Sid Spanos

Stockholm, Sweden

Hi, I'm
Sid Spanos.

Practical systems thinking

I build, break, understand and improve systems.

Twenty years in IT and live AV taught me to keep systems working when people depend on them. I still learn by building, testing assumptions and following a problem wherever it leads.

Get in touch Explore the work
GitHub ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Email ↗

~/explore-sid

Portfolio guide

A few ways into my work.

Choose a question to explore the projects behind it.

How do you approach a problem?

Start with what needs to work. Investigate the assumptions, build something I can test, then follow the evidence—even when it changes the plan.

How I work ↗
What changed your mind?

The Fedora rebuild succeeded, but it made me question how much of the result belonged to Atomic and how much came from the definition and scripts around it.

Follow the evidence ↗
Show me a measured improvement.

A lighter version of this portfolio: the same design, with a standalone WordPress theme. The case study includes before-and-after lab measurements and their limitations.

Read the measured results ↗
Where did that judgement come from?

Years of IT and AV in a working hotel and conference operation, where a technical problem immediately affected guests, presenters and colleagues.

The production experience behind the experiments ↗
Want to ask something else? Contact me

How I work

I learn technology by working with it. Some projects become permanent systems. Others prove an idea wrong. Both are useful.

Problem → Investigate → Build → Test → Break → Understand → Improve

The Fedora workstation started with a recovery plan. A clean second machine tested what could actually be rebuilt—and made me separate the benefits of Atomic from the provisioning system around it.

Follow that investigation ↗
01

Projects

RequestLine landing page: the live request board for DJs, with the line let the floor pick the next track over a dark tiled background. 01 Built & Running

RequestLine

How can an audience request music without interrupting the booth?

RequestLine connects QR access, Telegram requests and a live board so the request has a route from the floor to the DJ.

View project Live site
Provisioning flow diagram: MDM settings, profiles, scoping and deployment on one branch; Apple Business Manager feeding DEP config and VPP assignment, converging with a device powering on at auto-enrollment, then profiles applied and the device handed over ready. 03 Built & Running

JAMF TotalOps

How does someone who did not build a system learn to operate it?

JAMF TotalOps connects diagrams to runbooks so an operator can move from a system view to a procedure.

View project Live site
Diagram of the containerised WordPress platform: NGINX reverse proxy at the edge, Docker on Synology DSM, shared Adminer and DNS, and four per-site containers for WordPress, MariaDB, Redis and file access. 04 Built & Running

Containerised WordPress Platform

How can another site be deployed without inventing the platform again?

A repeatable container layout makes each site's application, database and persistent files explicit, including their shared host dependency.

View project
Explore the rest of the projects
10 Built & Running

A lighter portfolio

Replacing Salient while preserving the portfolio design. A measured theme trial: mobile performance 64 to 90, with largest-content load time reduced by 54%.

View project

The Lab

This is where I find out how things actually work. These investigations have different stages and different limits.

When the evidence changes the plan

An experiment does not have to fail completely to teach me something. Sometimes the system works, but the explanation I started with no longer holds up.

A successful rebuild changed how I describe Atomic

The clean-machine test worked. It also showed that much of the reproducibility came from Git, manifests and scripts—not uniquely from the operating system. OS rollback and recovery of personal data remained different jobs.

Read what changed my mind ↗

Judgement shaped by production

The experiments happen in the lab. The judgement came from production.

More than eleven years in IT and AV management at Clarion Hotel Sign meant working across a 558-room hotel and 18 meeting rooms, alongside bars, restaurants and conference operations.

Networks, endpoints, AV and signage were part of the same practical responsibility: helping people do their work when the room was filling up and the event had a start time.

That experience shapes the questions I ask now. What happens when this fails? Can someone else understand it? What will recovery actually require?

More about the experience behind the work ↗
02

What I work with

01Platform and orchestrationKubernetes clusters built from the metal up — immutable nodes, load-balanced control planes, off-cluster persistent storage, and failover behaviour verified by pulling machines rather than reading documentation.

I work across node configuration, API availability and persistent storage, including what happens when a machine disappears.

  • The Talos homelab uses repurposed Latitude hardware and a floating API address verified under node failure.
Explore: Talos Kubernetes Homelab ↗
02Containers and self-hosted infrastructureDocker and KVM workloads on Linux and Synology hosts: reverse-proxied services, object caching, repeatable per-service layouts, and network segmentation planned before the first container starts.

I separate application, database, cache and access layers so each service has an understandable layout and clear dependencies.

  • The WordPress platform combines Docker, MariaDB, Redis and a reverse proxy on Synology, with a repeatable per-site structure.
Explore: Containerised WordPress Platform ↗
03Endpoint and fleet managementJAMF administration across managed Apple estates, with the documentation and diagram work that makes an estate operable by someone other than the person who built it.

I organise operational guidance so administrators can find a procedure and understand the environment without relying on a verbal handover.

  • JAMF TotalOps brings administration documentation into one navigable platform with clickable diagrams.
Explore: JAMF TotalOps ↗
04AV systems and live environmentsOver a decade running IT and AV for a 558-room hotel and its conference operation — rooms that had to work on the day, with no second attempt.

My background combines IT support and AV operations in hospitality and conferences, where technical problems immediately affect presenters, guests and event teams.

  • Alongside the hotel and conference experience, RequestLine is a related live-environment project: QR access and Telegram feed audience requests into a DJ request board.
Explore: RequestLine ↗
05Automation and toolingLocal-first automation: offline model serving, cross-platform command surfaces, and scripted operations that replace the manual steps nobody wants to repeat at 2am.

I connect tools around repeatable tasks, keeping the workflow understandable and giving the operator a clear way to control it.

  • The local AI workbench brings VS Code, Ollama and Stream Deck together. The portfolio also includes AI-operated WordPress through MCP.
Explore: Local AI Development Environment ↗
03

Contact

Got a difficult technical problem?

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