Yet another migration. Playing with new options in the blog engine, eventually trying to moderately monetize my "empire." I've now migrated my old apache2 based Linux box running on Ubuntu to a series of modern docker containers ran through a series of hardening scripts then stuck behind a gcp vm. I'm sure there's still CVEs I'm unaware of eager to destroy all the things I work on, but I assume I'm small-potatoes from a "screw with my life" perspective. Yes, this is the second version of a cross-post from nextgenwar.info
For what it's worth, NGW has been sitting on a series of gcp VMs for years. It was running on a bitnami image behind apache2 for a long time, but tastynoms.menu and this site were still running on an ancient Dell sitting in my basement under the stairs, holding on to its last breath. Now, I've setup an IPv6 port forward to an isolated docker container on an incredibly hardened node to run an IRC client (so I can persist in EFnet, idle forever), and otherwise obfuscate my home network behind a series of VPNs, containers, VLANs, and zero trust architecture with a laundry list of passwords that drives my wife insane. All the IoT devices are already in a series of segmented VLANs, and the entire thing is on two different external networks behind a load-balancer, so it's already complex and secure, but it can never be secure enough (and so I keep my skills fresh, never complex enough either.)
This new configuration is a still VM based, but now everything is behind virtualized load balancers and everything is containerized. Even the different MySQL databases - one for each blog - are individually containerized rather than running different DBs for each blog. Some very savvy docker-compose work, and the whole thing just, runs.
The monetization will hopefully come if google ever approves an AdSense for me on any of this infrastructure (I'd prefer using something that didn't track people and wasn't so invasive, but we don't live in that world, sadly. Still, I will point people at modern tools to disappear like Tor, DuckDuckGo, and my new favorite for cell service, cape.co). I don't want enough money to get rich. Just for the ads to pay for the cloud costs; that's literally all I want - this to host itself for free.
Of course, that will require more posts. And more activity.
My main focus will continue to be nextgenwar.info, but I'll lean into more recipes now that I'm hardcore about encoding the metadata on each recipe to make the underlying XML compatible with things like Google Assistant (and because Laura wants us to track our macros). That means more foodie blogs with health data on tastynoms.menu. And of course, more posts about national defense, government acquisitions, venture capital, socio-economics, cyber espionage, and special operations on NGW.
Here? It'll be hard to force myself to post. I know no one reads these things, but it's fun none-the-less. Just to make myself remember to be "good" at things.
Now, back to tons of work. I spent all day in a car program managing months worth of work and proposals and management for numerous contracts and vendors with potential government contract value over a quarter-billion, and all I could think about after dinner tonight was "I have to fix the errors with docker-compose being on a snap install but docker being on an apt install."
Oh well. All fixed!