Coming back
It’s been roughly two and a half years since a RAID contoler crash wiped out StrangerThanFriction. Since that annoying and educational day (never buy 3ware, always have automated backups) I’ve taken a couple of half-hearted stabs at putting the site back up. Losing a substantial amount of content certainly took its toll on my motivation and, frankly, the hassles involved in managing a colocated server just so I could store files and shout into the ether didn’t seem worth it.
For the last couple of years the domain’s been parked on a Dotster host waiting for me to get the motivation up to deal with it. Mainly, it was just an expensive way to keep the domain up and forwarding email. The hosing service itself was such an unmitigated PITA to use that any irregular swell of enthusiasm I might have had to get back in the game soon crashed upon the unyielding rocks of a truly shitty web-based management system. If you’ve ever tried to use a computer while wearing oven mits you have a rough idea of the amount of control offered.
Strangely, it seems that happenstance and idle curiosity won through where mere effort failed outright. Earlier today someone posted a question to a mailinglist I happen to be on. They wanted a VPS, a Virtual Private Server, along with a laundrylist of must-haves: shell access, full priviledges to install and configure any software, solid reliability and dirt cheap. Usually, that’s a pick two type of propisition and internally I scoffed while reading the request. After all, it was for these very needs that I’d gone to the trouble of colocating my own server – anything else was either Made by Matel or out of the price range of a casual geek.
To my surprise, the first couple of replies weren’t jeers and scoffing (as is usual for pretty much any request on this list) but rather recommendations for an outfit called Linode. Curious, and somewhat bored with reviewing acres of code, I checked out the site and what they had to offer. Honestly, it was dead-on. If you’re in any way interested in setting up a linux server on the cheap I highly suggest checking them out – and if not, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say, my curiosity was piqued and for the grand sum of $21 and 20 minutes’ time I had a debian-based VPS up and running. No set up fees, no contract length, no unwieldly configuration process… Just beautiful. It actually took longer to get the nameservers redirected through Dotster’s crappy interface than it did to set up the OS, install apache, mySQL and sendmail.
End result, with a little tinkering I now have a fully-functional linux server with blogging software and mail services happily churning away. The annoyance factor thus removed I’m thinking it’s time to get back into the swing of things. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing with the site in the medium-term, but for now I’m just liking the idea of having a place to once again scatter my thoughts without restricting them to 140-character soundbytes or broadcasting them to the vast and sundry masses of Facebook.
For those who have the interest, I suppose this is a “watch this space” type of post. And, in the mean time, I’m putting together some linky-links to keep you all entertained.
Okay, back to tinkering… I have some photo projects coming up that need a little attention if they’re ever going to come to fruition.