Well, i decided to brush up my simple HTML page and created a fully linked wiki on the subject. Please take a look, in the hope it will be useful for at least one fellow one-eyed leg-pegged passionate data hoarder.
I've seen a chunk of self hosting posts & this guide also looks awesome. Main issue right is hardware. I have a laptop from 2012 but it lacks USB 3.0 & I'm not sure if it could handle something like this. I'm quite excited to continue researching this & giving a shot though!
Gentoo is a bit of a weird choice but maybe I am prejudiced from using it as a Desktop environment versus use as a server. But in any case, good to write this up.
And by not using any docker, you can be 100% sure of what you are actually installing. instead of resorting to trust binaries somebody else put together in an opaque container.