Kevin Reid's blog

In further news of updating my personal web presence, I have finally set up HTTPS for switchb.org. As I write this I'm working on updating all the links to it that I control.

The thing I found underdocumented in Let's Encrypt/Certbot is: if you want to (or must) manually edit the HTTP configuration, what should the edits be? What I concluded was:

<VirtualHost *:443>
  ServerName YOUR DOMAIN NAME
  Include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf
  SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR DOMAIN OR CERT NAME/cert.pem
  SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR DOMAIN OR CERT NAME/privkey.pem
  SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/YOUR DOMAIN OR CERT NAME/chain.pem

  ...rest of configuration for this virtual host...
</VirtualHost>

Notes:

• /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-apache.conf (which of course may be in a different location depending on your OS and package manager) contains the basic configuration to enable SSL (SSLEngine on) and certbot-recommended cipher options.
• You have to have a separate VirtualHost entry for *:443 and *:80; there's no way to copy the common configuration as far as I heard.
• By "CERT NAME" I mean the name assigned to a multi-domain-name certificate if you have requested one. You can find out the certificate names with the command certbot certificates. For a single domain it will be identical to the domain name.

switchb.org web and Subversion services are now running on a different server. Do let me know if you notice something broken.

I think I have a problem with writing. Namely, that I find it difficult to get around to starting a project involving writing, when it isn't 100% straightforward “The answer to this problem is…” or a little link or tip. I’ve had several “blog posts I should write” queued up, and I’m not getting around to doing my homework assignments promptly.

I’m considering setting a “write something every day” goal, or similar.

I’ve got two new projects to blog about. Let's see how soon those posts show up.

Should I get on LinkedIn? One hears far less about what they're up to than Facebook, and I recently received an invitation from a friend of mine.

Less subjectively: What does LinkedIn offer (given that it's a social network site), and do you find it worth your time?

Update: I signed up. No especially noticeable effects so far other than one newsletter sort of mailing and a lot of people I know wanting to add me as a contact^Wconnection; presumably LinkedIn notifies you when people in your address book create an account?

I've been having a lot of thoughts lately I'd like to publish, but seem a little bit too short for A Blog Post. Some options

1. Considered signing up for Twitter. Pro: short stuff is expected there; participating in the hot new thing; people interested in short-form will be on twitter and using the follow feature. Con: Reliability problems; YA thing to manage credentials and backup for; no hyperlinks; my favorite username is taken.
2. I could post stuff here. Particularly, LJ supports titleless posts.
3. I could use some other site, or build my own publishing system. [er, why?]

On reflection, I'm thinking to just post the stuff here and not have yet-another-distinct-place/site.

Readers, what would you prefer?

(This post is tagged “lisp” solely so that Planet Lisp will pick it up.)

Hi. I don't know what I'm going to do with this yet.