Meet the Author

Jackson Darman

Hello! I am a 24-year-old with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from James Madison University. My main areas of interest are cybersecurity, systems administration, and all things Linux. Outside of the realm of computing, I love tabletop games, my slightly overweight cat, and a nice cold glass of Dr Pepper.

Getting In Touch

My preferred way of communicating is through e-mail. If you need to get in contact with me, sending me a quick email is typically the best way to do it.

All of my emails are signed with my GPG key. Feel free to encrypt your mail as well if you’re so inclined.

What I Use

I have a plethora of computers lying around performing various duties in my home office, but these are the ones that see the most use.

Desktop

THE DARMANATOR

The Darmanator is my daily-driver system that is designed to handle any game that I can throw at it and look pretty awesome while doing it. Here’s the parts list:

I am forced to dual boot this system, as I do most of my gaming + actual programming work on my Arch Linux install (yes, I’m one of those people), but my friends want me to play games with them. Those games have invasive anticheat. So I’m forced to use Windows 11.

Just as an aside, dear anticheat developers who refuse to understand that Linux gaming is a growing market and will continue to grow as Windows gradually gets worse with each new update:

Stop being lame

Laptops

M4 MacBook Pro

During his last lecture of the semester, one of my professors in my senior year of college encouraged the class to use computers and systems that seemed foreign to us before outright dismissing them. His logic was that in order to be the best developer you can be, you need to experience a wide breadth of the tools available to you.

I eventually came around to that idea, and I ended up picking up a base model M4 MacBook Pro on sale with the goal of learning the ins and outs of developing software for MacOS and iOS, and to see what the hype was about. The MacBook ended up taking the mantle as my primary workhorse when I’m out of the house. High school me would probably be so disappointed in me for being a sellout, but whatever. This laptop is pretty powerful, runs quietly, sips on power, and it works well with all of the Apple stuff that has found its way into my room over the years. I couldn’t ask for anything more (except for Apple trusting me enough to fix it myself).

Framework 16

This was my primary laptop during my last couple of years in college, and one of the only things that I have ever pre-ordered (I was the most annoying person imaginable while I was waiting for this to get to my house).

All of Framework’s laptops embody something that I wish was more prevalent these days: being able to repair your own stuff. Yes, the irony of getting a MacBook two years after I got this is not lost on me, but I genuinely think the world is a better place to live in when manufacturers let you repair your own stuff.

Nowadays, this laptop is my portable gaming setup for when I’m going to conventions and events, which I tend to do at least once or twice a year. I also use it as my home-theater PC for when I want to play demanding games in front of my TV rather than my cluttered office desk. In the long-term, I’ll probably end up turning it into a server in my homelab, but I don’t see myself doing that any time soon.

The ThinkPad Armada

I’ve owned many ThinkPads throughout my life, especially during my later high school to early college years. ThinkPads are just a really good value if you buy them secondhand, and if you’re on a tight budget I really can’t recommend anything else. Nowadays, all of them are the “Hivemind” nodes in my homelab that are used to learn Kubernetes on actual hardware. Here’s the complete list of ThinkPads I have loved (and lost) over the years.