Where are we?
There's another version of this post right above this line as I was typing it. Six full paragraphs about how I've striven to organize and/or publish information in various ways. But, it's a theme I've already written about before. Worse, I gave in to my inclination to begin in the Beginning. As you likely saw, I plan to put my entire publication history here. (Except E2 articles, I guess.) So, those six paragraphs only brought me about two years in the past.
That's unsuitable, because I want to cut the ribbon with a post about today, about these last two months. These words you read now were served on my dollar, on a page I wrote by hand. There's a bit of humblebrag there: the sort of "I did it, and I did it with my hand tied behind my back." But the larger point is that I have wanted to publish my thoughts, without subsidy. The other version of this post ran through the laundry list of hosts that lent a soapbox for my feet, and many others. Xanga, google - via blogger, myspace, even a high school friend of mine.
He, Chase LLoyd, ran his own server and hosted a couple friend/family blogs for a time. Only within the last year did I feel any desire for the same. At the time, a server was some amorphous device for relaying publications. In the intervening time, my understanding of our network deepened, such that I know that any computer can be a server. The inspiration hit home on reading an ars technica article about doing just that.
If you came in through the front door, though, you know the punch line to this story: this isn't my server. It is not the computer from my high school years saved from the electronic waste heap. It could have been, but for my decision to run that off of wifi rather than ethernet. The router is in the master bedroom. It would have been selfish to ask them to deal with the noise & heat of an outdated tower. Others have succeeded in those conditions. Unfortunately, the server ubuntu OS I used developed amnesia for its own IP address. I fought with it for many hours over some days, but it just wasn't worth it to me.
So I cast about for the next best thing, paid hosting. Most offer plans with an annual sum for a budget of space and bandwith. A small business might find them a good fit, but the price & affordances were impossibly extravagant for a nascent personal site. Luckily, someone recommended a host - nearlyfreespeech - that functioned like an off brand cellular service, whereby I prepay a sum that is only deducted in response to use.
The service has been a good education in networked linux use. This isn't my first brush with a non-windows system: one of my other computers runs Fedora, and I use cygwin for some software. But, the support materials here are much better focused than my prior research into goading a dinosaur. Then, it was a flurry of targeted forum searches to solve the problem of the moment. Were I to try again, I anticipate much better results.
But I don't need to. There is more than enough work right here, massaging old content into the structure I desire. So, that's where I'm headed for the forseeable future.