Home Cybersecurity for all

PixelatedDwarf helps to bring you step-by-step instructions on how to make your home network more secure (home cybersecurity) and private. By taking you from a beginner’s level to being more technically savvy, you gain the knowledge and confidence to do things on your own. I started in Information Technology many years ago. With the world being so connected today, there are more threats to ordinary people in their home networks.

Some of the people that I help are many times non-technical and hire me to quickly fix their problems, while another group wants to learn how to do it themselves and grow from the experience. The second group, the ones who want to learn about computers, home networking, and home network security is what this Blog is all about.

My philosophy on teaching

I have been an associate professor in two technical colleges teaching students about networking, programming, security, and other computer-related subjects. I use what I call the “Twuck Method” of teaching. If you have ever talked to a toddler and you say “Automobile” they will look at you strangely not understanding you. When you say “Truck” they will probably give you the same look. When you try “Twuck” their eyes will light up and you will have a light bulb moment of understanding. We are going to start learning at the “Twuck” level. I do not expect you to have any knowledge of computers, routers, switches, WiFi, or technical gadgets. All you need is a willingness to learn new things.

A bit about Pixelated Dwarf

The first program I wrote was in C. It was on a terminal hooked up to a mainframe computer at a local university. I was in high school and we had 2 hours a week of computer time on the mainframe for the entire school. I know this sounds impossible today but back then computer time was very expensive. This gave us time to type in all of our programs or run them from paper tape, the only “memory” storage device that we had at the time. We got a punch card reader about a year after that. Yes, I am an older geek.

The first computer that I owned was a “Frankenstein machine” that I soldered together in the early 1980s. It ran DOS and BASIC and had a tape recorder for memory. I started web programming in 1996 (PERL, HTML, and CGI ) when I got a job in the first ISP in our town. My jobs were the webmaster, postmaster, and all-around chief cook and bottle washer for them. I have since developed well over 150 domains for small and medium-sized organizations. I’ve also taught networking, hardware, and web programming classes in a couple of community colleges. 

A passion: making cybersecurity accessible

You will find that I am really passionate about teaching people about technology and how things work. I started this website it originally was just a place for me to post some things and have a record of my thoughts. Many people have asked me “How do I set up my home to be more secure?”. I have gotten that question a lot during the years and I am changing the direction of the site to help answer that question. I run Linux on many of my computers, but there are also MAC and Windows computers on it and everything needs to be as secure as I can make it. This is the journey that I am going to take you on. One that will help you to think about privacy and security more. I am also going to show you how to do things that are fun and will save you time.

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Home Cybersecurity Series: