Death by Docusaurus (Almost)
eric-post.com fought for it's life today. I don't think it will survive the git push that allows you to read this.
This domain is no longer using Ghost. Welcome to my new minimum viable product!
Docusaurus is an open‑source static‑site generator.
I switched from cloud flare zero trust tunnels to Pangolin running on a private VPS. One big problem: Couldn't find a way to put an SSO/2FA in front of the /ghost route like I could with zero trust policies. Yucky. I stood up and said no to that. Ghost was already something I was happy to ditch but, like my first blog post hinted at, I also don't want to manage a codebase. Docusaurus promised to protect me from myself and force me down the tutorial/blog-like structure. Forcing me to keep a manageable code base as I go into the future. Ghost was too restrictive, but maybe this will hit the sweet spot? I think probably.
Pangolin is a self-hosted tunneled reverse proxy server with built-in crowdsec.
Why switch to Pangolin? Well, cloud flare has had its ups and downs lately, and I figure I could do much worse. Honestly, it just reminded me that there is an open source solution that I've heard a lot an of great things about. I just needed step outside my comfort zone and pick up a VPS to run it on (a requirement). A Black Friday miracle happened, and I remembered to take a look. RackNerd had something just fine for $18 a year.
My comfort zone has always been well within my own networks. A VPS always felt too extra. However, I had experimented with setting up tail scale on a Raspberry Pi running at my Mom's house several months back. I've been testing ideas for services I could host for my family. Stuff like photo albums. It then dawned on me that I could just lock down this VPS in almost every conceivable way and just run traffic through tailscale. I ran through the steps on this site here to sanity check my security expectations. It was an overall fun process.
Tailscale is a zero‑config VPN that turns any device into a secure, private mesh network using WireGuard.
Tailscale is still magic to me right now. I'm still basking in its glow. I am thankful for its existence. I can see some slightly better, more open-source solutions out there, but I am cool with this.
I should point out that I wanted to post about Docusaurus. I failed pretty badly so far. I can see that. Maybe mention a few things about using GitHub pages and probably brag about finally getting my git actions to work. I push a button, eric-post.com updates. Noice!
In fact, I've experienced a lot of moments over the years that had me wondering why I think I could actually do any of this. Sometimes I decide to do a thing, and so I gave it a shot. This can lead to some cascading consequences, as that tends to happen, that turns a small project into a quagmire of quicksand. Felt stuck. I gave up many times but was always drawn back wondering "maybe this time!”. I can't help it. I think this post can at least illustrate that process. One solution leads to another until eventually I can see over the hill. Once I get to the top, it's easy to see the path I took. Meandering around and stuffed with digressions.
Eric of two years back would think what I am doing now is almost sci-fi. Outside of something he could do. Eric now: It's no big deal. Just gotta learn this and that. Conquering these hills keep me addicted to my home-lab.