Christiano Anderson

My Experience with Self-Hosted RSS solution

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 15:11:25 +0100

As a privacy advocate and someone who believes in data sovereignty, I’ve been on a constant challenge to maintain control over my digital life. I I love reading news and staying well-informed, making me an avid news consumer. I actively support quality content producers by subscribing or donating money regularly, ensuring that I contribute to the sustainability of my favourite sources. After setting up Miniflux on my own server, I’ve completely transformed how I stay informed.

The IndieWeb and Small web

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 09:08:31 +0100

As someone who values privacy and the open web, I’ve been fascinated by the growing movement away from centralised platforms toward more personal, user-controlled online experiences. What surprised me recently was discovering just how many people are embracing these concepts without even knowing their names.

IndieWeb

The IndieWeb is a community of people who own their websites and content rather than posting to third-party platforms (like Medium, Substack, etc). It’s built on principles like:

Gradia: The Ultimate Screenshot Tool for GNOME

Sat, 17 Jan 2026 09:15:06 +0100

I’ve been hunting for a screenshot tool that’s actually good for GNOME, and I’m pretty sure I found my new go-to: Gradia. I’ve been using it for a while now, and it’s fantastic.

You can add notes, highlight sections, add arrows, very helpful when you’re working on documentation or teaching a tech class.

Postgres null character in psql

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 21:09:59 +0200

In psql, null values are displayed as blank strings by default, which can be confusing to read.

However, you can customize this behavior by setting a specific character to represent null values, making your output more readable and easier to interpret:

\pset null '-x-'

All null values will become -x-, which is much more convenient.

anderson=# select * from test1;
 name | surname 
------+---------
 A    | -x-
(1 row)

Bonus

It’s possible to choose an emoji as a replacement:

LSD - ls replacement

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 11:30:05 +0200

I have a new ls replacement!

I was using eza (see Eza on Fedora 42 ) for a while, but I’ve found something even better: lsd. This tool is a nice because it displays icons for file types, making it so much easier to navigate files directories.

The default settings are great, but the date format mm/dd/yyyy is a bit odd. Changing this is the only modification needed to make the tool perfect.

Eza on Fedora 42

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:40:45 +0200

In my previous post, I wrote about using Eza on Fedora 41, which works well and it can be installed via dnf.

This week, I upgraded my main computer to Fedora 42 and noticed that the Eza package is no longer available and couldn’t be installed using dnf.

I looked into the rust-eza and discovered that the maintainer has orphaned it due to time constrains.

To keep using Eza, I downloaded the latest release from the project’s Github page, and installed the binary directly to the /usr/local/bin

Replacing ls with eza

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 14:06:11 +0100

Eza is a modern replacement for ls, it’s written in Rust, small, fast and just a single binary.

How to replace in Fedora with Fish Shell

sudo dnf install eza
alias --save ls eza

Done!

Merging two tables in PostgreSQL

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 08:11:59 +0100

I often have to merge data from different tables in PostgreSQL, this is a code snippet I use:

MERGE
INTO
	users u
		USING new_users n ON
	u.user_uuid = n.user_uuid
	WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
INSERT
VALUES (n.user_uuid,
n.first_name,
n.last_name)
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE
SET
	first_name = n.first_name,
	last_name = n.last_name
  RETURNING u.*;

A Fish Script for Creating New Hugo Posts

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 08:13:07 +0100

I’ve streamlined my blogging process using Hugo by automating tasks with the Fish Shell.

I created a simple script that saves me a few minutes each time I write a new post.

It automatically starts a new Hugo post and opens it in Helix editor, allowing me to write, save, and publish with ease.

File name: new_til.fish


function new_til -d "Create a new Today I learned post on Hugo"

    set blog_path ~/sites/blog
    set date_str (date +%Y-%m-%d)

    cd $blog_path

    hugo new til/$date_str-$argv[1].md

    hx content/til/$date_str-$argv[1].md


end

Just save the script into ~./config/fish/functions and to start a new Today I Learned post, just type $ new_til post_title

Running PostgreSQL with Podman and volume

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:48:24 +0100

This is a short snippet to run PostgreSQL using Podman with a volume. The snippet has been tested on Fedora 41.

Create the Podman volume

$ podman volume create psqldevel

Run PostgreSQL

$ podman run -d -p 5432:5432 -v psqldevel:/var/lib/postgresql/data -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=xx --name psqldevel postgres:latest

Introducing Today I Learned

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:33:35 +0100

As I continue to explore the world of Data Engineer, Linux, Fedora and other intersting topics, I often find small but interesting topics, that don’t deserve a full blog post, but I don’t want to let these discoveries to go away.

In this section, I’ll be documenting and sharing short snippets of knowledge, tips and tricks that I’ve learned along the way.

These posts will be bite-sized, easy to digest and hopefully, useful to others who may be on a similar journey.

Apache Spark and Apache Iceberg

Sun, 15 Dec 2024 08:16:18 +0200

I’m building a personal datalake, just for fun, using Apache Iceberg and Apache Spark. I’m writing a technical post explaining the process, and how to run a small datalake in your own computer.

Fish shell

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:56:11 +0100

After using ZSH for a couple of years, I decided to switch back to the Fish shell. Fish works out of the box, batteries included, and the basic installation provides all the features I expect from a shell environment.

For over 20 years, I have been using Unix-based systems, including SCO Unix, Solaris, and BSDi. I have been using Linux since 1996, and Slackware was the first Linux distribution I used, and now I’m a happy Fedora user. My journey led me to discover different shells, csh, ksh, and bash being the most common.

FOSDEM 2024

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 16:57:46 +0100

It was fun to attend FOSDEM for the first time. The event is of immense magnitude, as multiple talks are occurring simultaneously, and approximately 8000 individuals from all over the globe attended the event. It’s a chance to meet new people, learn about new technology, get stickers (I’m trying to find more space on my laptop to put more stickers) and help out at the event. My first FOSDEM and my first time volunteering to heralding the lightning talks, what a great way to get immersed in the event!

Contributing to Fedora

Thu, 07 Sep 2023 20:20:02 +0200

Fedora is the Linux distribution that I primarily utilize, as it offers a satisfactory balance between cutting-edge packages and stability. The release schedule is six-monthly, and you can expect the most recent version of the main packages, a level of innovation you can only find in one of the most up-to-date and stable operating systems. Being a data professional, I enjoy trying new software and staying abreast of the newest industry innovation.

My ZSH Setup

Sun, 30 Jul 2023 18:20:34 +0200

Here’s how I set up ZSH on Fedora Linux.

Install the basic packages

dnf install zsh zsh-autosuggestions zsh-syntax-highlighting util-linux-user

Install Oh My ZSH

Follow the instruction on the Oh My ZSH website:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Install the Powerlevel10k theme

Install the MesloLGS font family first to get the best results.

Install the fonts:
Clone the repository:
- git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/romkatv/powerlevel10k.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-$HOME/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/themes/powerlevel10k
Set ZSH_THEME="powerlevel10k/powerlevel10k" in ~/.zshrc
Configure the Terminal to load the MesloLGS font:

Learning Scala

Mon, 19 Sep 2022 20:31:57 +0200

Python is my main programming language at work, it’s the lingua franca for data engineer, together with SQL. I have always been very curious to learn a functional programming language and Scala was a natural choice.

As data engineer, Python, Scala and Java are the most common programming languages, these three technologies dominate the main tools, components and frameworks used by data professionals, for example:

Hadoop (Java)
Pandas (Python)
Airflow (Python)
Kafka (Scala and Java)
Spark (Scala)
Pulsar (Java)

(…) It’s a big list, if you are still not convinced, take a look into Apache Projects Directory for Big Data.

New Blog

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 14:50:24 +0200

I’m starting this new space to write articles on data engineering and also on other different topics like privacy, productivity tools and personal growth.

Why a new blog?

Before my own blog platform, I wrote a few posts on the Medium platform, like this one: Data Engineer and Infrastructure as a code. I am very interested in sharing knowledge, freely, without paywalls. This is one of the reasons why I decided to stick with my own platform instead of using Medium.