My homelab, projects and how I learn for my certificates

The certificates I get are actually very theoretical. They are just to put them in a pdf and send that out along with my other references from school, uni and work. You can — and I did — install VMs and simulate stuff in Packet Tracer and the like for learning and practice, but a lot of it is just memorization of commands, terminology, and workflow steps on top of everything else.

However, in order to memorize, learn, and demonstrate things better, I do have my homelab, documentation, Anki cards (flashcards), and whiteboards filled with notes and graphic-facilitation-style images. These are basically visual anchors and memory palaces that use the Loci and Major methods in ways I haven’t seen before. I record audio, do practice tests, use ChatGPT and NotebookLM, bought online programs — and if I were to show all of that, I would probably just confuse you, or it would take a lot of time to structure it and turn it into something you can read up on or watch as a YouTube video.

I also practiced network diagramming along with other documentation, and I’ll be happy to discuss this uncensored in a professional environment. At this point, I just don’t want to share everything on the public web.

 

I did spend some money and time setting up some sort of DMZ, segmentation, VLANs, and Hyper-V and Proxmox environments — all separated into different network segments for security reasons. As you can see, this Cisco switch is super old and not secure. But that also forces me to use the Cisco CLI from time to time and get real experience with switching and networking instead of only simulating.

So this whole mix of learning methods makes me somewhat of an “omni learner”: hands-on experience, auditory learning, visual learning, plus simulating the actual thing (the exam). A lot of it is the Loci Method, the Major Method, and diagramming / facilitation-style visuals to memorize lists of ports, tools and options, and workflows. It got a bit extreme — I even got a crown from Miro because I’m in the top 1% of users of their whiteboard app. 

 

In the end, the actual project work is what’s the most fun, compared to just running some commands and seeing what they show. Another reason I don’t share everything is that what I do is still junior level and not fully hardened, and again, some of it is outdated tech. I do get a lot of traffic from China and the US — not from employers I applied to.

 

Over time, I update my homelab and post older documents. For now, my main focus is still the certificates because that’s what most people look at. If you are reading this, you are in the top 1% of people who care and who are actually interested. This is for you — and I’ll be happy to demonstrate more in detail in a live discussion.