agenda, and whether you put any value in what I say. For the purposes of the validity and knowledge of what I talk about, I'm a security researcher, a tech enthusiast employed in the industry with skills in automation, robotics, software development, networks, cryptography and much more besides. That should be enough to put faith in my words, but I would also implore you, don't trust me, do your own research. It is also worth noting I may be younger than you think, I'm not an expert by any means, I am still and probably always will be actively studying my field, and from time to time, I get things wrong.

When was it built?

The original domain request was made on the 1st of August 2023. That date has special meaning for those who know, I chose it because its memorable to me, which is important as I need to remember to renew it. As for the site, well construction of some parts began as far back as 2018. The first iteration of what you might call this site was originally done in 2016 so this site has some history behind it.

It has been a labour of love over many years figuring out what I needed, and how to build it in the spare time I had so for most of those years not a lot happened. Much of the old content also became irrelevant and so has since been deleted, though some remnants can still be found about the place. I like to think the site coalesced into existence gradually over a couple of months to become what it is today on the 1st of October 2023 as to me it is a much more recent addition that became possible because of the many experimental sites that came before it.

Where is it?

The geographical location of a server on the internet is about as relevant in the modern world as the phase of a particular electron in the Oort cloud. It technically has some bearing, under some circumstances it may have some relevance, but ultimately its inconsequential so long as it exists and isn't ripping a hole in the universe. The server this webpage runs on does have a physical location, if it suited you you could even pinpoint where with a reasonable degree of accuracy, but its not really important. I would like to take a moment however to recognise that this webpage runs on the Downbox Community Cloud, you've probably never heard of that and likely never will again.

The community is full of folks that believe in a more communal kind of internet than you will be familiar with, one that serves people, but is not beholden to any corporate or political powers. You might think that's some kind of idyllic dream of freedom that could never really exist, but here we are. It does exist, and while there are some compromises, they are not particularly onerous. Such a thing is only possible through a group with unique expertise in a large number of technologies, and for the individuals to be selfless and charitable in nature. That is why I wanted to recognise them, while they prefer to remain hidden, this part of this site is a small monument to the great work they do in protecting the freedom and liberties of the individuals on the internet.

How does it work?

You might have heard mention how this site isn't just another auto-generated content provider interface or WordPress site, you might not even know what that means. If I told you I've stripped away all the usual nonsense people use to bootstrap websites together, and foregone many of the tools people use to simplify the system, you'd rightfully start to wonder, how does it work then? I'm pretty skilled in website design, a notable head-nod to Tom of MySpace who tried to teach the world HTML and CSS. The central site I actually wrote the old fashioned way, by hand, which sounds crazy in this modern world, but it was a labour of love. I used HTML and CSS tools, I even put a bit of PHP in the backend though more for experimenting with than anything, but I did my best to avoid JavaScript. That's not because I can't, I'm very good with it, its just I'm a noScript fan, JavaScript has a use but its overused and opens up a number of vulnerabilities if used improperly. This as you can imagine made it harder but I decided CSS is designed to manage styles and has animation, so use that, there is no need for JavaScript at all, and I love me a challenge.

The blog is a tad more complex and I needed something robust, so I installed Grav (https://getgrav.org/). As you can see on the website its a CMS, I chose it because I've used WordPress before but its very big, if you want to break out of the preset it often gets in the way, and the tales of how insecure WordPress is are legendary, so I wanted something simpler, more moddable and secure, Grav seems to manage all those fairly well. Some other good selling points are the technologies its built on, it builds straight off folder structure so I could build it much like I have previously on Github, and it uses Markdown, which I have extensive experience of from writing documentation and notes.

Why build this?

The number one reason, as always, is because I could. It's a good test and showcase of skills amongst other things but the motivation is much more than that. From a purely selfish perspective it's to encourage my writing skills, improve creative thought processes, and to solidify knowledge by revisiting work and analyzing it with a critical mind. Beyond that it's about exploring new areas of the technical field while documenting my progress, and if this all seems rather self-centred thats sort of the point. You don't start out building a personal website expecting millions of subscribers, you assume you'll be the only reader as for a while at least you will be, if the content you create is good people will follow your work, but never fool yourself into believing you're bigger than you are. In a more communal perspective, as I've moved across the field I've come across numerous things that have irked me about the way things are, so I think its also wise to raise these points, others may agree, and if enough people think it could be done better then the collective will aim to improve in the future. Thats the idea at least, in practice it tends to be a tad more hit and miss, but that's life for you, humans aren't deterministic like machines.