[Ed.2022-03-07: found an ancient backup in an online hole-in-the-wall, so have managed to recover some of the content!]

As mentioned in the description, a few days ago the microSD card that serves as my hard drive snapped in half, and the USB I was using to backup my encryption keys broke. In other words, I have lost the entire documents folder of my computer. All things I have written for the past year. My personal documents… Along with the original files for this blog. As I am writing this my spare computer is glowing red with the efforts of John the ripper, chomping at the encrypted backups. I do not foresee it being successful but it is all I could think of doing.

As such The Infrequency is created a new. An archived copy of how it used to be is available via The Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine. So, assuming they are not going anywhere any time soon, there will be a copy available for those that want to have a rummage.

The original first post, title: THE END

Hello and welcome to the end of The Infrequency.

I say the end because this is the first post, and no one knows about this site yet. The only reason you might be reading this is if you are going through the archives of posts. Welcome archaeologist and congratulations, you’ve reached the end.

Let’s go over a few things though, since you are here and there is a slim chance you are not an archaeologist. Granted, you might be an automated SEO web crawler looking for a place to insert your marketing member and pump up the link score of some herbal home teeth whitening kit… I’ve heard dentists hate that stay at home mom. If I haven’t heard from her in the next week I’ll assume the worst has happened and she has been sealed in a cavity.

The Infrequency is meant to serves as my online home here at the curbside of the Internet. An old fashioned home page akin to the net of yore. There is no exact publishing schedule. There might be a post per day, or a post per year. When ever there is time and something I’d like to share, there will be a post. It is infrequent. Hence The Infrequency. Yes it is a dad joke. I’m allowed. I have the papers to prove it.

I miss the early Internet. The times before content silo’s started forcing EULAs down my throat for everything I share. It’s why I am giving Neocities a go (hello Neocitizens, nice to meet you). Here I own my content and there are no real limitations. If I decide to turn the site theme pink and yellow or serve up content in the form of a series of rotating GIF haiku’s I can do that. Also, this way it feels more like I’m a part of the Small Communities…Community (I hope to explore this idea of small communities in a future post). Besides, once I have some spare time (20XX it looks like) I might decide to also release this in the form of an email newsletter. That way I can smuggle myself over the border into the Republic of Newsletters.

Being an infovore I often find myself with a pile of links, notes and ideas that are trying to congeal into a unified thing—except it has nowhere to go once it starts trying to shamble out of the lab. Until now that is. Some posts will be diving down rabbit holes, some listing stuff, others perhaps bits of fiction or a piece of art. It’s a personal web log (good lord… has anyone else written “web log” since the late 90s?) of all manner of things that need to be kept somewhere.

There are no tracking scripts or cookies generating data, save the standard Neocities statics. The data I keep can be summed up simply: Number of unique visitors per day and which countries they appear to be from. That’s it. I’m not sharing it with anyone nor using it for any real purpose beyond “huh, guess my site was viewed by someone in Ittoqqortoormiit… cool.” If this ever changed, you’ll be very clearly informed. I’m not a believer in data gathering and retention simply for the sake of it. Nor a fan of advertisements. (Addendum: I actually only get number of visitors+unique visitors per day, so no IPs or actual locations ;) ).

I lied to you a little earlier, there is one person that knows I’m setting up this site. Their first question was how as I planning to earn any money on it. Which begs the question why does everything have to be a fulcrum for earning cash online? This is something I enjoy doing in the few moments I have to myself. Perhaps there will be some merch for sale in the future to offset the ears I’m spending on this, or perhaps not. I’m not looking to turn this into a job. I already have a job with schedules and service requirements.

Now if you would pardon me, I have a mail server to keep off the SpamHaus black list, an ailing laptop to nurse back to health (again) and about twenty other things in the real world that I need to get to. Final thoughts

While it certainly hurts and irks, there is little that can be done about the situation. At the same time, the rpi desktop is now running Ubuntu MATE—which means I’m no longer stuck in 32bit hell. Also using this opportunity to build something a bit more organized on the cleared jungle that was my previous setup. More sensical directory structures, simpler script solutions, and a less paranoid backup system.

As the old 32gb microSD snapped, I am stuck using what I had in the drawer. At 16gb it definitely introduces some more limitations. Doubt I will be doing any image collages until the next paycheck. But times are hard all over, with the global pandemic rolling into it’s 2nd wave and the economic issues that comes with that. At least Norway has been kind enough to cover 100% of salaries for those in temporary-redundancy (wish I could find the correct word for this in English… when you still have a job to come back to but the job is temporarily suspended).

It took me 3 days to re-write the generate and upload script for this blog. On the bright side I notice I’ve learned much since the original script was created. For one it is now working off of last modification time rather than mad5 hashes, and manages to do the required string manipulations in two lines rather than eight. A small silver lining, but one none the less.

There it is. The resurrection of The Infrequency. This time with unencrypted (local) as well as encrypted (cloud) backups. So hopefully this will not happen again.

Going to go back to listening to Tommy Guerrero’s fantastic album Road to Knowhere and trying to re-fill the writing directory.

Until next time, keep safe.

Until next time,
// Cornelius K.

Title image from The Arabian nights’ entertainments (ca.1916) via Old Book Illustrations.