peten.ca

or: running ethernet cable in my basement's drop ceiling at 1:00AM

+ NGINX on Debian, purchasing a domain on porkbun, and the making of this site (special hatred + reserved for CSS) + +

+ One fateful day, I decided that I should put my old computer to use. The thing was, and still is, pretty + junky - but it's definitely enough to host these pages, maybe have a little NAS, stuff like that. It's got a + Core i3 2100, RX460, 8gb of DDR3... you can see where I'm going with this. It wasn't good when I built it in + 2017, but it served me well and I figured that it deserved a second life. +

+ On a whim, I set it up on a table in my basement, with the monitor I originally had bought (cost me 40$ in + 2017 - 4:3 aspect ratio, 1280x1024, not exactly "premium"). I remembered live-booting Linux Mint back in + like 2018, and so tried to make some installation media for Debian assuming that I pretty much knew all the + steps to burn the ISO onto a flash drive and boot into it. It was not that easy. +

+ To spare you from the pain that I had to endure, just know that I tried a million different things with no + success for like 3 hours until I had the bright idea to disconnect the machine's 250gb hard drive's SATA + cable, force the BIOS into the "machine failed to boot - drive not detected menu," insert the flash drive, + and then press enter as if I had attached a bootable drive. I tried literally every option in the boot from + media menu, changed boot orders in the BIOS, remade the boot media a million times - I tried lots. Once I + got everything set up, all was looking okay. +

+ The next day, I made a very foolish mistake. You know, because you're alright, I'll admit to it. I + accidentally typed rm /* into the terminal. I THOUGHT that it wouldn't do anything, because I didn't add the + -r tag to remove things recursively, but I guess I was wrong. Regardless, I had to reinstall Debian. Image + below for your enjoyment. +

+ After that was all good, I purchased a domain on porkbun.com, got NGINX set up on the Linux machine, and + started work on the HTML and CSS for this site. If you'd like some advice, here you go: +

+ If you need help, you can use ChatGPT. Nobody will rat you out. When I was making a page on Github sites way + back when, I remember being VERY confused as to how to center a div, or align text. Nowadays, you can ask a + machine to do it for you. Holy robots! +

+ You should probably use some CSS framework like Tailwind, Bootstrap, etc. for your work. I have Bootstrap on + here, but I rarely use it. Take the time to read the docs, and use it. If you want to be good - yeah, it's a + shortcut. You need to understand the "box model" for sure, but for the layman, most of the work is already + done for you. + Just add the classes to your stuff and move on with your life. +

+ If you are making something more than a static site, then use JS and a JS framework (React, Vue, Svelte, + whatever man). I am not trying to flash my webdev skills with this site, but if I was, it would be one of + those awesome one-pagers with a bunch of animations and transitions and it'd be hideously + resource-intensive. +

+ Anyways, I'm getting tired of writing this. Call it a working project post. +

+ All the best. +

+ Peter +