# New HTTP Site!
2025.05.08
TL/DR: Check out the shiny new (boring) HTTP homepage!
=>
http://rg19.freeshell.org Rose Garden 19 (HTTP)
## About the NEW site
After trying the Dillo browser and learning a little more about CSS, it seemed time to finally fulfill my original (circa 2017) goal of making a "proper" HTML website. I reformatted the contents of this Gemini capsule (entirely by hand), wrote a Lua script that calls "lowdown -s -t html" on every Markdown file in the resursive directory scan, then spent two whole days playing with CSS to make sure it all looked *just right*... And then I beamed it up to the Super Dimensional Fortress because I already have an account here, so why not use it?
The result is about as minimalist as you can get without looking too _raw_ or hard on the eyes, and I've tried my best to carefully choose colors that look good at almost any screen brightness. The fonts are still kind of wonky for some reason, but it's a work in progress. I've sworn to NEVER use JavaScript for anything, but I'm not opposed to using images if the occasion calls for it. The goal is for the site to render nicely on any browser or device that supports HTML at the very least, including text mode browsers, so the layout is probably boring at this time and is unlikely to change in the near future. Oh and it should go without saying, but there is no cookie jar, so there are no cookies for anyone... These are _my_ cookies. MINE!
I think the primary goal now is to figure out a way to set up an archive for the Core Dump blog so it doesn't turn into a single page of links going back to the beginning of time... but then I'd have to write more before I even need such a thing! Most of the content here has been migrated to the new site, though I chose to get rid of the 'Record Player' because it was collecting dust and seemed to clash with the whole purpose of the Rose Garden. I've also decided to leave the Telegraph behind since it would need to be rewired at the new site and I'm just not up to the task... The story 'Journey into the Darkness' is quite poorly written and even seems to increase the word count by means of waffling, so it is under reconsruction before it appears on the new site.
## Moving Forward
As for this Gemini capsule, I'm undecided about what to do. It seems pointless to have both an HTTP site and a Gemini capsule for the same content, but perhaps I could repurpose it somehow... Ideas are lacking at the moment so it will remain as it is until I can figure out what to do. Seems a shame to just delete everything.
On that note, I want to thank sdf.org for the free Gemini and HTTP hosting! Without that, I never would have gotten anything online without a lot of hassle and hunting down reasonable tutorials... and I'm sure the first post would have been an entire essay about what I did wrong!
But now that I'm on the "real" web, it's time to start getting more serious about the writing... Everything from 2023 was created with little regard to whether anyone would actually read any of it, but that's no excuse to just dump a bunch of garbage on the internet and hope for the best! Simply reading 'Adventures in OpenBSD 7.4' seems to have made me realize what a jerk I was when I wrote about AVLinux, with or without the cleanup that ensued before posting that article. And when I wrote about Dillo... well "The Final Thing On My Mind" was originally a 1600+ word rant about why the web is shit (and has been for over a decade), but that was removed because it started becoming its own article altogether and was just full of foul language that didn't need to be in a post about a cool new (old) browser.
Not many people want to read a stream of spiteful, angry cursing rants about how everything is shit, especially when such rants are written by someone who is quite often NOT qualified to form their own original opinion on the matter (that's me, btw). But then I'm not one of those "like and subscribe" people, nor do I have any social media accounts to boost my own ego. For me it's not about being popular or even widely known (of which I am neither). It's about trying to write (actual) interesting content and sharing it with the world on the one platform that is universally known, universally available and also already full of garbage (that's the web). I can and _will_ do better, because I learned quite a lot from writing an ugly 6500 word essay during the summer of 2021 and it's been haunting me ever since. To forget those lessons now would be to move backwards as a person, and that is just unacceptable.
I don't know where this is all going, but I'd like to think it's not just one big waste of time. So with that, change is in the air once more as it becomes quite clear that some fresh thinking is required to make it work. After all, everything serves the command line, and the command line serves the people who use it... Maybe that's where this is going.
