I have been renovating our old house
(1920s? 1930s? I don't know, but it
originally had knob and tube wiring)
for 13 years. I'm on the last room.
The electrical, drywall, painting, and
flooring are all done. Just the
moldings are left to put in. It's been
a long process and it will be so nice
to be finished. I don't think I'd ever
advise anyone to buy an old house
unless they wanted to learn a lot and
experience their fair share of fear
and panic in the process.
Have you ever had a bizarre idea that
turned out to be really useful? I just
did. I wanted to set up a private
email server, with no 'federation'.
The users would only be able to send
and receive emails on that server.
Part of the purpose was to use it with
Delta Chat.
Well, I started experimenting. First I
set up email for local accounts using
opensmtpd (thanks for the
recommendation KatolaZ), so that users
who could SSH into the server could
email one another. Then I added IMAP
with dovecot and altered the opensmtpd
config to allow external access. At
this point, I hadn't set up TLS. It
was the equivalent of a 1997 mail
server, sending everything unencrypted
in plain text, but only on my LAN.
Stay with me here.
Then a bright shining realization
occurred. I doubt that I'm the only
person in the world who uses their
work email extensively for file
transfer. I email ideas and files to
myself all the time.
Well, I like vintage tech, especially
my BlackBerry Bold 9900. It has a very
outdated email client (Logicmail).
When I set up that LAN-only,
unencrypted email system, I realized
that it was the perfect setup to
transfer files, notes, etc., quickly
to the Bold.
So while I'll ultimately set up TLS
and authentication for access to the
email server from outside my LAN, I'm
going to leave ports 25 and 143 open
on the LAN, so I can send notes and
files quickly and easily to my Bold,
Lifedrive, Jornada and any other
antiquated tech with an email client
that I own. Personal, unfederated
email servers -- so useful!
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It's been so nice to see a lot of the
old regulars (Jynx, sloum, Slugmax,
and tfurrows among others) posting on
gopher recently. Perhaps my "Ghost
Town" phlog entry was premature.
------------
I'm glad I don't have to travel like
Jynx. One or two flights a year is
plenty for me. Oddly, I've only ever
had to deal with one substantial delay
and the airline (Westjet) paid for a
hotel room. That was nice, but the
whole thing was quite inconvenient.
After a lot of anxiety and a two-hour
post-flight drive, I got to work the
next day about five minutes late.
