Without the open-source software community, this website would not exist. Thank you so much for the help!
I dreamed of running my own website for years, ever since idolising the Playstation hacker blog Wololo.net and the brilliant minds behind the weekly articles and hacks back in 2013ish. Thanks to them, I was able to modify my old Sony PSP 3000, breathing new life into an old toy. That taught me how to use dodgy, hacky software meant for developers and not for end-users, and started me down the dark path of Electronic Engineering and hobby web development.
I first started trying to write a blog in a year off from university in 2016-17. The old website, robot-one.blogspot.co.uk, never took off. I never felt in control of the code or the articles I wanted to publish. It would always stay on - and be a part of - Google’s legacy Blogger platform. When that inevitably dies, so will the old blog, without any recourse for republishing what was there, and it is likely to die sooner rather than later (Google has a nasty habit of killing off cool projects, see killedbygoogle.com). What little I did write there, I have copied over into this new website, never fear!
While dwelling in the small corner of Hell known as the 24 Hour Lab (an airless, windowless, brightly lit white room full of computers and suicidal engineering students trying finish overdue papers, open 24/7 for all your robotnik needs), I discovered GitHub, a hub of grouchy gits programmers who share their software (and the source code to build it) for free. On GitHub, I found Hugo, a small program that generates simple “static” websites from simple text files. And GitHub offers free website hosting for static websites. I sat on that knowledge, working on an (unfinished) self-written guide for “How to make your own website” for a couple of years, until I had enough of the theory and just did it. Then I started improving someone else’s more or less abandoned theme, using knowledge I’d gained from modding the Firefox and Vivaldi web browsers. Did you know a web browser’s user interface is made the same way a website is made? Anyway, here’s my modified version of the theme. And you’re reading this on my website, where I’m happy to say I have control over the code and content - if GitHub dies, I can easily move it elsewhere or even run it off my own computer.
Thank you, open source community!
I wouldn’t have got here without:
- the Wololo.net community
- various Piracy communities, e.g. CS.RIN.RU, FitGirl Repacks, r/Piracy, LRepacks, etc.
- the Vivaldi and Firefox modding communities
- the Hugo community
- the general free and open-source (FOSS) community, especially on GitHub
All places I’ve been able to ask questions, get answers, and “borrow” computer code and tools to play with.
Example: Just recently…
… I had a problem with my website. I’d modified the theme so that I had a “Site last updated” date at the bottom of every page. This is important so visitors can know if there’s been anything recently added to the website, or if it’s still “alive”. Unfortunately, “Last Updated” wasn’t changing from 22 June 2022, despite my having published content in September 2022.
A quick question on the Hugo forums, and my problem was resolved by one of the developers. Amazing! Now, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see the date I last updated my website, and if you click on it, it will take you to the list of changes made.
Easier than getting any help at University, where I had to jump through hoops, fill out forms and cough up large sums of money for the occasional grudgingly-given convoluted response or rare extended deadline.
The FOSS community is a much better place to learn for the willing and self-taught student. It’s Ask and ye shall receive, free of costs for beginners and an excellent place to share knowledge. Thank you!
😅 Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
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