Hello World avatar Darthagnon | Tuesday, 15 Mar, 2022 | 4 minutes read | Last updated Tuesday, 15 Mar, 2022

[Legacy]   #Journal   #Plans   #Test  

Hello and welcome to my new website.

The above is what my old website, robot-one.blogspot.co.uk looked like (see also mirrors on Archive.org and Archive.today).

Took me long enough to get it up and running, having started webdev at my previous website, in Q2 2016 in free time in the Mechanical Engineering building at the University of Bath. The screenshot shows what it used to look like, in all its mid-2000s glory, running on Google’s Blogger platform. It’s now Q1 2022.

Chapter 1: The old Blogger site

I was quite proud of some small customisations I did to the theme code, but very quickly hit the limitations of Blogger: I was a newbie, and wanted to implement loads of custom Javascript, Facebook comments (this was before Big Tech was considered evil) and download a backup of my site. Turns out, exporting data from Blogger is kinda difficult, and re-using that export even harder. So I became otherwise occupied by Manufacturing Engineering studies and work at Explorium.

Fast-forward a couple years, and I’d redone two programming classes at Bath, and done a lot of obsessive software testing during which I came across Hugo, which made it relatively easy to setup a website on GitHub Pages. I was now ready to setup my own website, and I wrote private documentation covering the process. With this system, I could own all my source code and data and have a full data export/backup of the website.

And then I found I still didn’t own all the data. Turns out, web development is a mess because most people hotlink vital website resources (i.e. load them from someone else’s computer). I needed to fix that, at least for the code I would use on my site, by learning more advanced HTML/JS/CSS. So I became distracted again.

Why is data ownership important?

Google has a bad habit of killing off old projects, hence hosting any amount of work on Blogger, a legacy Google service which could be next on the chopping block, is a bad idea. I already mentioned the difficulty of exporting anything useful from the service, should it die, and good luck reusing your exported data anywhere else.

Most other services like Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, etc. have similar problems: no source code access, so your work on your website can be held hostage by a for-profit company that will try and make you pay for every little feature.

As for hotlinking bits of website code, this was considered bad manners back in the Old Internet, because you’d consume someone else’s limited computing power to pull stuff into your website. I’ve read funny stories where sysadmins found people hotlinking to their servers, so they would swap out the resources with rude memes, which would then show up, vandalising the naughty hotlinker’s website. I don’t want anyone to to this to me, or breaking my site by pushing dodgy updates, and often work in limited internet environments, so I make sure to load all my resources locally. Bonus: Because of this precaution, I could, worst-case-scenario, easily host my website fully off my PC.

Downside: It takes a lot of work to read through the website theme code and fix it all. Hence the delay.

Kept you waiting, huh?

Metal Gear Solid 5: Ground Zeroes meme

After years of delays, here we are. I’ve kept busy, and have a lot I want to share with you.

Coming soon

  • A how-to guide on setting up your own website just like mine
  • Several retrospective tech articles about projects I’ve done:
    • How, and why, to white-hat hack a Windows PC
    • How I removed a cryptominer
    • Repairing a phone found in the road
    • University project: The Mouse Race
    • University project: misc. programming
    • University project: Bath course materials
  • Portfolios of my art, design and manufacture work
  • eBooks I’ve built
  • Audiobooks I’ve recorded
  • Recipes
  • Science-fiction/fantasy stories I’m writing
  • Nerdy hobbies
  • Philosophy and mythology
  • Guest articles, if I can convince any of my friends to contribute 😉

I’m also working on improving the website theme with my own tweaks here, so expect the site to look and work better and better over the coming months. Or maybe I’ll just switch themes. Dunno yet.

Anyways, until next time,

Darren, signing off.

© 2016 - 2022 Of Machines and Men. Site last updated: 15 December 2022

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Site is a work-in-progress

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Guest Authors

Friends of mine are welcome to contribute their knowledge to the site! Here’s a list of those who have contributed:

Avatar Username Bio
Avatar, guest Ionicannon Ionicannon My niece, with an Eastern European connection and a growing interest in literature and art.
Servers

I enjoy systems administration, so I manage a few servers and websites.

My LAN

Chances are if we are on the same Local Area Network (LAN), I’m serving something! These are served from my Raspberry Pi homeserver, and currently only accessible on my home network. For your convenience, here are the services you can access (you’ll have to ask me for the passwords in person; no way I’m putting them in cleartext on the web):

  • qBittorrent server - a torrent client with which we can remotely download public domain media via the Bittorrent, without leaving our PCs on for hours. Homepage
  • filebrowser - access downloaded torrents or files stored on the homeserver’s Network Attached Storage (NAS) via any web browser. Looks like Google Drive, but is fully self-hosted. GitHub Repository
  • Aria2Ng server - Don’t feel like leaving your PC on all night for that big download? Remotely download media to the NAS, by torrents and many other protocols, too. GitHub Repository
  • WireguardUI - still not fully functional, a frontend for the Wireguard VPN protocol, so that eventually I can host my own VPN. GitHub Repository
  • AdGuard Home - [Currently Disabled] Network-wide ad blocker and DNS server. Not something the end user needs to worry about, save that they won’t see advertising. GitHub Repository
  • Navidrome - [Currently Disabled] Spotify replacement, but fully self-hosted with my own music. Homepage
  • Samba (SMB) access to the 500GB NAS is also enabled. You can access it from Windows Explorer >> My Computer (This PC) >> Add a network location or the equivalent on MacOS/iOS/Linux/Android.
  • SSH (command line) and SFTP (filesystem) access are also enabled, accessible via the appropriate clients, e.g. WinSCP, OpenSSH, OpenSSH Windows or PuTTY

Your LAN

These are served from my PC, and you can access them as long as we’re both connected.

  • Cerberus FTP Server - file server.
  • LanXChange - Apple Airdrop alternative. We can both run the clients and share individual files easily between PC, Mac, Linux, Android.
  • filebrowser - I also occasionally run filebrowser to turn my PC into a “Google Drive”.
Contact

Questions? Comments? You can reach me on the social media linked in the Socials box. Feel free to drop me a message. I’ll try to get back to you shortly. To prevent spam, I have added [square brackets] to some of my socials; if you’re not a robot, you can click the links and remove the [brackets].

You can email me via darthagnone [at] gmail [dot] com.

WHOIS running this site?
Avatar, admin Darthagnon

Hello! The site admin is Darthagnon.

This is my blog and technical portfolio, where I seek to inform, entertain, and share my handicrafts and knowledge with you. I like to create robot “heroes” from recycled materials, write legends and draw pictures of them. To keep good old machines running for a long time - without puppet strings attached - you could also use some of my tips and tricks for computer software and hardware. Or cook yourself a delicious vegan recipe or two, gathered from across the globe. I’ll also wax lyrical about esoteric literature and nerdy hobbies on occasion.

What’s with the username?

I like to go by the Sith version of the 4th Musketeer, D’Artagnan. It’s obviously not my real name.

Friends

Other blogs and people I follow or recommend:

  • Wololo.net; the Playstation Portable hacking blog that first got me interested in computer science and security research back in 2013ish. The /talk forum used to be a vibrant community full of hobby programmers. There’s also the separate Wagic forum, which was focused on developing the digital card game Wagic: the Homebrew?!. Run by @frwololo
  • Explorium; my former employers, a growth-mindset-focused creative learning centre and training provider for Primary and Secondary school children. We did some incredible work there, and helped many kids discover their creative potential. Check them out!
  • Colin Smith, an author and friend of mine writes at:
  • Dragons Not Included, a D&D and roleplaying podcast run by my best friend. Join the crew of the Dragons Not Included podcast as they roll, crit and laugh their way through the Wrath of the Righteous tabletop role playing adventure. Subscribe via RSS or anywhere else podcasts are syndicated.
  • CHEF-KOCH’s Technology News, a technology news outlet (also on Twitter, Reddit and other social media) where CHEF-KOCH reports on the cutting edge of technology in a concise, readable and helpful manner. Head and shoulders above all other tech news these days.
  • Howl’s Project; based in Turkey, a Studio Ghibli anime-themed fashion store run by a friend of mine.
  • CS.RIN.RU, the Famous Russian Forum for DRM-free videogames. Information on every game on Steam/GOG/Epic and beyond, inhabited by knowledgeable users and freelance hackers.
  • FitGirl Repacks, the ONLY official site for FitGirl Repacks. Despite the odd name, it’s the best source for DRM-free videogame installers these days. See also Masquerade, who is an upcoming repacker.

Artists I know