The person behind NightFox

About me

I’m Travis. I build and operate technology for a living, I have been making websites since the mid-2000s, and I am usually happiest when I can get close enough to a system to understand how it actually works.

I got interested in the Internet before I really understood what the Internet was. Building ugly little websites led to web hosting. Web hosting led to Linux. Linux led to networking, virtualization, servers in data centers, automation, monitoring, backups, and all the other things you discover after deciding that running your own infrastructure sounds like fun.

That turned into a career and eventually into NodeSpace Hosting, the small hosting and infrastructure company I founded. Working in a small operation has shaped how I think about technology. I do not get to treat the network, the hypervisor, the operating system, the application, the billing system, and the customer problem as unrelated things. Sooner or later, they meet.

I learn by operating things. I like documentation, but I trust knowledge more after it has survived a maintenance window, a failed disk, a weird customer issue, a migration, or a mistake that had to be fixed at an inconvenient hour.

Then there are the buses

Technology is only part of this site. I have been interested in buses since I was a kid, and eventually that interest turned into a commercial driver’s license, professional driving, bus ownership, and co-owning Oh My Transport, a passenger transportation company. It is a very different world from a server room, but I like it for many of the same reasons: there is always more going on under the surface than most people realize.

That is why NightFox can move from PHP and BGP to air brakes, mirror adjustment, vehicle geometry, or old Blue Bird details with almost no warning. I am not trying to force everything into one tidy personal brand. These are simply the things I know, use, collect, and care about.

What I actually work with

Most often

PHP and MySQL
Enterprise Linux, especially RHEL-family systems
Virtualization and hosting infrastructure
Routing, switching, VPNs, DNS, and IP networking
Bash, automation, and systems glue

Also in the pile

Python when it is the better tool
Windows and mixed-platform environments
Legacy web software and old Internet archaeology
Transportation operations and fleet systems
Whatever I decided to learn this month

What is “NightFox”?

NightFox is an Internet screen name I have been using since the AOL days, with the name showing up around 2006. The “night” part is easy: I have always been a night owl. The fox part came from being unusually good at moving around without anyone noticing. More than once, someone suggested that I needed a bell.

The name stuck, the domain came back, and now it is attached to a website that probably makes more sense as a personal notebook than it ever did as a “brand.” That suits me.

About the site itself

NightFox is intentionally built with ordinary HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP instead of a content management system. I like being able to open a file, change it, and know exactly what will happen. It also means the site can move to almost any normal PHP host without dragging a framework or database behind it.

It is hosted on infrastructure from NodeSpace, which feels appropriate for a site that grew out of the same curiosity that eventually became the company.