I’ve been using WordPress on my blog for so long, I don’t even really remember when I converted to using it from my homegrown system. My post archives suggest it happened some time in 2010, so that’s a long time to be on a platform I ultimately disliked. Heck, I hated the Gutenberg block writing system so much I followed a guide to disable it. And then I installed an actual plugin to disable it permanently.
Ever since my previous foray into building a server, I’v been trolling Lab Gopher for an upgrade. My preference would have been for a Dell PowerEdge R720xd 3.5-inch format since it could hold 12 full-size hard disks. But those are relatively rare and deals were scarce.
Instead, I stumbled across a Dell PowerEdge R720 2.5-inch format with an additional drive cage. So while 2.5-inch drives were lower capacity, I could use 16 of them if necessary.
I’ve been thinking of adding a Kanban board to my site for a more advanced TODO list. So far I’ve looked at:
Kanboard - Interesting and right now the main contender. It’s fast, easy to set up, and can use Postgres. It’s somewhat ugly, and the existing themes are few and far-between. It’s also PHP, which isn’t winning it any points. Also, every single theme breaks the code syntax highlighting in the hover tool-tip of the Board view.
To support more of my tinkering in an effort to test various Postgres cluster configurations, I decided it would be really nifty to have a virtual server. I could not only spin up VMs and containers to validate architectures, but experiment to my heart’s content with other potential technologies.
At first, I was going to buy an Antsle. But the fact such a thing existed made me wonder what other kinds of dedicated virtual device hardware might exist.
Postgres is one of those database engines that carves out a niche and garners adherents with various levels of religious zeal. The community, while relatively small when compared to that of something like MongoDB, is helpful almost to a fault. Members from the freshest minted newb to the most battle tested veteran will often trip over themselves to answer questions found in the various dedicated forums, mailing lists, and chat rooms.
