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New journal posts! Also phasing out my real name
This commit is contained in:
will 2023-11-23 05:34:17 -07:00
parent 3ccbcddb6c
commit 2e17dcf39e
7 changed files with 100 additions and 29 deletions
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1
.gitignore vendored
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*.ttf
*.svg
*.png
*.jpg
*.jxl

5
about/index.php
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@ -10,11 +10,10 @@
<body>
<?php include($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/nav.php'); ?>
<h1>about me</h1>
<h2 id="caption">hi</h2>
<p><span title="General Kenobi!">Hello there!</span> They call me Will (<?php echo file_get_contents($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/pronouns.txt'); ?>), but I tend to go by deep twisty (more on that later) or some variation of "isopod" or "bathynomus" on the internet. I like to make stuff on the computer, like <a href="https://deeptwisty.bandcamp.com/">music</a>, or <a href="https://deeptwisty.com/art">art</a>, or this website. I've heard rumors calling me such things as "canadian", "autistic", and "incalculably talented". I cannot confirm or deny any of these allegations.</p>
<h2 id="caption">helo</h2>
<p><span title="General Kenobi!">Hello there!</span> I generally go by deep twisty (more on that later) or some variation of "isopod" or "bathynomus" on this here internet. (<?php echo file_get_contents($_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/pronouns.txt'); ?> pronouns :) ) I like to make stuff on the computer, like <a href="https://deeptwisty.bandcamp.com/">music</a>, or <a href="https://deeptwisty.com/art">art</a>, or this website. I've heard rumors calling me such things as "canadian", "autistic", and "incalculably talented". I cannot confirm or deny any of these allegations.</p>
<h2>What's a "deep twisty"?</h2>
<p>"deep twisty" is a pseudonym I came up with to post my music and such things under. At this point it exists largely as a way to compartmentalize my online identity such that I can link my art to people who I might not want seeing all this. It comes from some tweets from an <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221214182955/https://twitter.com/SubnauticaSCM/status/1095774020446744576">official Subnautica twitter account</a> where they referred to the then-work-in-progress Deep Twisty Bridges biome as just "deep twisty". I thought it sounded funny. Funny enough to brand myself on, apparently.</p>
<p>I go by Will because that's my name and I can't be fucked changing it.</p>
<h2>About the site</h2>
<p>This website is written in pure HTML, CSS, and a tiny bit of Javascript with the server-side stuff done in PHP. It (and everything else I host) is hosted using Nginx on a VPS with 4GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores running Ubuntu Server, with domains registered with <a href="https://porkbun.com/">Porkbun</a>.
<p>You can read about the history of this thing <a href="../blog/posts/deeptwistycom_2nd_anniversary_-_a_history_of_this_bullshit/">here</a>.</p>

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blog/index.php
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@ -128,6 +128,65 @@
}
echo "</ul>";
?>
<article id="2023-11-23">
<h2>2023-11-23</h2>
<p>Another update on my little Contraption today, mostly expanding on stuff that's evident in the video I posted a couple days ago, but I have a fresh update too.</p>
<p>Firstly, the JBOD board I bought isn't the one I mentioned before. That board, seemingly, is old and no longer in production. I got a newer revision, the CB2 as opposed to the CB1. It's got some differences, but nothing that really matters for my purposes.</p>
<p>Next, the 5-port SATA controller I expressed interest in doesn't work. I bought it and installed it and the laptop just doesn't seem to agree with it. Like, it won't even load the BIOS interface, let alone boot with the thing installed. With an NVMe SSD, or with nothing in the slot, it's fine, but with the SATA controller, no dice. My Game Theory&trade; is it's either a power thing or it's just a classic Laptop Bios Moment&trade;, the thing being programmed to expect an SSD in that slot and not knowing what to do when there's something there other than a storage device. Either way, I don't see a good way to solve this, so I'm not really interested in pursuing it further.</p>
<p>So that's five out of my eight total SATA slots gone, replaced with a single SSD, leaving me with a boot drive and three SATA slots to work with. This by no means dooms the project; that's still enough for a drive for TrueNAS apps and redundant storage in the form of two mirrored disks. That's not bad, and it would be reasonable to stop here. But we can do better.</p>
<p>SATA is kind of weird. It's not designed to be split into multiple connections with a hub the way, say, USB is, but if your controller supports it you can kind of do it anyway. If I wanna hook up more than two or three HDDs to this thing, and I do, this is looking like my best bet. Fortunately, the SATA controller that <em>is</em> working happens to support this feature. So I bought one such hub to see if it would work, and, well:</p>
<div style="display: flex;">
<picture style="width: 50%;">
<source srcset="media/2023-11-23/contraption.jxl" type="image/jxl">
<img src="media/2023-11-23/contraption.jpg" alt='Five SATA drives plugged into a laptop, one via an internal SATA bay, and the other four via an M.2 SATA controller in place of the WiFi card and a SATA splitter board. The latter four hard drives are powered off of an ATX PC PSU controlled by a Supermicro JBOD controller board.'>
</picture>
<picture style="width: 50%;">
<source srcset="media/2023-11-23/lsblk.jxl" type="image/jxl">
<img src="media/2023-11-23/lsblk.jpg" alt='lsblk output showing five SATA drives recognized by the system (sda through sde)'>
</picture>
</div>
<p>If you're not sufficiently techy to decipher what's going on in those pictures, it boils down to this: it worked.</p>
<p>Now, I'm fully aware that I'm probably not going to get super incredible performance out of this setup, but the thing is, hard drives are slow. Like, they're <em>really</em> slow. A fast HDD would be hard pressed to saturate a SATA II connection in optimal conditions, let alone SATA III. In terms of pure bandwidth, one SATA III port should support two or three hard drives fine. Besides, nothing about this was ever going to be performance optimized.</p>
<p>I'm nearing the point where I have everything I need to put this together. All that's left is the hard drives themselves, potentially a second SATA multiplier to spread the load between the two ports better, and to figure out a case, because I'm not running this thing strewn across my desk like this.</p>
</article>
<article id="2023-11-20">
<h2>2023-11-20</h2>
<video controls>
<source src="media/2023-11-20_contraption.mp4" type="video/mp4">
Your browser does not support the video tag.
</video>
</article>
<article id="2023-10-28">
<h2>2023-10-28</h2>
<p>This month's update is I've been thinking about ways to upgrade my laptop-server into a full-blown NAS with fancy features like "data redundancy" and "several terabytes of disk space" so today you get to hear about my thought process for that. Look forward to a proper blog post about this if/when I ever build it for real.</p>
<p>My reasons for wanting to do this to a laptop essentially boil down to the fact that I already have it. It's got a good level of computing power and is plenty upgradeable enough to facilitate a mod like this, so it makes sense to me to keep using it instead of buying a new one.</p>
<p>Now, there are a few ways to go about this. The most obvious to most people will probably be to just connect a bunch of USB external hard drives and call it done. A couple of problems with that, though: first, I want to set up a RAID array and I don't remotely trust USB with an application like that, and second, that would be boring.</p>
<p>On <em>certain</em> modern laptops it would start and end there, but luckily for me mine is not one such machine. My laptop is an HP 15-dk0030nr, a four-year-old mid-tier gaming laptop boasting upgradeable RAM, an internal 2.5" SATA drive bay, an M.2 NVMe SSD, and an M.2 WiFi card. A good amount of upgradeability for a laptop, and I plan to take it to its logical extreme.</p>
<p>A fun fact about NVMe is that, despite being billed as a storage connection standard, it's fundamentally just PCIe, which means you can connect basically any PCIe device to it if you have an adapter. Meaning my laptop essentially has two internal PCIe slots I can use to expand its capabilities however I see fit, assuming I'm prepared to punch some holes in the bottom panel to make it all fit.</p>
<p>My plan is as follows: I'll ditch the NVMe SSD and WiFi card, as neither are particularly important for a server to have, and instead boot the system off of an SSD in the internal SATA bay, and fill the M.2 slots with SATA controllers. I bought <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09MSWNF7X">this little number</a> for the WiFi card slot and tested it with some dusty old 500GB hard disks I had laying around and it seemed to work perfectly, and I plan to get something like <a href="https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/expansion-cards/ECS07/">this</a> to replace the NVMe SSD, more or less turning my laptop into a 7-bay NAS.</p>
<div style="display: flex;">
<picture style="width: 50%;">
<source srcset="media/2023-10-28/ChenYang.jxl" type="image/jxl">
<img src="media/2023-10-28/ChenYang.jpg" alt='A 2-port M.2 SATA controller, keyed for a WiFi card slot.'>
</picture>
<picture style="width: 50%;">
<source srcset="media/2023-10-28/ECS07.jxl" type="image/jxl">
<img src="media/2023-10-28/ECS07.jpg" alt='A 5-port M.2 SATA controller, keyed for an NVMe drive slot.'>
</picture>
</div>
<p>One little issue though: I have no way to power the drives directly off of my laptop. For my little test I was able to power the drives off of some spare SATA power connectors in my desktop PC, but that's not exactly an enterprise-grade solution, and for all its internal PCIe connectivity it's not like my laptop is bristling with ATX power connectors. If you thought plugging 3.5" HDDs into the WiFi card slot was janky, you ain't seen nothing yet. Here's where we really get into the weeds.</p>
<p>One of my first thoughts was to use USB power, either from the laptop's ports or an external hub. It's a low-power DC device, so it should be possible, right? Unfortunately, nobody makes an adapter for that. <a href="https://isopod.zone/notes/9la5c343fqi1cjof">Someone on fedi</a> claimed to have success with parts from an external HDD enclosure, but my laptop happens to have less than seven USB ports, and I didn't want to use USB anyway, plus drive shucking stops being cost effective <em>fast</em> once you hit higher capacities.</p>
<p>Small tangent here - in my research I learned that HDDs have some weird power requirements: they apparently take both 5V and 12V power, the latter being for the motor. Also, HDDs can spike in power draw <em>significantly</em> while spinning up, well past the 9 or so watts they use under load. I guess making a dongle that handles all that only to then not provide a data connection is just a little too niche for most companies.</p>
<p>So then, if USB is out, maybe I should look into something that's actually designed to power hard drives. Realistically, that means a PC PSU. I'm divided between a standard ATX PSU or something like a Pico PSU, but it doesn't really matter either way - they both do the same thing. The issue <em>here</em> is how I'm gonna run them without a motherboard.</p>
<p>See, PC power supplies rely on the motherboard for control, specifically on one wire that the motherboard bridges to ground to turn the PSU on. You can run the power supply motherboard-less by making this connection manually, but I'm hesitant to do that on account of if I fuck it up I could light a fire or kill myself. I'd prefer some other way to turn on the power supply. Enter this thing:</p>
<picture>
<source srcset="media/2023-10-28/CSE-PTJBOD-CB1.jxl" type="image/jxl">
<img src="media/2023-10-28/CSE-PTJBOD-CB1.jpg" alt='A Supermicro JBOD power board'>
</picture>
<p>This is the Supermicro CSE-PTJBOD-CB1. I learned about it from a Stack Exchange thread that linked to <a href="https://www.servethehome.com/supermicro-cse-ptjbod-cb1-jbod-power-board-diy-jbod-chassis-made-easy/">this Serve The Home article</a> about it. It's the "motherboard" from a JBOD enclosure (think an external hard drive, but with dozens of disks). It's like a PC motherboard, but stripped down to the absolute bare essentials for the purpose at hand. It's available on Ebay for around $60 CAD, and all it does is basic power management. I can plug this and my drives into my PC PSU and I'm off to the races, without making an electrical hazard! As a bonus, I also get hookups for a power button and a couple of fans.</p>
<p>So my plan thus far is as follows: SATA boot SSD in the laptop's internal drive bay, 7 ports worth of SATA controllers in the NVMe slots hooked up to high-capacity HDDs, and power those drives off of a standard PC PSU managed by a JBOD power board. Just two variables left to solve for: a chassis for the thing, and a way to pay for all those drives. For the former, I've got some vague idea in mind involving some custom-length metal tubing and a lot of 3d-printed brackets. For the latter, maybe I'll use my tax return, or spend like six months buying everything piecemeal.</p>
<p>So that was today's unhinged computer rant. Get ready for a few months from now when I post photos.</p>
</article>
<article id="2023-09-18">
<h2>2023-09-18</h2>
<p>Had a bit of a think about my principles and priorities website-wise. Long story short is I've turned off the redirect for chrome-based browsers. I've got a few reasons for doing this, chief among them being that I don't want to lock out people who have to use chrome because they don't have total control over their computers or rely on chrome-only accessibility tools or whatever, and also if I'm gonna use my website as a link hub it seems a bit counterproductive to block, statistically, most internet users from seeing it.</p>
@ -158,21 +217,6 @@
<p>I played a game called <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1713610/Purrgatory/">Purrgatory</a> recently. It's pretty good. meow/10</p>
<p>Had to fly out for a wedding recently, and the experience has left me with a renewed hatred for every wretched part of that sordid system. If I could down a plane using 110ml of toothpaste, I would consider doing so a tragic waste of my talents. Oh, and there's also the fact that for someone of my freakishly colossal height most airplane seats have negative legroom. North American transcontinental high speed rail network when</p>
</article>
<article id="2023-06-28">
<h2>2023-06-28</h2>
<p>June's been pretty good. My manager is finally scheduling me better, for one thing. I also bought a network switch for my room to hook my 3D printer up to the LAN, and I'm a huge fan of its network functionality thus far. No more futzing around with the included flash drive for me!</p>
<p>I don't know why I didn't mention this sooner, but I set up a Calckey instance a couple months ago. It's my new main Fediverse account. I quite like the user experience, but the moderation tools leave a bit to be desired coming from Akkoma with its Message Rewrite Facility. Not like I need to do much moderating, though.</p>
<p>I also set up a Radicale server. I set my family up with accounts on it so we can all enter relevant events into a shared calendar. If you're a Radicale admin and you're wondering how to do that, basically each user gets their own folder in Radicale's directory, and you just need to make a calendar and symlink it into the folder for everyone you want to share it with. Also, did you know iOS has native support for CalDAV integration? Rare W for Apple there.</p>
<p>I'm glad I didn't make that Invidious instance I mentioned back in January. Apparently Youtube went and broke the method Invidious uses to grab Youtube videos. Or they just blocked Invidious specifically, somehow. Either way, Piped still works. lol. Anyway, fuck Youtube. Anyone know any good Peertube instances?</p>
<p>I've been working on some music recently, a little. Here's a preview of the song I'm working on:</p>
<audio controls=""><source src="media/2023-06-28_lead_wip.mp3" type="audio/mp3"></audio>
<p>I actually got that guitar-sounding noise by looping a short drum sample really fast and putting it through Paranoia Mangler, a bitcrusher plugin that comes standard with Reaper. I've gotta use this technique more often. It produces some of my favourite sounds.</p>
</article>
<article id="2023-05-31">
<h2>2023-05-31</h2>
<p>Let's get the bitching about work out of the way up front: my boss has been scheduling me full time for the past four weeks now despite knowing full well I'm supposed to be working part time, and furthermore he had me working six consecutive days just now. Any more of this shit and I will straight up quit. Fuck you bro</p>
<p>In brighter news, my finger's pretty much healed. That's pretty much it actually, between work and resting between shifts at work I haven't really had the time or energy to do much else. Remind me to burn down the capitalist system sometime.</p>
</article>
<div class="buttons" style="margin-bottom: 1rem;">
<a href="https://status.cafe/"><img src="media/banner-statuscafe.png" alt="Status Cafe"></a>
<a href="https://kiosk.nightfall.city/"><img src="media/neonkiosk.png" alt="Neon Kiosk"></a>

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etc/quotes/index.php
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@ -53,11 +53,11 @@
$this->color = $c;
}
}
$will = new User("w_pfp", "president of the universe (2%) ඞ", "00ffb7");
$vivi = new User("v_pfp", "vivian, rogue of GAY", "ff009e");
$sad = new User("s_pfp", "first man of the universe ඞ", "f1c40f");
$mage = new User("m_pfp", "nudibranch ඞ", "faaaaa");
$celian = new User("c_pfp", "cheese head ಡඞ𐐘𐑀", "73fbff");
$will = new User("w_pfp", "president Potato!Jerma ඞ", "00ffb7");
$vivi = new User("v_pfp", "karkalicious shit whisperer", "ff009e");
$sad = new User("s_pfp", "first spider of the universe ඞ", "f1c40f");
$mage = new User("m_pfp", "> ඞ", "faaaaa");
$celian = new User("c_pfp", "ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ MILK ಡඞ𐐘𐑀", "73fbff");
$thom = new User("t_pfp", "Tomato ඞ", "567c2d");
$goon = new User("g_pfp", "hatchgoon ඞ", "2c9c91");
$portals = new User("p_pfp", "portalsandart ඞ", "5a397d");
@ -73,6 +73,22 @@
}
?>
<?php
echo_message($celian, "playing and talking about this game isnt enough i need to absorb it like plants do to nutrients in the soil", true);
echo_message($celian, "NOOOO you can't do that... spooky fog", true);
echo_message($vivi, "im sorry my FISH is a little rusty", true);
echo_message($will, "Mmmm yummy car engine steak ^_^", true);
echo_message($mage, "You would put me in the meat grinder next", true);
echo_message($will, "But you're not beef");
echo_message($celian, "What if I disguise myself as a steak");
echo_message($celian, "I don't think I've drawn a <em>human</em> dick since I was like...", true);
echo_message($celian, "dfgprp-403c286c-ccb1-4a3c-ba2c-3aa8fff58c0b.png", true);
echo_message($sad, "you're nut?", true);
echo_message($celian, "aren't we all?");
echo_message($vivi, "your arms are looking very testicular mr. Thanos", true);
echo_message($vivi, "that slut did NOT taste good", true);
echo_message($vivi, "im a [little sponge] who requires [[MOISTURE]]", true);
echo_message($celian, "HOLY SHIT REAL BOMB THREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", true);
echo_message($vivi, "Shmumpus", true);
echo_message($vivi, "You can use the wet thing for combat", true);
echo_message($vivi, "my hobbies include milking my creature for eggnog", true);
echo_message($will, "everybody loves Bomb Threat", true);

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index.php
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@ -218,9 +218,12 @@
'real life isopod',
'',
'holy fucking bingle',
'AI generated',
'AI (Aquatic Isopod) generated',
'crubge',
'Only unpickle data you trust.',
'Tested in prod!',
'pwetty epic B)',
'Known to the state of California to cause cancer',
'vewified',
'Verified',
'COUNTER',
@ -229,7 +232,8 @@
'UPSIDEDOWN',
'RGB',
'BLAHAJ',
'@BEAT'
'@BEAT',
'HALO'
);
break;
}
@ -284,6 +288,10 @@
$cap = '<a href="/stuff/beat/">@'.date("B").'</a>';
$tit = '@'.date("B");
break;
case 'HALO':
$cap = '<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N14uA0EhBAU">coke and fries halo</a>';
$tit = 'coke and fries halo';
break;
}
}
}
@ -319,7 +327,6 @@
<div id="guys">
<a target="_blank" href="https://dokodemo.neocities.org/" title="made by Dokodemo"><img alt="An isopod!" src="images/isopod3.png"></a>
<a target="_blank" href="https://wobble.town/visit/93" title="charles"><img alt="Charles" src="https://wobble.town/visit/93/wobble.gif" style="width: 64px; image-rendering: pixelated; filter:hue-rotate(20deg) brightness(110%) drop-shadow(2px 2px 3px black);"></a>
<a target="_blank" href="https://lu.tiny-universes.net" title="hi, i'm kevin!"><img alt="Kevin" src="images/plant1-2.png"></a>
<a target="_blank" href="https://newlambda.neocities.org/stuff/adopt" title="benlet"><img alt="benlet" src="images/benlet1.png" style="width: 32px; image-rendering: pixelated;"></a>
<a target="_blank" href="https://www.pixelcatsend.com/profile&id=3734" title="Shadow"><img alt="Shadow" src="images/shadow.png" style="image-rendering: pixelated;"></a>

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links/index.php
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@ -80,6 +80,10 @@
<td><a href="https://deeptwisty.itch.io/" rel="me">deeptwisty.itch.io</a></td>
<td>itch.io</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://ko-fi.com/deeptwisty" rel="me">deeptwisty</a></td>
<td>Ko-fi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2"><h2>Services</h2></td>
</tr>
@ -382,8 +386,8 @@
<td colspan="2"><h2>More stuff</h2></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://links.yesterweb.org/">Yesterlinks</a> [<a href="https://links.yesterweb.org/surf.php">Random</a>]</td>
<td>A "user-curated directory of interesting off-the-beaten path websites", with over 600 links and counting!</td>
<td><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230817122434/https://links.yesterweb.org/">Yesterlinks</a></td>
<td>A user-curated directory of nearly 600 off-the-beaten-path websites, formerly hosted by the Yesterweb project.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><a href="https://search.marginalia.nu/">Marginalia Search</a> [<a href="https://search.marginalia.nu/explore/random">Random</a>]</td>

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style.css
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@ -161,7 +161,7 @@ label[for='navtoggle'] {
width: 100%;
border: none;
}
img, picture {
img, picture, video {
max-width: 100%;
}
summary:hover {