I Made a Web Server

an odds'n'ends stack this week

Bit of a short one this week since I sent out that stack over the weekend of me reading the Epstein jerky emails:

Sometimes I feel like this newsletter is very disorganized. But, to be fair, my brain is disorganized too.

Anyway:

The Fucking Beatles Again

Wait a minute … there are FOUR BEATLES BIOPICS HAPPENING?! FOUR?! The most recorded and scrutinized band in all of modern history is getting FOUR. SEPARATE. BIOGRAPHICAL. PICTURES. ABOUT. EACH. ONE. OF. THEM?

This makes me hate the Beatles! And I like the Beatles! The Beatles are the Star Wars of music! Just call it the BCU at this point! TWO OF THE BEATLES ARE STILL LIVING! What is the point, besides money? Is it money? Is it just money? It’s all money isn’t it.

This is insane. This is the “live action Lion King” of biopics. What could four fucking movies tell us about the Beatles that every single other fucking piece of media about them hasn’t? WHAT ABOUT THE PETER JACKSON THING? Wasn’t that like 7 hours long too?! Oh my god. At least Robbie Williams and Elton John and Weird Al had the decency to do something fun with their biopics. Gag me with a spoon.

All the shit going on in the world right now and Sam Mendes has the gall to send the Four Horsemen of the Beatpocalypse to end it all.

Book Update

The guy I hired to make the book art for my book is doing such a great job. I believe he’s working on the final painting now (yes, actual painting, not digital). I’m excited to reveal it! Meanwhile I still have to finish this third draft edit and then go back and do a final draft pass. I’m hoping to get everything ready for publication by the summertime, but I’ve never done this before so … I’ll keep you posted. But I will say this: my therapist finished the draft I sent her and she said it made her cry. And she has a graduate degree in Creative Writing! I’m telling you, this book is good!

🚨 Nerd Alert 🚨

I’m normally at least a 7/10 on the Nerd-O-Meter with regard to D&D and video games, but lately I’ve been pushing my Nerdosity Quotient into its upper limits. The long and short of it is that I used my Raspberry Pi 4, sitting in my closet for years now, to set up a server for FoundryVTT, a browser-based app that lets you play games like D&D and stuff online with your friends (VTT = virtual tabletop).

For some of you, this will be the end of the newsletter. Thanks for reading!

For the rest of you:

This is a Raspberry Pi 4. I bought it in 20…19? Something like that. It’s about the size of a credit card (though thicker, obviously) and runs Linux. I originally bought it as a media PC for all the TV shows and movies that somehow stumble their way onto various hard drives (as well as Netflix, to be fair), but I found the interface overall to be kind of clunky, so I stored it away.

Fast-forward to now, where I’ve had this Foundry app for a couple of years. I can host games with it, but it requires that people log onto my home computer, literally through my IP address, which makes browsers freak out and warn my friends that I might be a hacker trying to steal their monies. Because of this, I’ve been wanting to try and use my Pi 4 to create a server for Foundry, complete with a domain name that stops the browser freak out, and a couple days ago I just decided to go for it. It’s been pretty challenging, and rewarding!

Here’s what I’ve done in a week:

• set up Raspberry Pi OS onto my Pi 4

• installed Foundry onto my Pi 4, including:

  • the app

  • node.js to run the app

  • a program called pm2 which ensures the app continues running even if I restart the PC

• installed caddy, a versatile program used, in this case, primarily to create a reverse proxy¹ for the purposes of obtaining an SSL certificate, as well as overall security

• spent a lot of time trying to figure out port forwarding² (I’ve done it before for game stuff, but not to this extent)

• bought [domain name]

• pointed [domain] to my router and spent a few hours trying to figure out how to obtain that SSL certificate (an SSL is simply a service that certifies a website is secure, so you can use https:// rather than http://, which is insecure)

• learned how to use iftop to monitor my web traffic (and block my first IP subnet!)

• (basically learned/figured out a bunch of linux-based shit)

• set up a subdomain on my Pi 4 to create [subdomain site] (this is going to be a library of all the TTRPG pdfs I own for my friends to access)

• figured out how to make myself the owner of /var/www/html so that I can access files (this is a very annoying aspect of caddy, where it can’t only access certain folders on my computer. I’m still trying to figure out a way to bypass this)

• password protected [subdomain] through caddy so that only my friends can access it.

• installed rsnapshot to create backups of my Pi 4 stuff

• figured out how to save those backups remotely to my Windows PC rather than on the Pi 4 itself, to save on storage

• generated a list of all the files/folders in my /html directory so that I can more easily make links with them (for the TTRPG library)

• bought 2x SATA SSD enclosures, a 7 USB powered hub, and a new power strip from Best Buy³

• figured out how to format and partition two of my old 1tb SSDs on Linux (and in the ext4 format)

• moved my Foundry installation to one of the SSDs so that I have a lot more storage space to work with

• tried desperately to figure out how to make these SSDs into a NAS (network attached server) so that I can move files onto them easier but apparently I can’t do that because my home computer is also my work computer and so there is extra security involved that includes not letting me map network drives myself (boo)

• put all of this in a shoebox

Obviously I need to organize it better (and make a cutout for the USB hub for easier access), but overall … I think this is pretty dang cool.

I have a few other possible plans for future website stuff, like possibly setting up MediaWiki, which I have been using through MiraHeze to create a wiki for one of my D&D campaign settings. It works fine though and wikis require a bunch of backend php stuff that I don’t know if I want to get into.

So there you go. I’m aware that this is Greek to the vast majority of you, and I appreciate you reading this far.

The End

I honestly haven’t been consuming a lot of art recently so I have nothing to suggest! If anyone has something they’d like to recommend, let me know! See you next week!

1. A reverse proxy is like a waiter at a restaurant. When you log onto a website, a reverse proxy is like the waiter taking your order to the chef (the server) and then bringing back the food (the website). This just ensures that you never meet the chef, who wishes to remain anonymous so you don’t hack him and steal his social security number, etc.

2. To continue the restaurant analogy: imagine you enter the restaurant and find that all the tables are off limits. Port forwarding is basically opening up a table for you. (And caddy is the waiter seeing that you’ve arrived and bringing you to that table.)

3. This directly goes against my Buy Nothing year, by the way. I could make the argument that it fulfills Exception #2 (the Mirth & Merriment clause) but it’s kind of a stretch, as I didn’t need these things to play games with my friends.