Yeah that’s right, I’ve got MOAR CozyNet site updates! Really all I’m doing is just messing around because I get bored at work and I’m wondering how much I can squeeze out of this VPS. I was thinking that it would be pretty cool to run a PHP forum, but there are some prerequisites to get it done right, or at least sort of right.

That prerequisite is an email server so that the forum can handle user account creation and user driven password reset requests. You can get by without a mail server, but then it’s just a half baked forum and nobody likes half baked things right? So now I’ve finally got a mail server setup for CozyNet too, which is great because now I can use a mail client instead of needing to sign into ProtonMail to read emails (yeah I’m not paying for another ProtonMail account just to use their bridge service.) I’ll be updating the contact info soon. Also another cool thing about this is I can easily integrate PGP signed emails for anyone wanting to verify the authenticity of the message. I do have a public PGP key btw, in case anyone was wondering.

Maybe I shouldn’t be mentioning anything about a forum but I think you CozyNet readers are an alright bunch given the fact you’re readin muh blog! But there are some restrictions and limitations because if you guys know anything about forums, especially running a forum in today’s morally maladjusted society, it’s a really BAD idea. So that means no server hosted file attachments (plus I don’t have the storage capacity to host files anyhow), and all accounts are manually activated. So right now I’ll activate rando accounts, but it’s a short window where thereafter I’ll only activate accounts for frens and fren of frens. Also an account is required to even read the forum, which is a bit unfortunate because I think forums are a great source to index for web search engines, but this ain’t Y2K anymore so Google and Bing can get bent.

I haven’t yet written any rules, but they’re basically the same as the IRC server rules. Also I don’t ever plan on this getting big and want to keep it small. Hopefully things will go well, otherwise I’ll just shut it off, so be cool bros.

If you’re interested in some good ol’ fashion shitpostin’, then head on down to the CozyNet forum!

Thanks for reading my blog!

Of late I’ve been using the Debian pastezone pastebin service and figured that it would be pretty cool to host my own pastebin service. I searched around on github and gitlab for a PHP based pastebin that would hook up with my mysql database service.

I did find a few projects, but I didn’t like the way they looked or operated. I think the one I liked the most though was this old project, “php-pastebin-v3.” It’s an archived project, but I don’t care if projects like these are abandoned; they’re simple services that honestly don’t need some continuous development.

Despite liking this one, I wanted something that was a little more simple, just like Debian Pastezone, because it can be accessed by simple browsers, even text based browsers! Poking around on Debian pastezone brought me to the project source, which is a Perl and CGI based service.

This is quite similar to my Xapian Omega internal site indexing and search service, which the Omega web front-end is a CGI based application. I wrote a short blog on it awhile ago here, if you’re interested.

I like these sorts of simplistic backend services because they just werk! Now I am a bit leery to the “security” of it all, or perhaps its unbeknownst lack thereof; but generally the security boils down to the web server itself and what might be unknowingly permitted. Now this is just a hobby site so if it gets wrekt then oh well, but it makes a good learning experience none the less. So check out the CozyNet Pastezone!

I think having this is especially nice for the IRC where the occasional snippets of code and configurations are pasted into the channel. I’ve modified the pastebin service to include an address bar because I wanted to make the pastebin into an iframe-able widget that wouldn’t require the user to open a new tab from their browser; they can just load the paste link directly within the search input and hit “Go” to load the page. You can also somewhat navigate from outside of it onto other CozyNet web pages, which is kinda funny, but out of scope for it’s purpose. You can see this in action on the CozyNet homepage below the IRC chat window in a toggle button that reveals the pastebin. You can produce links and load links directly within the iframe without ever needing to leave the page which I think it’s really neat!

Or alternatively, you can just go directly to the pastebin service if that floats your boat.

I’m not finished with tweaking the pastebin service by the way. It still needs some improvement in the theme department, and I’m considering disabling the commenting system for hidden pastes since it doesn’t exactly work very well; I mean, it does work, but it runs into some weird session error after making a comment, which you can resolve by simply going back and refreshing the page to see the submitted comment. Additionally, I’m thinking of also integrating my captcha system that I use for the comment service to cut out any potential C&C bot submissions.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Yeahhh I know… I’m not posting as much anymore it seems; I’ll try to fix that. I would like to keep up with writing detailed long posts, but that’s really caused a problem with being consistent. It’s just not easy trying to come up with a well fleshed out post is all, so I’m just not gonna do it unless I’m in the mood.

I’ve still been keeping busy with house stuff. After over a year of shidding innawoods like a wild man, I’ve finally got my outhouse to a usable state. I simply got sick of being attacked by so many damn mosquito's when trying to take care of business. Since it’s been raining a lot here this year, the mosquito population exploded. I’m also mowing the yard twice a friggin week, which if you recall is about 1 acre (0.4 hectares), so it’s a real pain in the bum, and itchy too. Keeping up with that among other things doesn’t leave me with much time in the day to blogpost or shitpost because I’m too tired by the end of it.

Landscape-wise, I have a laundry list of things needing to be done too. Clear up fallen trees, make a burn pit to burn limb piles, clear out trash piles from the backyard, cut down trash trees in the backyard, pick up dead limbs and branches, weed-whack, mow, poison, and more. For now I’m just doing my best to maintain things so it doesn’t get too out of hand while nature is trying to reclaim the property. It at least looks better than last year, where the whole “yard” was just overtaken by an overgrowth of rag weeds and Johnson grass. I’ve been trying to stay consistent with mowing so that I can kill off the perineal weeds; the sticker plants are by far the worst.

On the pet front, the kittens have been doing well. They’re growing quick and will be full grown cats before long. They like playing games and being mischievous too, such as scratching the trim in doorways. I flick water at them and chase them away from it to deter them, but instead of learning from that, they just try to do it even quicker. They’ll even look right at me while doing it before quickly darting off, as if to say “teehee you can’t catch me!” I call them my paint scraper assistants.

Also apparently I now have a pet dog. Someone dumped him off on the road and I guess he walked a few miles up to my place since I keep the porch light on and there’s no other dogs here to chase him away. At first I tried chasing him away because I don’t want a dog and not really fond of them since they tear shit up and make a lot of noise (more so than a cat.) He kept away after that, but then one morning it was raining outside and he was beneath one of the trees that fell over beside the yard (which is one of the fallen trees still on my list to clear out.) He was just there barking to the sky and looking all wet and miserable, so I got him a pan and emptied out a can of wet cat food that I wasn’t going to use since my cats became crack addicted to it.

He’s been coming around since then, which I figured he would after feeding him that one time, so I got him a bag of dog food, some chew bones, and a rope toy. He sticks around now in the back yard and is a really friendly dog when not skittish. He’s a nearly all white Australian Shepherd with bright almost white blue’ish eyes, with one eye having some weird coloration deformity. Despite being young, I think he might be nearly blind because if I throw his rope toy or a stick, it just doesn’t register in his dog brain that I threw anything at all; my cats have more sense when I throw them something! I have to be really obvious, and then he’ll chase after it, but then he has completely no idea where it landed and will look around then give up.

Here’s a picture of him. He’s real skinny right now, and has flea rashes. If he sticks around and trusts me a little more, I’ll get a kiddie pool to give him a flea bath in and brush his fur out. Right now his name is Poochie, as in “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.” I don’t really have a way to keep him in the yard since it’s easy to escape, so hopefully he doesn’t get into any trouble.

He has both his eyes, it's just hard to tell.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Yeah, the CozyNey blog isn’t ded, I’ve just been busy is all! I was at the Texas Linux Fest a few weeks ago, which was alright. It wasn’t as Linux-y as I would have liked, but I suppose it was a good occasion to get out. The traffic in Austin isn’t very fun though. They have a lot of these apartment development blocks being built up and a lot of people moving in. The street system doesn’t seem very capable of managing the vehicles without causing traffic jams. I think that city has taken on more people than it can withstand. If TXLF is held again in Austin, I probably won’t go.

Anyhow I got to eat out a little there, and had some barbecue at Terry Black which was extremely friggin expensive! I was expecting that though, but it was really good. Then the next day I had burgers at Sandy’s. Here’s a picture of their neon sign!

Back at home, I’ve been a little busy. I setup some rain gutters in the back, and plan to start working on gutters for the front soon. These will really help keep the foundation from moving around. For now it’s alright, but over time water beating down isn’t good for it. In fact, I found a sill beam in the front beneath the porch that I’ll need to replace, which I’m not looking forward to.

I also now have kitties! They seem pretty smart and took right away to the litter box, despite not ever being trained to one. They’ve been quite busy in that box too, so I keep cleaning it out. I’m really surprised by how fast they figured it out. I just sat it down, put one inside and that was it! I need to buy them some more toys because I have them playing with leaves and cardboard strips right now, and so they make a mess.

Here’s a picture of the two kittens. The darker grey cat is Snickers and the lighter one with stripes is KitKat, and they’re both girls. I later put a box on its side with a large flap and sat their bed inside which they like a lot. At first they were trying to sleep beneath the dresser, so the secludedness of the box around their bed helped change their minds. As they get bigger, I’ll get them another bed and litter box.

Now the room I put them in I spent a lot of time cleaning and clearing. This was the last room on the first level that I hadn’t yet bother cleaning properly, so the floor was filthy. But I finally cleared out my stuff to mop and scrub the floors with water and bleach. There are still a few things in there I can’t move out just yet, which I think will make fun climbing obstacles for the cats.

Oh and one other thing I almost forgot to mention was the eclipse! I got to seen the full eclipse which was pretty cool. The moon covering the sun really makes it look a lot closer than it really is; it seemed as if the moon was just a few miles up in the air directly overhead, and it looked foreboding. When everything went dark, it felt like evening time. I was out at my parents place, which is also out in rural Texas. As it got dark, the air felt cold like the evening time, the owls by the creek started hooting, the crickets chirped, and the goats all went back to their barn for the night.

A few minutes later when the sun came back out, the goats all ran out of their barn back into the pasture to follow their morning routine in the afternoon. They probably thought that was the shortest night ever! Then the owls and crickets stopped making noise and the day continued back where it left off. The next big event to look forward to this year will be the invasion of the cicadas!

I don’t have any good pictures of it unfortunately, otherwise I would share one here too, so have a cat picture instead!

Thanks for reading my blog!