Scott Vranesh-Fallin
Writer • Open Source Technologist • Maquisard
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Writer • Open Source Technologist • Maquisard
Personal stories written at the edge of sleep by an insomniac American—intimate, honest stories about the current state of the world and the cost of all things—both material and spiritual.
Original Story
A brief, evocative note about the story — where it came from, what it’s about.
Link to Sample StoryOriginal Story
Another short note — a story fragment, a mood, a season it belongs to.
Link to Sample StoryOriginal Story
One more line of copy — keep it as spare as the stories themselves.
Link to Sample StoryOriginal Essay
A brief, evocative note about the story — where it came from, what it’s about.
Link to Sample StoryOriginal Essay
A brief, evocative note about the story — where it came from, what it’s about.
Link to Sample StoryOriginal Essay
A brief, evocative note about the story — where it came from, what it’s about.
Link to Sample Story
Paradise, Nevada, U.S.A.
36.0972° N, 115.1467° W
This site is largely under construction. It really just serves as a place to hang my résumé on-line. I'll be adding stories, essays, and videos in the near future... at least that is the plan.
Now, for a bio:
Scott Vranesh-Fallin was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently resides in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife of 20 years and two cats.
He is a long-time privacy advocate, recently turned activist.
He has traveled to 43 of the 50 states and a few foreign countries. He lived abroad (well, Canada) during his senior year of high school. He has through-hiked about half of the Appalachian Trail (from Georgia to the Pennsylvania-New Jersey state line, roughly 1,200 miles).
He once lived and studied at the Rochester Zen Center, earning his keep by assisting with the construction of a new zendo (meditation hall) at their rural retreat center in Batavia, New York.
By day he works an IT job. By night he works on his first novel and hacks on Scheme and Python code.
Scott is a life-long martial artist, though he's never been what one would call belt or promotion driven. He is currently at the "apprentice" level of the Libre Knife Fighting Guild under founder and head instructor, Scott Babb.
A polyglot developer, he is working on becoming bilingual in human languages. He has a native's facility with English and is very much a beginner with Spanish.
His pronouns are: he/him/his.
Contact for all inquiries.. →Original Video
A brief, evocative note about the video — where it came from, what it’s about.
Original Video
Another short note — a story fragment, a mood, a season it belongs to.
Original Video
One more line of copy — keep it as spare as the videos themselves.
Original Video
One more line of copy — keep it as spare as the videos themselves.
Original Video
One more line of copy — keep it as spare as the videos themselves.
Original Video
One more line of copy — keep it as spare as the videos themselves.
I've always dabbled in coding... since I was a kid spending divorced dad weekends with my father. He'd take me to work at the phone company and sit me in front of a PDP-10. I taught myself C and Assembly Language out of boredom.
Feel free to take a look at my GitHub page, linked to by the button immediately below. There are a variety of projects represented there, from a kernel level security-oriented module to some hacking I did on a consumer-focused EEG toy. More will be uploaded when I get around to it.
View GitHub ProfilePrivacy is not a luxury—it is a precondition for free thought, free speech, and free association. Below are two tools I use and advocate for.
Tor, or "The Onion Router", routes your internet traffic through a distributed network of volunteer-operated relays, masking your IP address and browsing habits from surveillance, censorship, and corporate data harvesting.
I run a couple of Tor relays as a small contribution to the network’s health. It costs me $12 USD per month to run the two relays and there is a very minimal amount of time required to administer them. I run them on Debian Linux, the only Linux distribution with a social contract and an emphasis on the freedom in "free software". If you value your online privacy, consider downloading Tor Browser or running a relay yourself.
My Tor relays are called Orwell and Vonnegut. You can click on those links to learn more about them.
Tails is portable Linux distribution that fits on a USB thumb drive. You plug it into a computer's USB port and reboot the computer into Tails. Once you do this, all of your traffic will be routed through the Tor network, guaranteeing some privacy. I have a USB drive, styled as a bracelet, that I have loaded with Tails so it is always accessible when I require enhanced computer security. Public libraries are often really good places to use your Tails installation. USB port security is often not turned on at libraries. Tails is a great way to excersize your First Ammendment rights of Free Speach and Privacy at libraries, which I believe are the cathedrals of the First Ammendment.
This, of course, has all been U.S. centric. Rest assured, Tor and Tails can help you in your country, too. Just exercise caution, as required.
GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is the open-source implementation of the OpenPGP standard. It allows you to sign and encrypt email, files, and communications so that only the intended recipient can read them.
If you wish to correspond with me privately, obtain GnuPG and write to ask for my public key—I am happy to share it.
Proton Mail is a great encrypted eMail provider with both free and paid options. The free option is more than adequate for most personal uses and I suggest you and your friends communicate with it.
Proton Mail also offers VPN service along with tools like a calendar, a wordprocessor (Docs), and spreadsheet software (Sheets)... along with storage (Drive), and more, much like Google's office suite.
And as for private, instant messaging, Signal seems to be a very popular and solid mobile phone app.
I periodically publish a Substack on digital privacy, safety, and how to exercise your First Ammedment rights using Free and Open Source (FOS) software.
Delivered via Substack. Unsubscribe any time.
Should you have something to say or something to tell me, fell free you use the email address below:
scott@vranesh-fallin.com