Learning & Development Journey

Over three decades in commercial IT, I’ve watched the tech stack change repeatedly, and the truth is, staying relevant means hands-on knowledge of each technology. Security, cloud, automation, and now AI have all raised the bar on what “practical understanding” means.

Within these open systems I’ve been able to dig into the components — containers, virtualisation, the underlying OS, and some common services used prolifically in the cloud — in a way that actually shows how they behave: how things run, break, interact, and scale. That visibility helps learning and develops the practical understanding needed for, for instance, security awareness; when you’ve seen the mechanics yourself, attack surfaces and failure modes aren’t theories — they’re obvious.

This is the logic behind the milestones below. Each year reflects a deliberate expansion into another work-related tech domain or layer: building environments I can break, automate, reconfigure, and harden. The stack becomes the learning substrate and a progression aimed at stronger systems understanding & design, better security judgement, and an architecture that can evolve with ease and flow.

These tools are a flexible, modular, and energy-efficient personal technology environment designed for experimentation, learning, and self-hosting, ensuring privacy and control over my own data.

Milestones (2019 — present)

Year-by-year focus across tooling, domains, and learning outcomes.

Year Hardware & software tooling Tech domain Learning domains
2019 - Ubuntu Linux/GNOME Desktop
- Firefox, VS Code, Git 		FOSS
coding 		- cloud-centric OS & tools
- WebDev refresher
2020 - Linux, LAMP/XAMPP
- local dev, raw PHP (not secure) 		eComm
dynamic websites 		- modern microservice architectures
- DRY reusable components, interactive, scalable elements
2021 - Linux, VMware, GNS3, Cisco IOS
- Python 3 with Paramiko/Netmiko libraries 		networking
automation 		- automated network management
- isolated (safe) lab for building runbooks
2022 - AWS CSP
- Docker/Compose, Terraform, DevOps 		AWS cloud console
scalable IaaS/PaaS 		- AWS EC2 Container Service (ECS)
- modular IaC with Terraform, some CD workflows
2023 - Linux, Proxmox VE cluster (pooled resource management)
- Ubuntu Server 		KVM type-1 hypervisor
Self-hosted 		- enterprise environment simulation, pooled resources
- cost-effective alternative to proprietary virtualisation platforms
2024 - Linux network core virtual appliances: pfSense, Open vSwitch
- Kali, Splunk, Security Onion 		Cybersecurity lab
self-hosted 		- firewall administration, network segmentation, virtualisation
- security monitoring tools, pentest, SIEM
2025 - AWS Lightsail (Ubuntu)
- Certbot, fail2ban, GitLab (self-hosted repo)
- Laravel MVC, full LEMP stack (Linux, Nginx, MariaDB, PHP) 		cloud based VPS
secure
modern PHP 		- Certbot automated SSL/TLS certificate management
- fail2ban intrusion prevention
- GitLab deployment automation
2025 - n8n
- Cloudflare zero trust tunnel 		Agentic AI workflow
self-hosted endpoint 		- architecture design for automation using LLMs & third-party APIs
- focus on security, resilience & ease of maintenance
2025 - AWS Lightsail (Ubuntu)
- Flask + Gunicorn, Nginx/Certbot, PostgreSQL 		cloud based VPS
Python web application 		- designed for future use as a development or testing site
- designing for availability, maintainability & operational efficiency
2025 - Google online course Cybersecurity - Google Cybersecurity Professional Certificate

Coding Projects — 5W + 1H

  • attendance (PHP) WIP project — not completed
    Show 5W + 1H
    What
    Time & attendance tracker with PHP/Laravel.
    Why
    Practise CRUD, auth, and Eloquent fundamentals.
    Who
    Solo project, peer feedback only.
    Where
    Nginx reverse proxy → Laravel Sail stack.
    When
    2024
    How
    Laravel, Blade, MariaDB, Sail.
  • “Guess My Number” (Vanilla JS) Play the game
    Show 5W + 1H
    What
    DOM-based number guessing game.
    Why
    Practise events, state, and UI feedback in JS.
    Who
    Personal learning exercise.
    Where
    Static assets served from /public.
    When
    2025
    How
    HTML / CSS / JS with defer + cache-busting.