A medical doctor by training, but also a tech enthusiast interested in privacy, open source, owning our data, IndieWeb, and more.
Welcome to my personal website. I’m Naty, a tech dabbler, third-culture kid, serial hobbyist, and lifelong learner.
BurgeonLab is a blog where I document my mostly geeky interests and other enlightenments. This is my passion project and a work in progress; so expect to see changes.
I am keen on data privacy, self-hosting, technical writing, specialty coffee, street photography, fountain pens, Formula 1, and more.
My other pseudonyms are @eclecticpassions and @aperture2iris.
Thank you for checking out my corner of the Internet, hope you find something interesting!
March 1, 2026: I’m in the process of a big overhaul of my Hugo theme’s CSS. There may be some breakage in the meantime, apologies!
I’m collecting feedback to make the blog better in 2026. As a reader, your opinion matters to me. Could you take my 1–2 minute anonymous questionnaire? Thank you!
Embracing IndieWeb
Learn how and why I'm part of the small web
Ever since I learnt about content ownership, enshittification, and the IndieWeb in 2025; I’m gradually integrating small web principles and IndieWeb features into my site.
For instance, I can receive webmentions if your site supports sending them; otherwise, feel free to send me a webmention manually! Public webmention display isn’t supported yet, only I’ll be notified if you mention something from my site.
A common feature in small web communities are webrings—a collection of sites linked serially around a common theme. You can find what webrings I’m part of in the expandable list in the footer and explore other sites with the navigational links. I also collect web badges (aka 88x31 buttons) which are down there too. And while you’re at it, feel free to sign my guestbook!
In the last week of 2025, BurgeonLab gained full Micropub support through Indiekit; a self-hosted Node.js server! Explore content tagged with: #indieweb, #indiekit.
Latest Blogs
Besides blog posts, you can explore these other sections: pages, weeknotes, notes (microblogs), likes and photos. Use the Explore dropdown menu at the top or direct links to common pages in the footer to discover the site.
Discover Feather Wiki, a FOSS lightweight and customizable personal private web notebook, with multi-device sync via Syncthing and Android support using Termux.
How I fixed high latency and laggy SSH after getting a new router. Steps on how to SSH into Raspberry Pi over Ethernet with direct connection on Mac devices.
As a long-time user of LanguageTool’s offline server on macOS, I thought I’d share how I set it up. It’s a great way to get a pretty accurate grammar and spell checking / proofreading software without relying on online services. I’ll go through how to configure this open source tool, get extra optional improvements like n-gram data processing, and script shortcuts.
Quick how-to guide on setting active class to nav links in Hugo menus without pageRef. A simple string comparison method works with any content structure. Code examples included for my top nav and footer menus.
See how I enhanced my Hugo blogging workflow with Termux on Android: run a Hugo server locally, manage Git with Termux instead of relying on a separate Git client app (like PuppyGit or GitSync), resolve a fatal Hugo image processing error causing server to fail, learn to set up everything from scratch. I also share my portable computing setup.
Catching up on the /changelog page, trying to learn more Git to fix my Git mistakes, Mother’s Day, and XL link roundup for missing last week’s weeknote.
Inspired by IndieWebCamp, discovered loads of cool people and their websites. Site changes and added webmention digest section, and the usual link roundup.
Revamped Pi homelab was a success, deployed public-facing Indiekit Micropub Node.js server using Docker, Compose, Tailscale and Caddy; with new Kitty terminal!
Jumping down rabbit holes and troubleshooting: fixing Mermaid/D2 diagrams, Render and Codeberg problems, learning new tools, Pi home server refresh, and more!
Participating in Hyde’s Over/Under series, HK public library resources, new Fresh Tech Finds section exploring tools like CLI/IDE, and lots of IndieWeb links!