my Next Big Project™️ that i want to pick up (and hopefully finish!!) is setting up a private media server where i can store media (photos & videos) and then, crucially, have a simple, customized front-end behind auth to access this media remotely.

but why?

photo of a cute felt mouse in a gray cowl and holding a raspberry with the text "i am plagued by concepts"

i want privacy and control

i have taken tons of videos of my baby boy that i want to share with family and friends. i don't want to post this content on some social media site, even one with private albums or accounts, because well… first of all, i'm not even on most social media.

and secondly, fuck that, i'm not allowing some company to train their LLM on photos and videos of my son (or photos of me, for that matter). nor am i comfortable with the idea that some company can just yeet these cherished family memories one day, like via arbitrary moderation or if said company just stops existing.

i need to improve UX & UI

you may be thinking, “why not put your stuff on iCloud / Dropbox / whatever and then share it privately?” and you would be right, those are decent solutions that i've used in the past.

the problem is that some of these solutions confuse the non-tech-savvy members of my family. the UX is not great for them, honestly! they get lost in the UI, they have issues logging in (and i can't easily provide remote support!), they have a hard time accessing this content later, they don't understand some lingo, etc. they prefer to resave things as well, which is fine if they want to do that, but also i wonder if they feel pressured to re-save, to avoid losing something? or maybe to feel more ownership? and i wonder, is there a way i can make this experience better for them?

then there's the limitations that i encounter on my end as the sharer: like file size limitations, storage limitations, sorting limitations, etc.

plus, honestly? these UIs are just ugly and impersonal to me! these UIs feel less like a collection of cherished memories and more like a sterile file directory.

i want the personal touch and creativity of a decorated physical photo album. i want the unpolished earnestness of the goofy DVD menus i used to make when i burned home movies in the early 2000s. i want to feel a connection to the media i'm sharing, who i'm sharing it with, and how i'm sharing it. these days, social media sharing + the ubiquity of cell phone cameras makes everything feel so throw-away, and i hate that.

i want every collection of shared photos and videos to feel like a labor of love.

so just build it, simple as that?

i have all these critiques of these tools and systems, and i’m like: why not just build your own? there’s some complexity to work through, certainly, but it would be a neat learning experience with a very rewarding outcome.

in my mind the risks mainly boil down to security. managing access for 2 dozen people, protecting and preserving data, etc. i'm not arrogant, and i hope that this fact + my paranoia will be my advantage as i navigate this project.

either way, i'm gonna start small and work my way up. let’s see how far i can get!