About

I’m Alexander Skiba and it’s nice to have you.

I’m a DevOps engineer based in Graz, Austria at Timetac. On paper I’m also studying Computer Science at university but I have been going to fewer and fewer courses due to me losing interest over the time.

I usually write about work as a system administrator & DevOps engineer and video games. I also like to post reading recommendations and hold regular Cooking with Friends events. It’s quite possible you’ll find articles not belonging into these categories - after all this is my personal blog. I’m also writing a novel, though progress on that has been at a glacial pace.

Contact

Should you want to contact me send an e-mail to mail@ghostlyrics.net or use one of the links in the sidebar.

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Professional experience

2018-present - DevOps engineer at Timetac - (30 hrs/week)

2014-2018 - Linux administration tasks for the ICG of the University of Technology in Graz - (20 hrs/week to 30 hrs/week)

• I’ve written about my sysadmin work in its own blog category and also got creative with the way this blog is published.
• Furthermore I’ve written a comprehensive blog post about different technologies I’ve got to experience during this period of my work life.

2014-2016 - Linux administration tasks for the ITAT of the Karl-Franzens Universität Graz. - (2 hrs/week)

• application setup (Apache, Postfix, Mailman, all with TLS)
• detailed technical explanations (symmetric/asymmetric cryptography, Puppet, Sensu, SVN/Git, GitLab)

2013 - Automating a third party GUI for backup purposes using image detection for Kärnten Netz. Implementation in Jython, realized using Sikuli, code closed source. - (38 hrs/week)

2012 - Parsing, evaluating and analyzing logfiles, graphing and exporting the results for the tagstore project at the Institute of Software Technology (TU Graz). Implementation in Python, available on github. - (freelance project)

2011 - Improvement of internal GUI for geo-information database, rewrite in order to have dynamically built sites for Kärnten Netz. Implementation in PHP, code closed source. - (38 hrs/week)

2009 - Data entry in geo-information database for Kärnten Netz (formerly KELAG Netz). - (38 hrs/week)

Conferences and Workshops

2019 - Conference visits

• joined BSides Ljubljana 2019 in Ljubljana, Slovenia
• joined Grazer Linuxtage 2019 in Graz, Austria

2018 - Conference visits

• joined BSides Roma 2018 in Rome, Italy
• joined BSides Ljubljana 2018 in Ljubljana, Slovenia
• joined Grazer Linuxtage 2018 in Graz, Austria

2017 - Conference visits & helping at CTF

• joined BSides Vienna 2017 in Vienna, Austria
• helped with Ops and Tech Support when LosFuzzys were participating in RUCTFE 2017

2016 - Conference visits & workshop

• joined BSides Ljubljana 2016 in Ljubljana, Slovenia
• participated in a Kibana 4 workshop in Cologne, Germany
• joined Grazer Linuxtage 2016 in Graz, Austria

2014 - Participated in the Summer School: IPICS2014 - Intensive Programme on Information & Communication Security in Lesvos, Mitilini, Greece

2013

• helped with the Introduction to Linux workshop of Grazer Linuxtage 2013 in Graz, Austria
• visited Cebit 2013 in Hanover, Germany

2012 - Game Jam & Linuxtage

• Participated in the Game Jam Graz, in Graz, Austria
• Held the Introduction to Linux workshop together with Manfred Wallner at Grazer Linuxtage 2012 in Graz, Austria

2011 - Helped with the Introduction to Linux workshop of Grazer Linuxtage 2011 in Graz, Austria