Let’s be honest, I don’t really write that much, and I probably won’t “finally start writing more,” but I do like to tinker with my site and try new things. So here we are, another rebuild, this time with Astro.

It gave me the opportunity to learn a few new things, try some new ideas, and ultimately I like my site even better now—and boy is it blazing fast even though the script bundle is larger than before!

November 11th, 2022, my beloved Casio (????-2022), who had taken suddenly ill, passed away. He was a plentiful, gorgeous cat, More than a dreamboat, he was a majestic “dream-barge” loverboy, who loved so very much to be on me. I miss him dearly.

It’s been about a year since I redesigned my website using eleventy. I mostly liked the redesign, but had some reservations—both about eleventy, and some style nuances.

After long consideration, I decided to switch to hugo. Why?

For half a year now I’d been considering building this as a static site. For years, I’ve mainly used WordPress, though I’ve toyed around with other methods several times over the years. I’m sure I’ll change it all again someday…

The thing is, while a web-based admin & writing interface seems desirable in theory, I found myself avoiding it. I basically live in my code editor anyway, why not make it the place I also write for my website?

My partner occasionally hosts some karaoke, and lately has been using software from OpenKJ, which is pretty nifty. The creator of that project released, some time back, a request service you can pay to use—it lets you upload your song library from the main software, and then lets people search and request songs while you’re hosting.

They also released a little standalone version of this that you can host yourself, which is right up my alley, so I’ve done that. However, it hasn’t been updated since 2018, and while the API hasn’t changed, the interface is a little wonky and not great on mobile. So for a while, I’ve been meaning to fork it and improve it…

After getting OpenWrt working on my EdgeRouter 4, since I’ve grown accustomed to the flexibility & ease of Caddy in other situations, I wondered if I could use it in this case. Turns out, yes! Especially thanks to Siger Yang’s notes and this cgi-ubus script. I had to make some adjustments on top of what Yang describes, so here’s what worked for me:

Mid-2021 I noticed it seems like Ubiquiti has quietly discontinued their EdgeRouter lines (they’re increasingly sold out, there haven’t been firmware updates in a while), and since I like to keep my devices’ firmware up to date I became a little concerned.

In looking for solutions I eventually found I could extend the life of my EdgeRouter 4, which is otherwise pretty solid hardware, by installing OpenWrt.

UPDATE 2023-01-10: Well, that didn’t last long. On some reflection and limited use, I realized there isn’t really any reason to federate my blog. The experience isn’t as good as it could be, and other reasons better explored by Kev Quirk. You can follow the RSS feed, and beyond that, I like things simpler these days.

Original content of this post about the ActivityPub plugin for WordPress follows:

Adapted from a few recipes around the internet, with adjustments to make it taste like something. It’s quite good!

Slightly simplified adaptation of Martha Rose Shulman’s recipe, with technique/ingredients borrowed from my Italian-American elders (who did not come from Liguria—apologies to Liguria).