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Hey, There
I’m Nikita - Backend engineer, 10+ years in. Mostly Ruby and Rails, but I’ll reach for whatever gets the job done.
Currently on a sabbatical in Lisbon - taking time to study fundamentals, hack on side projects, and travel. Most recently at OysterHR building global payroll systems, and before that ran my own consulting practice working with US and EU startups.
Current Project
finite - NixOS config that turns a Raspberry Pi into a network-wide ad blocker with Pi-hole and Unbound.
Recent Articles
- My NixOS Journey - From Ubuntu to Arch to Mac and back
- DNS-Level Ad Blocking - How Pi-hole stops trackers
What I’m Into
Ruby/Rails - My bread and butter. Background jobs, Sidekiq queues, making slow things fast.
NixOS - Switched from macOS about 6 months ago after going through Ubuntu → Arch → Mac → back to Linux. NixOS clicked for me - declarative configs feel like documentation that actually runs.
Infrastructure - DNS, self-hosting, Raspberry Pi projects. I like understanding what’s happening under the hood.
Projects
- finite - NixOS config that turns a Raspberry Pi into a DNS privacy/ad-blocking box (Pi-hole + Unbound)
This Blog
I write about stuff I’m working on or learning - backend patterns, NixOS configs, the occasional debugging war story. Mostly for my own reference, but maybe useful to others.
Browse by tags if you’re looking for something specific.