Welcome to the Duckpond!

Who are we?

Hi, I’m Zephan, an avid computer tinkerer and overall nerd. I’m also an advocate of digital privacy and the Hacker Ethic. During the day, I am a visiting researcher at the University of Notre Dame, where I do mixed-signal integrated circuit design with a specialty in emerging techniques and technologies. I also completed my Ph.D. at Notre Dame funded through the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. In my free time, I enjoy hiking with Emory, photography, PC gaming (Right now I’m playing a lot of Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Battlefield VI, and Helldivers 2. My favorite game is probably The Witcher 3.), and Olympic archery.

Emory and I got married in October 2025; check out some of her favorite photos!

Photography

I post some of my photos on my photography page. Here are some recent outings:

Writings

Emory and I are also planning on writing some articles! Stay tuned for more.

Dotfiles

My dotfiles are currently hosted on Github. Right now, here is my setup:

I’ve dabbled with many DEs, though, including Hyprland, i3, GNOME (which I still use for remote desktop!), and Plasma.

When anticheat forces me to use Windows, I run komorebi.

Homelab Services

NAS

Of course, the most important service is fast, local file access. I use a software RAID volume managed by mdadm to do everything from developing photos to storing documents.

Cloud Storage (cloud.duck-pond.org)

For cross-platform remote file access and mobile synchronization, I run a self-hosted Nextcloud instance. It provides a private alternative to centralized cloud storage services like Dropbox or Google Drive, allowing for secure file retrieval outside the local network and collaborative document editing.

Office Suite (office.duck-pond.org)

To edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and PDFs within Nextcloud, I also run an Onlyoffice server.

Calendar and Contacts (calendar.duck-pond.org)

To keep schedules and address books synced, I use Radicale, a lightweight CalDAV and CardDAV server. My phone runs GrapheneOS and uses DAVx⁵ (installed via the open-source F-Droid repository) to handle background data synchronization.

Remote Desktop (desktop.duck-pond.org)

When I need remote access to a full workstation environment, I tunnel in through a web-based Apache Guacamole portal. It serves as an authenticated Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) gateway, allowing me to securely log in and render my desktop sessions entirely within a standard web browser without installing any native client apps. On the backend, it hooks directly into a headless instance of GNOME’s Mutter compositor.

IRC Relay

I keep WeeChat running continuously, and the WeeChat relay protocol functions as an IRC bouncer, allowing external desktop and mobile clients to connect and disconnect seamlessly without losing connection state or message history on IRC networks.

Foundry VTT (foundry.duck-pond.org)

Foundry Virtual Tabletop is software that provides an excellent online role-playing experience. I run my own self-hosted server instance, allowing players to connect natively through any modern web browser without requiring external hosting services or client-side software installations.

DNS Caching / Sinkhole

Network-wide privacy and advertisement filtering are managed by a local Pi-hole instance, which acts as a DNS sinkhole to block telemetry requests and tracking domains. The service also functions as a DNS cache to optimize browsing performance, routing upstream traffic securely using a cloudflared daemon for DNS over HTTPS (DoH).

Media Streaming (jellyfin.duck-pond.org)

For home media management and streaming, I use Jellyfin, a completely open-source, community-led media server. The platform indexes our video and audio libraries, handles on-the-fly transcoding, and serves content to various local and remote client applications without subscription walls or tracking.

URL Shortening (link.duck-pond.org)

Instead of running a heavy database application, a streamlined nginx map configuration handles my URL redirection. For quickly generating shortened links programmatically from the terminal, I use a simple shell script.

File Sharing (dump.duck-pond.org)

Public file distribution and quick asset hosting are similarly provided through a lightweight nginx configuration acting as a basic file server. Uploads to the storage directory are managed via a companion shell script optimized for fast command-line deployment.

Git (code.duck-pond.org)—Coming Soon!

Self-hosted software repository management via an instance of Forgejo, a lightweight, community-governed git platform. The service includes web-based code tracking, user collaboration tools, and native support for secure SSH cloning.

Matrix (matrix.duck-pond.org)–Coming Soon!

Matrix is an open, decentralized standard for secure, federated instant messaging and real-time communication. I connect to the global network via a self-hosted homeserver powered by Synapse, enabling persistent, end-to-end encrypted chat spaces.

Web Hosting (duck-pond.org)

This entire website is written in Markdown, and the HTML is generated by Pandoc. The CSS colors are based on Nightfox (Carbonfox), which I use for my terminals, editor, and more! The other scripted elements are running on a FastCGI server using PHP-FPM. All the site content is served up hot and fresh with nginx running on a storage server in my basement. The traffic to our site is reverse proxied through Cloudflare, and the TLS certificates are provided by Let’s Encrypt via certbot. If images load slowly, blame Xfinity, our ISP of “choice.”

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