I previously enabled comments again on this blog, and it seems to have attracted the attention of bots trying to sell drugs through the comment section.
As a result, I ended up implementing FriendlyCaptcha, a small Open-Source PoW (Proof-of-Work) captcha solution made in Germany.
Fear not for your data, it is using a self-hosted instance as well, and ActivityPub is exempt from this restriction.
Next on the list is modifying the captcha itself to include all creatures, and not just humans.
It’s something I had enabled back on Mataroa, but that I didn’t really bother enabling again: comments.
As a bonus, if you don’t want to type your email and name in the field below, you can also reply via any ActivityPub-enabled software (Mastodon, Misskey, etc). Just paste the link to a blog post in there and reply to the post.
It goes without saying: please remain civil in there.
As the second bonus, pingbacks should also be enabled now, though not sure how they work.
Hey everybody!
Small update about this blog in particular.
As you may have noticed, the style has changed quite a lot and there are now categories on the right side of the page.
I’ve decided to make it easier for me to maintain this blog and write more in general, which was why I originally moved to Mataroa (but then left because of the lack of IPv6 support).
Since switching back to Hugo, writing stuff has been a bit offputting because it requires me to run stuff locally, managing drafts can be a bit of a hassle, especially when talking about really quick ideas.
So, now that my blog edition is more streamlined, expect more posts in the future!
Fear not, no links were broken in the migration, I made sure to add redirects everywhere.
Don’t forget to update the RSS URL in your favourite reader to https://b.j4.lc/feed/ instead.
The previous one should still work, and redirect, but it’s better to have the correct one.
Adding this afterwards, sorry if I accidentally spammed your RSS reader, I totally forgot to make sure posts wouldn’t be duplicated D:
It is 2025 and it’s still super easy to deploy a blog using Hugo and GitLab pages.
In fact, the post you are reading right now is exactly that, deployed on my self-managed instance.
But Jae, weren’t you on another host beginning from last year?
Yes, last year I switched to Mataroa for the ease of mind the platform has.
The interface is very clean, has no bullshit whatsoever and is made and hosted in small web fashion.
Sadly, it has one caveat that was underlined once again by @miyuru@ipv6.social on the Fediverse (ironically under my post about GitHub and its lack of IPv6): no IPv6.
This is why today I moved back my blog on something I used to have a long time ago, a GitLab pages site generated by Hugo.
Actually implementing it was as easy as I remembered:
The Hugo setup itself is fairly easy, so is the CI file:
default:
image: ghcr.io/hugomods/hugo:ci-non-root
variables:
GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY: recursive
test:
script:
- hugo
rules:
- if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH != $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
deploy-pages:
script:
- hugo
pages: true
artifacts:
paths:
- public
rules:
- if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == $CI_DEFAULT_BRANCH
environment: production
Code language: YAML (yaml)The main difference from years ago is that now, we have fully-featured (and maintained) Docker images for Hugo, the one being selected in this instance being ghcr.io/hugomods/hugo, maintained by HugoMods.
So now, enjoy all the posts over IPv6 \o/
I really started blogging back in 2020, although I posted some stuff before, it’s only from that point on that I started posting semi-regularly.
As you may know, my last post on my main blog was back in December 2023, which is already more than half a year ago.
It’s this blogging journey that led me to create OverEngine, that slowly became way more than I thought, now hosting a blog, documentation, a wiki and many other things.
It was originally started as a small experimentation project to learn more about TypeScript which grew way out of scope.
Sadly, as you may also know, burnouts are very real, and I am not exempt to them. This is mainly the reason there hasn’t been any blog posts since forever, I can’t manage to write any.
This is why I moved here, to Mataroa since here, I just have a simple web interface to post, no need to manage hosting, maintenance and everything that makes a small project fun.
Posts here won’t be out of the usual, still about tech, random things and also maybe some tutorials thrown in the middle.
As for my old posts, don’t worry, they are archived on the Internet Archive already and the website will be up for as long as possible, as I don’t believe taking it down will do anything productive.
So, time to update your RSS readers (feed linked below this post), it’s time to blog again!
As a test, comments are now enabled on this blog. I trust each and every one of my readers to be civil enough and to behave.