Took some time to get around to another update no?
And here I was on last time to say I probably would not need a deadline! Hah!

So what happened?
Mostly a change of pace at work. I didn’t have the same time as I used to to pursue side projects like this one.

With that in mind, I will reduce my commitments, If I sense that I can’t get anything together that is relevant enough for a weekly post then I will simply hold off untill I have something to say.

So what have I done?

Well, there has been a number of things happening with my nextcloud!
There is now a https redirect to force the use of SSL when visiting the web front-end.
I have set up a cron job that visits the engine regularly, which makes my irregular logins go much smoother since there is no week-long backlogs of tasks for the nextcloud server to deal with first.
I have updated nextcloud twice.
The Nextcloud client is now installed on my home PC and phone. All content that used to live on Dropbox and Google Drive has been downloaded and those two have been abandoned. (Not emptied, just abandoned for now)
The phone automatically uploads new photos, like I used to do with Dropbox.
Cleaned up the repository some, created a shared folder and a publicly linked (hosted) folder as well as a shortcut to access it.

I have worked some .htaccess magic for my image repo, now it automatically tries to find a file by appending .jpg, .png and .gif to the requested filename and redirects there if the URL does not correspond to a file already.
If there is still nothing, it gives you the domain root folder so you can select your image from a list.
Combine that with a custom search engine in Vivaldi and I can now type in “img 42” which vivaldi expands to https://img.corvo.se/42 which the server redirects to
https://img.corvo.se/42.jpg

Nice!

Similarly. I have created a custom “search engine” shortcut for my Etherpad. I just type “pad name” and I get the pad with that name
http://shortpad.corvo.se:9001/p/name

Also newsworthy. I have built a new PC!
The last one was built in Q1 2012 to celebrate my first real job (and salary!). So I tried to make it the best system that I could build for 15K SEK.
Strictly focused on utility was the plan back then, with a simple, clean and opaque chassis, my LAN days were in the past.
The only two “extreme” things about it that I can think of is the two Sata SSDs in RAID0 configuration, and the dual 1080p widescreens.
Corvus was its name, and it has served me well. It is still a tough beast that can handle new releases on medium-high settings.

This new rig was meant to be a magnum opus, the best PC I had ever built. A showpiece that would be allowed to cost what it may. This time it should have all the bells and whistles I can think of.
Side window, LED strips, Water cooling, NVME M.2 SSD, configurable LED-lit mechanical keyboard, a 4K Monitor.
Water cooling is something I have wanted to do since I first heard of it as a teenager. And NVME SSDs are so insanely fast on paper that I just had to test it out!
The 4K was an afterthought, but it is essentially a quad 1080 monitor setup packed into a single monitor! My regret here is not going for >60 Hz when I had the opportunity. But 4K >60Hz are expensive.
Turns out, you don’t notice the increased resolution as much.
The mechanical keyboard feels nice, but in hindsight it is not worth the 1K SEK extra as it was in this case. The lighting is real nice though, and I tell myself that this keyboard, albeit expensive, will probably last for some time.

What else?
I finally found a terminal that can run a pokemon theme!
Some time ago me and a colleague found an app that allows you to set a pokemon background and theme to your terminal windows.
Unfortunately, I work in windows and the application did not work with cmd.
I have come to realise that this is mostly because of cmd not having the necessary features and is not a limitation of the app.
But I found another terminal that is called Hyper, and it has its own pokemon app.
I’m so happy!

I have deleted the server that used to run my email. All in all, it was an interesting experiment, but I honestly have little interest in the inevitable troubleshooting it would require, and being such a critical system on top of that.
So instead I will be running the email through a cPanel server. A shared one for now, but I expect to set up a dedicated VPS or even a machine for it at some point when I stop being cheap.

I have created a ssh config on my work computer that automatically completes the username and identity file for all of my work and hobby servers. A nice shorthand indeed that saves me from doing copy paste on the keyfile names all the time! My SSH now also enforces strict fingerprinting, so that it will refuse to connect to a host that does not have it’s fingerprint in the known-hosts, and saves new ones only to /dev/null.

I think that is it in terms of new stuff.
As for plans. I am abandoning the email server on anaflabet.

I also plan to move the Etherpad to the shared cPanel account if possible. My hope is to make it more easily managed. But it will be tricky since I clearly remember how hard it was to set up in the first place.
Mayhap there is a suitable plugin for nextcloud that can replace it?

The VPN will have to stay on the VPS for now, at least until i figure out something better.