DEV Community: Evie Snuggle ✨

Let's Join the IndieWeb Together

Evie Snuggle ✨ — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 19:48:30 +0000

I have joined the IndieWeb and you should too. By embracing some core principles, I’ve joined an online community who is banding together to create an alternative to the current corporate controlled web.

What’s in it for me?

Ownership — get out of the silo 🌾🌽

In return, I am able to post some content on my own website, that I control and own, and have a short summary of my content automatically get posted to all the social media platforms I wish to engage with, without any extra effort on my part!

Another benefit is being part of this movement against the centralisation of the internet as mentioned before, one which avoids all my writings being stuck in a “silo” where they’re difficult to export and I don’t have full control & agency over. There’s a certain liberating and empowering quality to this, taking back what is yours and staking a claim which says “these thoughts are mine” and “I own them”.

Share — do it on your terms

Social media networks are ever changing, and I hope that they’re going to change into a more decentralised form. But even if they’re not, I’m going to keep my thoughts on my website first and then distribute them elsewhere.

This idea, called syndication, is part of an IndieWeb philosophy called POSSE: “Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere”. This is a concept that I think shows some of the fundamental ideas behind the IndieWeb. Owning your own little corner of the internet, calling it yours (by owning a domain name), and having that be the canonical source for everything you make. This is a way to claim your own online identity. It’s already important to blog, as doing so can help you learn and become a better person, a better writer, and a more connected individual in an online web of many. But POSSE takes that so much further — helps you connect with people no matter what social media network they’re using, or even without if they’d go directly to the source or use an RSS reader.

What else? 🤔

There are other aspects to the IndieWeb too, such as “back-feeding” which is a term that describes retrieving comments from these other social media networks and showing them on your website, and also other cool things you can choose to opt into, such as the IndieWeb ring, or blog rolls which are ways for people to find other blogs which have more interesting content to read.

Sounds good, let’s get started 🚀

If you’re interested in taking a stand and being a part of a growing community that supports a free and open web, I invite you to become a part of the IndieWeb too. If you already have a website, check if there’s a way to integrate IndieWeb standards into your blog. If you don’t, there are some easier ways to get started, and some more involved ways like setting up Hugo , or Jekyll too on something like GitHub Pages, Netlify or similar.

If this sounds great to you and you’re wondering how to join? Let’s start today.

Learning How to Blog

Evie Snuggle ✨ — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 20:13:25 +0000

I find the actual technical side of creating a blog so much more fun than the actual writing side. It’s weird!

I could spend countless hours trying to fitz around with CSS or adjusting some JavaScript to do something like add little fancy spinning buttons that link to somewhere else on the internet.

What I seem to struggle with is the writing bit. Why is this? All I need to do is to get my thoughts down, but when I try it feels like nothing comes to me to write about. Sure, I’ve done lots of cool and interesting things but surely no one would want to read about those. I overthink writing way too much and that turns into not writing anything at all.

So how can I solve this? I’m not sure. First I’m going to try to remove the barriers that made it more difficult to write for me before: I had a Jekyll powered website and while everything was in a Markdown file in GitHub it was a bit of a pain to actually write out something because I’d be really picky about the images not looking quite right or the design looking a bit off.

I’m going to start with micro blogs, inspired by micro.blog, to capture my small ‘writings/posts/jots’ of writing and mix that in with a bit more of long-form writing.

I’ll pin the long-form stuff so that it’s a bit more visible and I can show it off. I’ll try to make it frictionless to write more, even in tiny small amounts, and then I’ll try to read up on how other people have done it. I can’t be the only one facing this problem: how do I even get started with writing content for a blog? Many people have been here before, and persevered, so I can do it too.

Before I made this post, I read: “How to blog about code and give zero fucks”

Which brings me to the subject of this post, which is that you, developer in an underrepresented group who hopefully received this link somehow through the magical machinations of social media, should be blogging more. I need you to blog more. Little future developers who look or act or dress or think like you need you to blog more. Your slightly confused and defensive developer community needs you to blog more. Please please please please. And if you are like, “I give zero fucks about what those people need, I need to get off work at six and build charming birdhouses or customize my bicycle or something,” the best part is giving zero fucks is totally fine.

I can do it! You can too.

Now here’s where I open it up: do you have any resources to share on how you have gotten started with blogging? Specifically how do you actually get words down? I’d be interested in hearing from others, so please share anything you might think could be helpful. 😊

Server Cabinet Update: How is it Going?

Evie Snuggle ✨ — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 19:28:12 +0000

It has been a long time since I’ve given an update on how the server cabinet is going. Well, snugg.ie has had a bit of an upgrade!

As you might’ve noticed, we’re in a totally new cabinet now! The older wooden cabinet outlived its lifespan after a few house moves. It was also never originally designed to be disassembled, which was its biggest hindrance.

The setup has now moved into a whole new 24U enclosure (Lehmann) made of metal. It’s disassemble-able and has sound-dampening foam, which gets everywhere 🌨️!

We’ve expanded!

totally new network setup! New VLANs, FTTx XGS-PON full-fibre wired directly into router using a WAS-110 ONT/ONU ‘on a stick’ SFP+ module
a lot more smart-home gear running through a Home Assistant ZBT-1, including Everything presence sensors, smart light bulbs (Philips Hue & Twinkly), and more!
using Docker containers for pretty much all of my services with docker-compose
switched from Plex to Jellyfin

What’s inside?

Top to bottom:

Unifi Dream Machine Pro*
Cisco Meraki MS225-48FP*
Silver patch panel*
Blanking plate*
Cisco Meraki MX100* (currently unused)
Homebrew Opnsense router* (currently unused)
10 blanking plates*
cuddle server* (4c/4t Intel Xeon E3-1225v2 & 14 GiB DDR3)
hug server (16c/32t 2x Intel E5-2630v3 & 64 GiB DDR4)
Eaton 5PX 1500 UPS

*new!

How much power does it all draw?

On average the whole cabinet draws 340 watts, about 8.38 kWh total a day, which using current UK energy prices is around £2/day. It’s an expensive hobby to keep, so bear in mind if you’re looking to getting into self-hosting things yourself!

Oh, hi there!

Evie Snuggle ✨ — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 00:42:43 +0000

Hello, Snuggle here! This is a small introduction post, I suppose.

Still not used to this website or the concept of making blog posts at all. Be sure to visit my Twitter @WarmSnuggle or my personal website: https://snugg.ie

Thank you! 🌸✨