The lore/backstory behing calling my virtual hacker/makerspace "Lairland HQ"

Gemini in Google Search's AI Overviews may not get this right (try searching lairland hq and read through the AI Overview (and press Dive Deeper in AI Mode) instead of telling Gemini to Explain Lairland HQ, Andrei Jiroh's virtual hackerspace/makerspace in AI Mode), but I am doing my homework explaining how we got here calling it "Lairland HQ". (Explaining how we got from the codename "The Pins Team" to the present-day @recaptime.dev HQ will be next, let me go through Le Archives later as that has a longer backstory than this.) For the curious and those begging why there's the word lair in my Hack Club Slack channel initially, this is for you so read on.

So what's Lairland HQ?

Lairland HQ is essentially my own personal corner of the internet, mostly my virtual hackerspace + makerspace alongside things like @multifandom.andreijiroh.dev for multifandom activities and @

A (brief) tech backstory

Thanks to @dunkirk.sh (Kieran Klukas, @taciturnaxolotl on GitHub and @krn on Hack Club Slack)'s life story in tech post from January 2025 for inspiration and ideas on writing this section.

Since I am currently in college pursuing Bachelor of Science in Information Technology (not Computer Engineering since my forte is more on the software dev/engineering and DevOps side than messing around robotics and hardware [although I still have some of my hardware kit from Lux Loff [under their artist alias "sporeball"]'s Minus Twelve YSWS for shipping golinkcli , waiting to be experimented given some time] and not even Computer Science [because while my tech journey have coding involved, I would rather not hurt myself for struggling with theoretical math unless you want CS50x and going through CS50 Games 2024 Archive for those who participated in the Counterspell game jam ]), let me explain in this section.

The origins

First stop: Glitch.com. RIP Glitch.com , but this is where I learned about web development in JavaScript alongside a bit of HTML and CSS and discovered the art and craft of software development and open-source around the 2018 (signed up to GitHub around late 2017 then GitLab in August 2019 for those asking).

Pre-Hack Club Days (a year before): Setting up a virtual hackerspace

GitLab group information about mau.dev/andreijiroh-dev via the REST API , cropped to the juicy parts (created_at to be exact). Just ignore the tabs for now.

I know the GitLab for Open-source program exists, but back then I switched to @tulir.fi 's Manimum GitLab instance from GitLab SaaS / GitLab.com ( to quote from the GitLab handbook on top misused terms for the confused: "Both GitLab.com and GitLab Dedicated are delivered as SaaS applications, which as a group we refer to SaaS.") for quite some time before going back to the hosted instance for the official migration from GitHub. It's still a work in progress through, but there's a lot of progress then.

Finding a fiscal host for Recap Time Squad and @hackclub.com Arcade

GitHub Sponsors docs about using a fiscal host (as of 2026-01-11)

You may heard my Hack Club backstory somewhere in the Slack, but in case you missed it, I initially joined Hack Club because of their fiscal sponsorship program during Arcade and the rest is history, from getting my first stickers and postcards to having YubiKeys (3 NFC 5Cs total, but I lost one somewhere [insert heavysob emoji here from the Hack Club Slack]), a Raspberry Pi 5 with 4 GB of RAM and some 64 GB of SD cards. This is also where I officially switched to the .dev TLD from .xyz (which bought cheaply via GoDaddy), which the old domain is scheduled for decommissioning later this year (unless I still have unfinished migration work that needs attention).

Present day: NixOS-based homelab, powered by Coolify

Coolify Self-hosted dashboard for my homelab server, proxied via Cloudflare Tunnels.

Fast forward to late 2025 and I officially unearthed a Dell PowerEdge T130 (specs in the screenshot below, alongside my HP laptop currently docked because laptop screen issues) collecting dust after being shipped as part of a balikbayan box from my dad (working somewhere in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia), nuked traces of Windows 7 into a NixOS unstable install and mounted 2 TB of HDD from another tower collecting dust behind the scenes for reasons relating to being unused for so long.

Spilt panel view of SSH shell session at Termius for both my laptop and homeserver through a DigitalOcean VPS as a bastion ( GitHub Education Student Dev Pack credits , anyone?) between the public internet and my homelab network via Tailscale . Taken from a Windows 10-based library computer.

Wrap up

So that's it for now. As the lore expands, I will update this document alongside changes in the subpage below. Hope this help you understand the background and history of my little corner of the internet in open-source + social web spaces.

Andrei Jiroh Halili (he/they) is an Autistic Filipino open-source developer and maintainer at Recap Time Squad ( @recaptime.dev , open-source umbrella org fiscally sponsored via HCB since 2024) and Hack Club alum ( @alumni.hackclub.community ) of 2025 (Philippine K-12 curriculum graduate from AFGBMTS [Assemblywoman Felicita G. Bernadrino Memorial Trade School in Marilao, Bulacan] on Computer Systems Servicing NC II strand under the Technical-Vocational-Livelihood track) from Marilao, Bulacan, multifandom furry goober listening to different sub-genres of electronic dance music (mainly dubstep, synthwave, chiptune, colour bass and D&B [drum and bass], among others) and NixOS + Alpine Linux user, and is currently undertaking BS in Information Technology at STI College Meycauayan.

You can follow me elsewhere (see linktree and all-the-links section of my website ) to keep updated on what's cooking behind the scenes and more. If you want to support my open-source work and keeping the lights on, consider chipping in directly or through Recap Time Squad on HCB (Hack Club's fiscal sponsorship program + in-house open-source platform ). Even if you can't financially support my work, sharing is caring.