Welcome to The Empty Cup

Hi, I’m Chris Su.

The name “The Empty Cup” (半瓶斋 in Chinese) comes from a reminder from my mentor - “Don’t be a half-bottle that makes the most noise.” I keep that in mind, so what you’ll find here are just some half-baked ideas and tinkering notes, nothing fancy.

About Me

I had to take a break from school in middle school due to depression. Later, with the help of my family and teachers, I started over from vocational school. That experience got me interested in two things:

One is tech. Code and systems have this reassuring certainty - you get what you put in. That’s why I ended up in DevOps. I like the feeling of building and maintaining systems.

The other is psychology and theology. I wanted to understand what I went through, and see if I could help others going through similar struggles. So I studied psychology systematically and got first aid certified, thinking maybe I could lend a hand when someone needs it.

What I’m Working On

• Homelab: I’ve set up a lab at home where I like to self-host services with open-source solutions. Partly for fun, partly to keep my data in my own hands.
• Freelance and Charity: I take on some freelance projects and donate all the income. Someone helped me when I was down, now I want to pass it forward. Check out my Store and Philanthropy pages for details.

Final Thoughts

I started this blog mainly to document my tinkering process and thoughts, hoping it might help someone else who’s figuring things out.

There are bound to be mistakes in my posts - it’s “The Empty Cup” after all. If you spot something wrong or have better ideas, feel free to reach out.

You can find me here:

• Github

Also go by: Chris, 脆脆鲨 (CuiCuiSha), 白芷 (Baizhi)

Contact:

• Email: [email protected]
• Telegram: lilysuart (Note: You need to add me as a contact first due to my account settings)