Modus Operandi; The Obligatory "About" Page
I’m Chip (W0CHP); a hacker since the 70’s, a ham radio operator
since the 1980’s and a professional multi-faceted technologist since the
1990’s.
I write a lot of code; much of which is ham radio-related. In fact, I spend more time coding for ham radio, than I do talking on ham radio. 🤷♂️
I am probably best known as the founder and principal developer of the WPSD Project, the ChroGPS Dash Project, and for my involvement in other amateur radio software/service projects and many other open source software projects.
Website Technical Colophon
Only F/OSS is used to create, edit and (self-)host this website. No proprietary nor patent-encumbered garbage is used to create, manage and present/serve this website.
The actual web site (and all my other sites/apps) is/are hosted on a cluster of FreeBSD servers in my home using the venerable FreeBSD Jails; with the jails being deployed and managed with Bastille.
However, you’re not hitting the actual servers…you’re actually viewing this site from another pair of load-balanced and Jailed FreeBSD proxy servers in my network’s DMZ, running the Apache HTTP Server.
The site is served over a commercial 1Gbit/s synchronous fiber optic connection,
with another 100 Mbit/s backup and/or H/A commercial connection. Additionally, the
two firewalls are also redundant thanks to the wonderful
CARP. Both the
primary and secondary connections are graced with /28 and /29 blocks of static
public IP addresses (respectively).
The website is written by hand, using the venerable and awesome Vim editor; site and structure generated with Hugo; deployed with OpenSSH, git, rsync, as well as sundry Bash and GNU Make wrapper scripts.
Presentation-wise, I’m using my own custom-made design (and by no means am I a web designer). The rendered HTML should be clean, error-free and semantically-correct. The site should respond well with, and adjust to, myriad mobile devices. Lastly, the site will render quite well in most modern browsers, and will degrade perfectly in text/console-based browsers and screen readers.
I value my privacy, as well as yours. Ergo, this site is served over an encrypted SSL connection. I use the wonderful Let’s Encrypt to issue and sign my SSL certificates - automatically, by way of the equally-wonderful mod_md. No cookies are used on this website.
Finger Info
finger
output from one of my [many] servers; with internal network information
redacted.)Login: chipster Name: Chip (W0CHP)
Directory: /home/chipster Shell: /usr/local/bin/bash
Logged on since: Thu Jun 18 09:08 (CDT), on pts/0, (idle 6 days 16h:57m:31s) from tmux.%11
Logged on since: Thu Jun 18 08:09 (CDT), on pts/1, (idle 5h:53m:11s) from tmux.%9
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:34 (CDT), on pts/2, (idle 11h:48m:16s) from tmux.%1
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:34 (CDT), on pts/3, (idle 13 days 17h:31m:27s) from tmux.%2
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:34 (CDT), on pts/4, (idle 13 days 17h:31m:19s) from tmux.%3
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:35 (CDT), on pts/5, (idle 13 days 16h:26m:56s) from tmux.%4
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:35 (CDT), on pts/6, (idle 13 days 17h:30m:51s) from tmux.%5
Logged on since: Thu Jun 11 08:35 (CDT), on pts/7, (idle 13 days 17h:30m:47s) from tmux.%6
Logged on since: Fri Jun 19 11:44 (CDT), on pts/8, (idle 4 days 20h:29m:20s)
from [redacted]
Logged on since: Wed Jun 24 19:13 (CDT), on pts/10, (idle 6h:52m:04s) from tmux.%20
Project:
* Continually working on, and improving <https://wpsd.radio> & <https://chro.gpsda.sh>
Plan:
* Working on the things in my .project ;-)
PGP key:
----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----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=x+Vz
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Key Fingerprint: 3F93 632B 66CB 8577 A349 5845 5003 937B 1D29 12AA
What is this .plan and .project stuff in my finger info?
If you are wondering what the terminal output above is all about, you are looking at a live stream of my finger status…a callback to the earliest days of internet culture.
Back in the 1970s, before social media, status updates, or even weblogs existed, Unix systems implemented a command called finger. Invented in 1971 by Les Earnest at the Stanford AI Lab, it was a simple way to see who was logged into a mainframe and what they were doing.
When you “fingered” a user on a server, the system would output their login status, how long they had been idle, and crucially, it would print the contents of two hidden text files located in the user’s home directory: .project and .plan.
- .project was meant to be a short, single-line summary of what the user was currently working on.
- .plan was designed for longer-form text. Originally intended for a user’s daily schedule or contact information, it quickly evolved.
By the 1990s, the .plan file had gained legendary status in hacker and tech culture. John Carmack, the legendary programmer behind Doom and Quake, famously used his .plan file to post daily development updates for his games. Fans would constantly finger his server to read his latest thoughts, making the .plan file one of the internet’s very first “blogs” or social media feeds.
By keeping my .project and .plan updated and streaming them here, I’m keeping a classic, utilitarian piece of Unix tradition alive.