Where did this site come from?

Llama generated TL;DR: The internet has become increasingly commercialized and user-unfriendly, prompting the author to create minimalist, accessible websites that prioritize user experience and harken back to the internet's more user-centric origins. Driven by frustration with "enshittification," they aim to build simple, fast, and universally functional digital interfaces that work across all devices and platforms. Click to continue reading...

I've been building websites and various other user-facing interfaces in different ways and with different technologies coming up two decades now. I in no way claim to be an expert on everything or really even anything, though I do think my experience is this realm across some of the biggest eras of web and app usage are what lead me to this, today. As I've built things, depreciated things, left things unfinished, etc I saw the web become increasingly enshittified. I saw it happening, or felt it, well before the coin was termed and I know I'm not alone in that sentiment. Here we are though, even having a name for it and practically nothing is changing if anything it is getting worse.

"Even with that foundational understanding of enshittification, Google has been unable to resist its siren song. Today's Google results are an increasingly useless morass of self-preferencing links to its own products, ads for products that aren't good enough to float to the top of the list on its own, and parasitic SEO junk piggybacking on the former." Pluralistic

Much of our world these days is digital and while we all know it, digital keeps getting worse. It is not only harder for us to find what we are looking for but even when we do we are sure to miss some diamonds in the rough along the way because they aren't the money makers. There was actually a moment recently when I found myself in the odd moment of not having an adblocker without realizing it. I went to one of my standard sites to simply read an arcticle and I was so overwhelmed by ads all I could think of was the early days of ad-blockers where we had to go to a dedicated site to see what was and wasn't blocked.

There are still of course the ways to get to wonderful articles in the small web. Those like this that somehow still try in the modern era to make our interfaces more efficient and explain the benefits of doing so. These in the small web are those that keep me coming back to what I see as the beauty of the internet. I felt the absolute need to make a text focused, vanilla HTML/CSS, small and fast site because it is really the only thing that makes sense to me. I'm not quite of the mindset of those that create the most minimally small pieces of the web. Though I enjoy these games that do still happen in far flung corners of the internet, I myself will always prefer my opionated design.

This is what brings us to here and now. I don't know what my design is quite yet. This and a few upcoming projects will be where I carve out my corner of the internet. I aim to make things that others can easily reproduce and even edit as they need to make the design a little closer to their own version of minimalism or even those that approach maximizing. For what it's worth I also don't take a hard stance on not having JS, this specific site won't have it anywhere as it is unecessary for a simple portfolio site, but it will exist in other projects when it becomes necessary.

Overall my main goal in creating going forward is to make things that work across as many devices as possible in exactly the same way. An interface should be approachable to as many people as possible from all walks of life. I do try to follow the 14kb rule so that when you access something I create it becomes complete. You can keep using it on your device and no matter your connection you have the best chance of using it. The internet should look different, like it used to, in every corner of it we find ourselves in.

Web Stack

Build

Hosting

Tracking/Ads

Experiments

Home Projects

Projects & Current Work

Infrastructure

All of the following infrastructure was designed and maintained to support thousands of concurrent users with minimal downtime while optimizing for efficient support.

Self-Hosted Messaging: Implemented and maintained Matrix and Mattermost instances.

Self-Hosted Forums: Implemented, designed, and maintained various forums/community areas using a variety of options like Discourse, NodeBB, Flarum, and more.

Self-Hosted "Cloud": Implemented and maintained self-hosted cloud infrastructure according to the requirements of a project. Primarily shipped Nextcloud heavily modified to project spec.

Self-Hosted Streaming: Implemented and maintained PeerTube instances when clients required their own streaming instances.

Blockchain

Created processes and technical documentation across the industry for clients looking to improve their user facing presence.

Web Design

Continue to push the envelope across front and backend web design for clients across a wide range of applications and web languages for consistent use across platforms. Primary focus has always been speed following light and minimal web design principles. Including an opinionated Wordle!

Machine Learning

Working across the industry to research and apply a diverse set of LLM use cases with a focus on improving human efficiency and reducing hallucinations.

Building at Scale

Designed scalable systems and automated processes while managing infrastructure projects, ensuring security compliance, leading incident responses, and optimizing system reliability with development teams. Has maintained a less than 0.5% downtime for any systems I directly managed.

Automation for Humans

Building comprehensive tools for QA reviews, streamlining manual procedures, resulting in a 50% reduction in average review time. Have been able to routinely increase efficiency by a minimum of 25% by automating what was previously manual work/processes. Home Resume

Who am I?

Hello, my name is Eric Dragon! I think if I were to try to quickly sum myself up it would be along the lines of wanting to see everything the world has to offer while engaging with the world through people and places.

I once heard someone say something along these lines: First, you are paid for the work you do. Second, you are paid for what you know. Finally, you are paid for who you are. I think for all of us the ideal is being paid for just who we are right? For me though, I am still working my way to that goal. I believe I am at the point in both my career and life where I am finally being recognized for what I know and not just the work I do.

I have done the “going through the motions” thing in tech. Started out doing basic help desk support and worked my way to being a Systems Administrator. From there I changed paths a bit, I focused more on leading, consulting, and taking on the slightly more challenging path of engineering. Beyond my career this whole time I have consistently pushed myself personally because tech as a whole is what I live and breath.

This is the most engaging career, lifestyle and overall fulfilling field I think anyone could ever do. Whether I am outdoors hiking a new mountain or traveling new parts in the world there are always places I can fit technology in a new and exciting way.

For those who have had the opportunity to learn and grow from the very start of IT, like I had at the beginning of it all, I think I can speak for all of us when I say we gain a significant understanding of how to balance many hats while making the experience stellar for our users and internal teams. This has been something that has led into my personal life and led me to my new, current path.

As it stands right now I am traveling the U.S. (soon the world) to see many different people and cultures. Not just for the great things that come with that personally but also for different ways of working to further hone skills I have and continue to build new ones. I am excited to see where my travels across digital and physical realms take me and hope you'll join me for the ride.

Email | GitHub | LinkedIn

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Systems Wizard

Dragon Eras

Technical Consultant | 2019 - Current

Implementing AI to do the busy work so you and your employees can get shit done. At the same time spearheading the management and security of diverse infrastructure with a global client base, including self-hosted messaging, forums, cloud, and streaming platforms, while optimizing support and processes for concurrent users. Currently researching a diverse set of LLM use cases with a focus on improving human efficiency and reducing hallucinations.

QA & SRE | 2021 - 2024

Designed scalable systems and automated processes while managing infrastructure, ensuring security compliance, leading incident responses, and optimizing system reliability with development teams. Designed automated processes and reporting for use across directorate, ensuring working systems, guaranteeing content accuracy, and optimizing content review within development teams.

Technical Project Management | 2018 - 2021

Guided and supervised a team of Support Engineers, consistently meeting SLAs for diverse enterprise solutions, ensuring high client satisfaction and operational efficiency. Directed and coordinated a team of IT professionals overseeing the management, implementation, and support of systems, hardware, security protocols, and user satisfaction.

IT Technician | 2015 - 2018

Executed technical support, issue troubleshooting, managed user support tickets, and enhanced system efficiency.

Technical Skills

CI/CD

Cloud Platforms

AI/ML

Competencies

Technical Project Management, Infrastructure Management, System Design and Maintenance, Security Compliance, Automation and Process Improvement, Networking, Performance Optimization, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Technical Writing, Active Directory (AD), AI/ML, RAG

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