What’s good, people? I’ll tell you what’s good. I basically finished all the source files for the XFA site. YEET! I won’t make any effort to hide my emotions. I am deeply, deeply stoked.
Now then, what’s bad, people? I’ll tell you what’s bad. Deploying the website. For some reason I figured the deployment process would be a walk in the park. Not so, readers, not so. It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of hullaballoo associated with getting servers up and working.
After I finally finished the source code for the project, I began poking around at which hosting service to use. I decided on BlueHost because the internet told me to. If the internet told me to jump off a bridge, would I do it? Well, readers, that depends. If the bridge was sufficiently high and I had a ballistic parachute strapped on, that might be a wild ride. In that case, I would probably have the internet to thank for its peer pressure. As a brief side note, in High School we’re taught that peer pressure is a bad, bad thing. While I have found that this is mostly true, I have found that mountain biking and longboarding are two activities where peer pressure is invaluable. If you are longboarding, however, please for the love of Thor’s hammer, wear a helmet. Perhaps this statement has shattered your perception of me as an invincible Coloradan (which I am, don’t you forget it), but I will have you know that one of my friends almost got into a horrible longboarding accident involving a pendy slide and an aggressively placed curb because he hadn’t strapped his helmet on. No one cares if you’re cool. Wear the fracking helmet. If nothing else, how on earth are you going to understand the covariant form of Maxwell’s equations if you have brain damage? That alone should hopefully scare you into keeping that helmet on whenever you’re on a mountain or boarding down a road.
Now then, back to the main issue at hand: website deployment. If you have been diligently reading my posts (or even just the “About” page), you know that I had grand notions of building my website up from scratch using good ol’ code. I believe my exact quote was “In an effort to not be a weak-minded codpiece, I’m going to build my site with Django, Python, Javascript, HTML, and CSS like the heroes of old.” Such insolence, my readers. Such naivete. Would it have been incredibly easier to build the site with WordPress? Absolutely. Is there any reason I didn’t? I dunno. Pride? I tend to be more enamored with code than the average citizen and I didn’t want to be just another blogger using WordPress haphazardly without taking the time to respect the underlying mechanics of the world wide web.
Wait, hold up a moment. I believe I hear coyotes howling. It honestly sounds more like wolves, but we haven’t had wild wolves in Colorado for ages. What an interesting sound. I don’t really know why they howl like that. They can’t howl before a kill because it would alert the prey. The can’t howl after the kill because it might lure other predators. Maybe they just do it because it feels awesome. I can certainly understand that sentiment. I have been known to make bizarre noises for the good, good mouth-feel. Yowl on, coyote brethren (and sisthren), yowl on.
Back to the main matter at hand. What to do about website deployment? In a courageous and noble effort, I shall strive onward. I shalt not let the tribulations of restricted Shell access keep me from that for which I conquest. I conquest for glory! I thirst for honor! I strive onward empowered by the vision of a day that may come when our sons and daughters can deploy their Django applications without fear of bad documentation and bad tutorials. Yes, my readers, yes! Let us not by hindered by the afflictions of server programming! Let us draw together, and march on toward the glorious horizon, a future where we are no longer at the mercy of nefarious hackers cloaked in scripted shadows, trying to steal or personal information from the whois database! (the whois database, btw, seems like one of the most anarchical creations of man. I openly condemn it. Do I fully understand it? No. Did I learn about its existence tonight? Yes.) For honor! the crowd roars in agreement. For glory! the crowd stamps their feet and pounds their fists. For our sons and our daughters! one member of the crowd becomes so impassioned he starts performing a ceremonial jig. The rest of the crowd openly shuns him and tries to pretend he doesn’t exist. To me! with an army of programmer-warriors at my back, I rush forward into battle I know we may lose, but will no doubt be sung about for generations to come.
Goodness me. Nothing like leading a pack of hypothetical programmer-warriors (a lovely oxymoron, you’ll agree) into a hypothetical battle against a metaphorical manifestation of my troubles with web app deployment. You may be amused to know that I’m currently propped up on my queen-sized bed (yeah, I know. It’s absolutely egregious that I possess a queen-sized bed) which is covered in snowflake flannel sheets. The morning light has been waking me up at ungodly hours, so I have placed a green flannel blanket around one set of windows (this blanket’s original purpose was as a green-screen for a project I did in seventh grade about caecilians), and a brown fitted sheet over the other. The green and the brown really come together to produce a wonderfully swampy effect during the day, which only solidifies the “Cave of Sorrows” motif I’ve been trying to cultivate in my current living space.
Goodness gracious, to my left is An Introduction to Analysis, Calculus, An Introduction to Astronomy, and Modern Physics. Those of you who are rightfully concerned about my sanity are probably wondering what these books are doing in my bed. Well, my friends, I honestly don’t know. I could try to pull off the ultimate weird flex and tell you all that I sleep with them, but we both know in our heart of hearts that isn’t true.
I am fast approaching… wait hold on. I can hear an animal prowling right outside my room. If it weren’t 12:40 am, I could try to see if it’s a mountain lion or bobcat. Drat. Anyway, I am fast approaching the hour of 1am, so I feel I should wrap this sucker up.
I can assure you all that I will remove the textbooks from my bed with extreme prejudice. Toodles!