About

Oh! A visitor? I guess this means you found my profile.

I'm Crystal. Independent software developer, tinkerer, hacker, self-hosting enthusiast, and archivist. I usually just go by crystal online, sometimes also using crystalcommunication or crystalc as my username on larger platforms.

My sole proprietorship, Nyxal Networks, hosts and provides both public and private internet services as well as intangible support in service of my personal interests, including but not limited to free and open source software projects and communities I deeply care about, such as Forgejo and Codeberg.

Projects

Most of my publicly visible efforts these days go to the Forgejo project. We are working together to create the future of self-hosted software development and I'm proud to be a member of the team.

Of course, all those efforts also indirectly support Codeberg in addition to some other things I try to help out with over there. Codeberg is already providing a real alternative to GitHub along with an excellent community that understands why it's needed. I am also flattered to have my contributions to the platform recognized as one of Codeberg e.V.'s few honorary members.

I also am the lead maintainer for forgejo-deb, a project which brings Forgejo to Debian as a native system package with full systemd integration for easy installation without using docker.

Finally, although I am not a direct contributor, I want to give a shoutout to the git-pages project. They are doing excellent work to provide an robust and performant solution for the oft-desired feature of static webpage hosting, which has been a pain point in Forgejo's ecosystem for years due to most previously existing open source implementations using fundamentally questionable architectures. @whitequark also did us a huge favor by implementing a unique feature inspired by Forgejo's website, allowing Forgejo Actions pull-request workflows to deploy site previews in a safe and authorized fashion.

Support

I am very grateful to be partially supported by Forgejo's Liberapay. If you wish to monetarily support the Forgejo project, feel free to send a donation there, and a fair portion of it will be distributed to me accordingly.

If you wish to support me directly for some reason (thank you!) you can send a donation to my own Liberapay or Nyxal Networks' Stripe. Please note that no products or services will be provided in exchange for payments submitted via these links, nor will it make me work more, but it will help to reduce the daily stress of managing my finances. :)

I have also been considering working on private consulting contracts and managed hosting for Forgejo instances. If you are interested in taking advantage of such services, please send an email to forgejo(at)nyxal(dot)com.

Contact

If you need to get in touch, the easiest way to get a hold of me is to join the Forgejo space on Matrix and ping me in the relevant public channel. I am also available in several of the main channels in the Codeberg space. I do not accept unsolicited DM requests from unknown users. If you are seeking tech support, please just ask your question in the respective public channel and wait for someone who knows the answer.

You can also send an email to cbpr(at)crystalc(dot)net. This inbox is monitored, but you should not necessarily expect a quick response, or any at all, unless your message is very important.

Finally, if you need to contact me urgently and the methods discussed above appear to be ineffective at the moment, I can be reached via Signal (crystal.306), however keep in mind that I will not accept any unsolicited requests from anyone I don't immediately recognize.

^{avatar: Mari Tamaki, Sora Yori mo Tooi Basho - art © Madhouse, Inc.}