skouf.com

The website of Nik Skoufis

Technology posts

An image of a bare hard drive platter with the head and disk exposed.

Recovering data from a failed drive using ddrescue

My first foray into data recovery has been both educational and, blissfully, not too stressful. You always hear tales of damaged hard drives and complete data loss and think “that’ll never happen to me”. Well, it finally has happened to me, and thankfully the outcome has been pretty good (all things considered), and I’ve learned a bit along the way.

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Skouf.com redesign - part 3

In the final part of my website redesign, I finish things off and simplify by merging my blog with my website, inspired by striving to be simple and other personal sites I’ve come across in the last year or so...

An image from above of nested white levels of the inside of a building with people in them

Engineering levels

Almost all organisations assign levels to their employees, and engineering is no different. But what are the alternatives to engineering levels, what might we gain by avoiding engineering levels, and how do we get the the more beautiful feature that a level-less work environment offers?...

Two buttons attached to a wall. The left button is labelled ON and the right button is labelled OFF.

So you want to turn something off?

Retiring software systems is hard work, especially at a big organisation. The longer a system spends out in the world, the more users come to rely on it. But all good things must come to an end, and at some point it will come time to retire your system. This is where the fun begins!... (external link, opens in a new tab)

A placeholder image, the word Skouf

Skouf.com redesign - part 2

In the second part of my website redesign, I think a bit about technology choices and design, and then end up stopping abruptly for a year and half...

A placeholder image, the word Skouf

Skouf.com redesign - part 1

When I was young and naive, I built a website for myself. It’s no-longer fit for purpose, and needs a facelift. This is the first part of a multi-part series, focussing on some of the design considerations of this new skouf.com....

A black and white image of a container ship, viewed from the rear

IaC in the home - two years on

After two years of running a home Kubernetes setup, I have more thoughts and lessons about how to run a home cluster....