Short Opening Blurb
This website hasn't been around for too long in the grand scheme of things on the internet (eight years or so as of 2020), although it does have a bit of history.
It started out some time in 2012 under a different domain name and utilizing centralized hosting space. That site is still available although I don't perform much maintenance on it these days.
Some time in September 2017, the hosting provider (GoDaddy) changed something having to do with their backing web servers and it broke pretty much everything on my site that had any form of "active" content. Which, being as though the site played host to numerous "web games" and a few other projects, as well as a rather large number of resources I had probably long since forgotten about, was a real problem. It was at this point that I decided I was going to take the matter of hosting the site into my own hands. This way, I would know just what software was running at any given time, I would know how much storage space I had, and I could upgrade the hardware and software any time I wanted.
This particular site is hosted on a small computer tucked out of the way in the basement, with the dynamic DNS service being provided by Afraid.org. For right now, I only have the mooo.com subdomain, however I have discovered that mooo.com is blocked by web filtering in some locations, while others provided by Afraid are not. It is possible that another subdomain will pop up at some point.
In the three or so years (again, as of this writing in April 2020) this site has been online, it's only seen two backing servers. Neither of them have suffered any failures of any kind, but rather the current machine was an incremental upgrade, and it seemed easier to simply replace the whole system and then use the old one for something else. Further information about these is available on the computers subsection of this site, but I will provide some details here.
The Swervers
CiaraTech SFF I (2017-2019)
This system was a castoff at my then-current place of work. As found, it was nothing more than a case and a motherboard, and possibly an optical drive. I supplied my own CPU, RAM, PSU and hard drive. Of course, being a small form factor system, a power supply was difficult to source, and the one I had in my collection already wasn't a very good fit. But it worked, and that was more than good enough for me.
I supplied the system with an 80 GB hard drive. At the time, this seemed like more than enough space, and I didn't want to waste a larger drive on a system that probably wasn't going to use it. The system itself ran Ubuntu Linux Server 16.04, which at the time was the current Long Term Support (LTS) release. The system was then thrust into a corner alongside the internet connectivity equipment, and that was that.
I noticed that from time to time the system would shut itself down. This I attributed to the Bestec power supply I had installed. Eventually, disk space grew to being a small concern, and the operating system software grew rather outdated. Since Ubuntu doesn't really seem to be capable of upgrading over a secure shell (SSH) connection, plans were made to bring the system upstairs and upgrade some of the hardware in the process.
CiaraTech SFF II (2019-Present)
Around the time this was all playing out, another huge round of these systems were slated for recycling pickup. These ones, however, contained CPUs and RAM, as well as power supplies. Unfortunately I only thought to grab three of them, although I did pull the RAM out of them all.
This one is a minor upgrade, going from an older E6750 to a newer E8400. I decided that it would be set up to replace the first server.
I decided to do this by cloning the existing hard drive to a new and larger one, resizing the partitions to fit, and upgrading the software stack. This time, I chose to upgrade to the latest and greatest Ubuntu release, which at the time was 19.10.
During the summer of 2020 it became increasingly obvious that in order to successfully have the server stay available all the time, I was going to have to move it under my control. Thus I moved the system upstairs into the "swerver closet" as it has become known, despite the fact that I'd prefer not to add any further heat to the closet.
Before final setup I decided to check out the hardware and also upgrade the software, since Ubuntu 20.04 was now available. It was noted that the CPU had no thermal compound on it! This was not going to be conducive to a hot environment. I am not sure how the system ended up running like this for so long, frankly it's pretty amazing.
As a result, I switched it out for the former DQ35JOE with the E6750 CPU on it. It doesn't really need to take advantage of the newer CPU anyways, but it was nice to have.
So far the system has been very stable, which I think is very surprising for a system that was thrown away. Not that I am complaining. Eventually I will be upgrading it to a newer DQ45CB motherboard with the E8400 CPU. However, other systems need attention first.
Other Things
I don't run this website in anticipation of having any monetary compensation, nor do I accept donations. The hosting is free, and what little electrical power it uses is more than paid for through my YouTube activities.
Things that you'll find on this site include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Technical articles relating to various projects I have undertaken.
- Information relating to some of my various collections.
- Software I have written for use by others, including but not limited to the Number Catcher game, the Music Request System (MRS) and its partner software the Music Request Interface (MRI).
- Information related to Low End Radio, my live streaming radio-esque show.
- Rants. Everybody has to have anger-driven rants on their website.
- Other informative articles that don't fall into the above categories.
Things you will NOT find on this site include, but again are not limited to:
- Advertising. As mentioned above, this is a community service and I don't make money off of it.
- JavaScript, other than its use as a handy instantaneous redirecting tool in some of the aforementioned pieces of software.
- Flash/HTML5 video except in places where having something like a YouTube video embedded enhances the page. I don't host my own videos, however.
- Trackers. Some things, like the previously mentioned software packages, utilize PHP sessions which does drop a session "cookie", and the MRS software can be set up to log user actions. I don't look at these, don't run a public MRS instance set up to do so, and have no desire to know who you are or what you're doing.
- Fake news. I shouldn't have to mention this, but in light of current (2020) world events and some of the "journalism" I have seen in the past few years, this is important.
- Probably other negative things about the internet I am forgetting.
The end-goal of this site is to have something that can be accessed using a myriad of platforms both new and old, and a myriad of different internet connections. I don't have a dial-up connection any longer, but I would certainly like to think that the simplistic nature of these pages isn't a problem even for that kind of connectivity.
I do make use of CSS, if only because I think that black text on a white background is hard on the eyes after a while, and because I am a huge nut for colourful things. Use of PHP server-side scripts is also something you'll find a lot of on this site, again in relation to the various pieces of online software located here.
I haven't got this server set up yet to handle secure HTTP connections. It's probable that will always be the case, as everything I have seen with regards to things like SSL/TLS, HTTPS and things like Let's Encrypt all sound like a major pain.
So long as I can, I do plan to keep this site hosted locally as it is far easier to maintain something I have direct control over. It is possible that I may need to migrate back to a centralized environment for a small period of time in the event that something happens here, or I have to move locations, etc.
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