I spent way too long trying to find an easy method of uploading images to my VPS to use for my blogs... I couldn't get any of the pretty solutions to work.
I ended up using tiny file manager and a caddy file browser as my solution.
I normally get one particular sandwich from this restaurant I normally go to, but I decided to get something different just to try something new!
It did not pan out (¬､¬).
Tbf it wasn't bad, just not as good as what I normally get.
Okay I know I said no more webdev but apparently I'm a liar who hates tags and tables looking bad on my medialog.
I fixed the tables to look better on mobile, and also drumroll please: I added comments to my medialog!
This system doesn't rely on mastodon/fediverse, and I deliberately designed it that way since I don't want to have to create mastodon posts for every little book or game review post. If people choose to be nice and reply to a fedi post I make announcing a medialog, I can manually add those myself.
I think I want to implement this later: a native like button
https://iine.to/
Wow I published two blog posts today! Feeling very productive 📝
I thought Pokopia was kind of boring at first but I just sunk 3 hours doing very basic tasks, and I kind of get it now
It's totally a zen game where you accomplish little goals and and the rest of the world melts away. I kind of need that kind of relaxing gameplay right now
Pokopia is so cozy that I keep falling asleep trying to play LOL
oh I also forgot about Phanpy, which I installed a few days ago. Well, that was barely harder than just typing a few commands and fixing the mapped ip address, and it worked right away.
It's a very slick front-end for fediverse, I really like it so far. And it works on some really cool principles, like rendering on the client-side (your browser) so it doesn't tax the server as much. That's useful for me since I'm using a self-hosted hollo instance.
I think I got most of the webdev and other projects out of me lol. Recently, I implemented:
The only thing I have left really is to maybe add a guest comments form for my ranobe blog? But that one isn't really necessary since Publii is a desktop CMS (I'd have to add the comments manually anyways), so it's not really worth it.
I do have some aspirations of making fan shrines for my fav series, but I also think I'd like to learn a little more html styling/coding since I want those to be handmade and customized for each series.
I finally got around to adding a proper form for comments on my blog, and it even submits the comment as a json to my github repo, so no more manual copy-pasting for me!
Not that I had a lot to do anyways....
I finally figured out why I've been waking up so early. It's because my pain meds are wearing off and my arm is waking me up...😭
It's definitely gotten better (I can do regular movements again!), but it's still enough to disrupt my sleep😮💨
For some reason, even though nothing woke me up, I woke up at 6:30 this morning, so I only got 5 hours of sleep....
I didn't mean to turn my microblog into just a webdev-centric thing (it's just been my main interest/hobby/obsession recently), so here's something different.
Even though I've been actively reading light novels for a while, this whole month has been a mess for my other hobbies lol. I really haven't been gaming or reading that much. Either too tired or too focused on something else.
oh well, it doesn't hurt to have rest periods.
So I think I may have figured out what the problem is with my Hollo install. It's been crashing because of too many requests locking parts of the database.
I'm not sure why nobody else was dealing with this issue, but if my instance stays up without hanging, then hopefully problem solved! Then I'll post about the solution on the hollo github.
btw all I did was add some extra postgres db command lines to the docker compose.yaml to prevent locking/deadlocks if it's taking too long, so that one request wins and the other dies.
Very high noon-core.
I had to fix my mastodon comments astro scripts since there was some hardcoded stuff in there, and now I have a new server where I'll be pulling comments from. Whew technical debt.... ( ˘ ^˘ )=3
BTW I FINALLY got a shipping notification for Pokopia! Gotta wait till next Tuesday, but I've been patient enough...
Things I had to make for my hollo instance today:
1. job to kill zombie processes
2. job to kill stuck processes related to the database
3. job to monitor and delete cached media without accidentally deleting my uploaded pictures.
Yeah I knew it was going to be rough, but not this rough LOL.
Is it weird that I still kind of prefer this software to mastodon?
I'm still in awe that I was able to get a Hollo fedi instance up and running on a hetzner VPS when I know practically nothing about Linux (other than installing some stuff on steam deck), docker containers, and commands.
I know we hate AI for stealing jobs and the life's work of any creator (rightly so), but when it comes to code/technical stuff like this, receiving personalized step-by-step advice can't be beat.
Of course sometimes it hallucinates and is wrong, but it can usually be worked around by consulting official guides as well and changing the way you ask your questions.
Okay I've been thinking about it forever but I finally made the jump! I have my own fediverse server now!!
I chose to go with Hollo over other choices because it fulfilled my needs:
I'm excited to use it and see how it goes!
Why do I need a cron job to setup auto-refresh intervals in FreshRSS? Makes no sense...isn't it supposed to be user friendly? Why wouldn't it be a config in the admin settings of the application??
So along with setting up FreshRSS, I wanted to try self-hosting some kind of fediverse instance even though it's ill advised (1). I've also seen that it can be dangerous as well, as single-user instances have an uphill battle fighting against harassment and bad actors (2).
It was mostly out of curiosity and a desire to test the free google cloud VM before it expires. I managed to get Hollo up and running after some trudging through SSH with Docker commands I barely understand. It worked! I managed to create an account and post a status.
But the free tier VM that I was working with was not up to the task of running Hollo (not enough RAM). Maybe I could have tried a different software, something more lightweight like snac or GoToSocial but I was tired by that point. I shut it down afterwards.
I'm quite satisfied with the mastodon instance that I'm on, but I also have this weird compulsion/interest in having my own instance. I might try hosting on a Raspberry Pi in the future.
Anyways, I stayed up late last night to experiment with this stuff, and now I'm quite sleepy...
I made a very silly update to my microblog. I added a follows/followers section! This is different from my "friends" page since this is supposed to mimic masto/bsky/tumblr/etc and is specific to microblogs.
If you're reading this and you are subscribed to the rss feed of this site, please let me know so that I can add you! Doubly so if you have a microblog of your own ദ്ദി(｡•̀ ,<)~✩‧₊ I would love to follow you!
So after doing some more reading, turns out the Google free tier only last for 90 days anyways.. so I guess I'll enjoy using FreshRSS for now and think about if I want to pay for a VPS/server... It is kind of a pain to maintain.
I decided to mess around and try setting up a FreshRSS instance on Google cloud with the free tier, let's see if it actually stays free lmao. I got it working at least!
Two tools that help me format my liveblog tables:
Look at this awesome button that was made with the ritual.sh button generator.
I'm definitely going to add this website to 88x31 button list I'm currently keeping.
I've started using RSS properly now. Before, I would use RSS Parrot to read certain blog feeds on Mastodon, but it was very limited functionality. Now I'm setup with both a phone app and a desktop browser extension, and will be searching for creators to follow.
This was one of the main resources I used when researching how to build my hobby sites. It's still kept up to date as well.
I woke up early today from moving my arm the wrong way and causing myself pain :/
Cleaned up my main site (which is a carrd) since there were too many links in the navbar. Now all the writing links have a dedicated page!
I just realized... couldn't the guestbook I made be used for Microblogging??? 😱
You just have to make the entry form password protected like the reply and delete functions!
Wow I could have saved so much time implementing micropub...
I've given up on reddit being a worthwhile place to go for social media. For every crumb of useful information or interesting personal stories, there is so much ragebait on that site.
Plus people are super rude to newcomers of any subreddit, it's freaking annoying.
I created a guestbook !
It's made using netlify tools, such as blobs, forms, and serverless functions. The entries are stored in a json file.
You can see how it's built at this github repo.
I updated the micropub.js script to handle both articles and notes, and also auto-apply paragraph tags in notes so that I don't have to enter the tags myself.
Is it excessive to have both solutions? maybe. But I like having options.
I finished watching the 2nd season of the One Piece Live Action yesterday, and it's been a fun watch, but I really wonder how far they'll get in this adaptation.
Apparently they're aiming for the time skip as the stopping point but at the pace of 1 season every 2 years, it'll be a LONG while before they ever get there, nevermind if they even manage to avoid cancellation considering how expensive the show is.
I appreciate them actually covering each arc though, and not just cutting whole arcs out.
The javascript for the microblog was so broken, half the functions (like the direct links or the loading button) weren't working and I only discovered this after I already posted that blog post about microblogs which includes the scripts (embarassing).
Anyways, it's fixed now!
The meds are doing a good job of treating the burning and aching feeling in my elbow, but every so often I'll move my arm and get a sharp shooting pain that makes me loosen my grip.
I can't even open the meds by myself cause I've lost the grip strength.
The poll I ran on mastodon about buying Pokopia finally finished, and most everyone told me to go play my other games instead of buying a new one lol.
In the end, I decided to order Pokopia "physically", and I'm waiting for it to ship out since it hasn't been restocked yet. I'm actually surprised nobody picked the "physical" option. More people actually opted for digital instead.
Truly a sign of the times.
Okay I got checked out at the doctor, luckily nothing major is broken but I got a pretty gnarly injury so I'll be in a sling for a bit...
I hit my elbow against the door yesterday while carrying a printer and thought it was a minor injury...
Now I can't even move my arm or weight bear with it...and it's my dominant arm 😭
I've been using Capy Reader as my RSS reader for my phone recently, and I love the fact that it doesn't require you to make an account! You could just add feeds locally!
Maybe this might be a bad idea when you lose your feeds list but... it's so refreshing to have something that just works.
I feel like every new feature I add to this microblog makes it that much more removed from the original simplicity of the Pastille template which works solely on HTML and CSS, but it also makes it easier for me to use soooo ¯\_ (ᵕ—ᴗ—)_/¯
I would rather have something functional that I actually like using.
Oooh I got my micropub endpoint all implemented! I can post to my statuslog/microblog without having to manually edit html if I don't want to.
I was inspired by ArimaMary who managed to get it working on their site and mentioned using Quill!
This is much easier than typing raw html in github lol.
I went to get my library card renewed (I normally use it for ebooks) and I'm reminded of how awesome it is as a resource.
I normally don't checkout physical books but I did this time just to have a reason to go back. Plus sometimes its just nice to read physically.
I've been in a bit of a reading slump recently, so hopefully this will break me out of it!
I can't decide if I want to get Pokopia or not because it's expensive and not really available physically, so I put a poll out on mastodon.
I'm curious to see what the results will end up being. I might cave but I'm holding on for now!
I started this as a blog post and realized it's probably better as a "microblog".
I was so exhausted at the end of last week that I decided not to do anything "productive" over the weekend. I hate to call it "burnout", because I feel like it's not as severe as true burnout. There's not anything that particularly triggered it, but maybe work stress has been building up gradually.
When it gets to this point, I hardly want to do anything, including my hobbies. No reading, gaming, or writing. I just don't want to do anything that involves thinking. What does that leave me with? Watching things, mostly.
I've been keeping up with the Ultima Retrospective series from Majuular, and he released a new one on Ultima VIII. It's 3 hours long, and a fascinating watch.
I also caught up on the recent season of Bridgerton. If I had to rank the seasons: 2, 4, 1, 3. I didn't really like Colin as much, and Penelope deserved better during her season. I really liked Sophie as a character, so she beat out Daphne.
I also watched some compilations of scenes from the game Dispatch. I'm definitely dabbling in the fandom, even though I've never played the game.
At least I'm feeling a little better now.
I got to meet up with a friend who I haven't seen in a while this week!!
I'm really happy about it but this week was super exhausting. Hopefully I can recover this weekend.
I've started taking a supplement to help with my migraines, I hope it works!
Happiness is mango kulfi on a warm day, right before bed.
I don't know how I managed to do it, but I injured my knee while going up the stairs and now it hurts 😭
By the way, I got so many comments on my blog post today about Finding My Way to You in an MMO World!! I never realized that people were actually reading my ranobe blog!
I updated this now/status microblog so that I can archive posts for every year. I was inspired to do this with the original template by NomNomNami, but I used some javascript to make sure that my anchor links to each post still work. Very cool!
I just completed Animal Well, and I'm honestly kind of mad that I couldn't finish the game on my own. I got 90% of the way there, but the last section of the game is so incredibly hard that I just couldn't do it.
Of course, I guess this is why I don't play platformers and other games that rely on reaction timing and precision. I wish devs would at least implement some kind of accessibility or cheat that allows people to just finish the game.
I'm so mad that I woke up at 3 am on my day off. I JUST WANT TO SLEEP 😭
I really debated putting one of the books I read recently on my ranobe blog but it's an R18 BL novel that's mostly 🌶️🌶️🌶️ so I don't really want that on my front page lol. Plus I don't have anything that compelling to say about it? So I put it on my medialog instead.
I finished Mother of Learning earlier this week (I wrote my thoughts about the series here) and I don't think I'm going to be over this series anytime soon. The depression you get from finishing a really good series is so real...
I might even consider writing some fanfiction since I have some cute ideas for my fav ship, Z/Z.
I fixed the filters function on my fanfic archive to collapse and display all the tags rather than scroll! It'll be easier to use now (lol). Small improvements!
Whenever shark week is coming, I get a killer migraine that can only be defeated by my specialty migraine meds. I wish I didn't need such an expensive medication to treat them.
I'm so looking forward to the long weekend, I've been so tired lately 😴
I made some updates to the static comments functionality, now I can add comments manually as well! This helpful when I get comments submitted either through my contact form, or as a reply to another mastodon post rather than the main one.
I stayed up late reading last night, and now my eyes have been burning all day. And I have to get up early tomorrow :C
Ugh, when I get into any kind of project on the computer, I get so obsessed with making things work that I spend way too much time on it (Without taking breaks!) I really don't wanna do that but it's a compulsion lol.
Anyways, I made the comments on my publii blog static too! I uploaded the project to Github