Hello World

New beginnings. Why are they so hard? For example - why is it so hard to start blogging? It's something I've been meaning to do for ages now, and yet it was only the forced quarntine, in these crazy virus-ridden days, that finally got me to stop sitting on my hands and start writing.

Actually, to be perfectly honest, it wasn't even that! What kickstarted this blog was the mere fascination with the concept of blogging. I've always looked at bloggers with a combination of envy and dissmisive attitude (which probably was at least partly due to the envy part).

On the one hand, I was dissmisive - Ha! look at those people, using their time to write about their work instead of, you know, actually working. I've always considered blogging to be a part of the tech bubble -  a habit you develop not out of passion for the stuff you write about, but as some sort of obligation people in the tech industry have. A way to prove to other people that yes, this person is serious. After all, how else could he have a blog?

On the other hand, as I've mentioned, I've always envied tech bloggers. Especially those in the cyber community. As I said, an active blog is for me a proof that someone's serious about his work, and everytime I read a blog post about anything I always assume that the writer has a good understanding of the stuff they write about - how else could they have enough knowledge to write an entire post about?

Yet, despite all of these feelings, I never got to actually write anything. Every once in a while I would spin up a WordPress installation, telling myself that "This is it Oz. Today's the day you start blogging"...and then spend the next two days setting up the site, picking a theme, and eventually just dropping the whole thing until the next time.

But I feel like this time is different. As I've mentioned, I'm currently in quarantine due to an interaction with a friend who was later diagnosed with COVID-19. I'm all good - I got tested, came out negative, and am waiting to go back to my job in two days.

However, these two weeks in quarantine reminded me of just how much I LOVE dealing with technology. During these two weeks, I've:

1. Purchased a new MacBook Pro and spent an entire day setting it up as a development and security-research environment.
2. Started learning iOS development through the wonderful 100 Days of Swift program.
3. Bought a new RaspberryPi and configured it as a DNS-Over-HTTPS server for my home network (Using Pi-Hole and Cloudflare - but this is a tale for another post...).
4. Did a comprehensive analysis of my home router, during which I managed to sucessfully exploit it, extract system files and learn about the technology with which it tries to keep my network safe.
5. Purchased a domain and a VPS, and for the first time in my life installed a website without a hosting - nginx, Apache & Let's Encrypt, all by myself.
6. Created this blog - again, without any hosting - and learned enough about Ghost (the CMS this site runs upon) to convert an existing theme into a theme I actually like in just a few hours.
7. Wrote this post!

These last two weeks were full of technological adventures of many types and sizes, and it was amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it reminded me just how much joy the technological world has to offer. And that's one of the reasons I've decided to start blogging, for real this time. Setting up this blog was a commitment on my side - a commitment to keep doing cool technological things to write about.

I challenged myself to post something at least once every two weeks. It dosen't have to be somehing big or even something original that hasn't been blogged about before. But it must be something I've learned and want to share with the world.

Hopefully, one day someone will read this and think "Wow, that dude's serious."