Housekeeping #1

This is going to be just another what-I've-been-up-to post. An update post. A journal entry. A dear diary post.

Ghost CMS Tech Stuff

First off, I was considering migrating this self-hosted instance of Ghost to the native Ghost(Pro) hosting. I currently have this site hosted with Digital Ocean and had setup the newsletter with Mailgun. I ended up cancelling the Mailgun service because after the free trial ended they started charging $30 bucks a month. A few users had subscribed, and by a few I mean 4, which is my girlfriend, an old friend, and two people from the internet. So I didn't feel that bad about it cancelling the newsletter service, but it still bother me a tad some that it wasn't working. After looking into the pros and cons of staying self-hosted versus using Ghost(Pro), I decided to add back Mailgun and this time selected their basic plan which should be about $15 a month. When comparing the costs I see that I could save a few dollars if I go with the Starter Plan, but then I wouldn't have the ability for paid subscriptions. (My apologies by the way if you're one out of the four subscribers and got a bunch of "new" posts from me.)

I also updated Ghost to it's 6.0 version which now supports ActivityPub. I had some issues with the update and the new Network feature on the Admin Dashboard worked only for like 5 minutes. It looks like many people that self-host Ghost have had this issue. I did some Googling and GPTing, but I think I messed up some nginx.config files.

(If you see anything weird on this blog, or can't subscribe let me know.)

Maybe going back to school?

I've been in a funk ever since dropping the whole thing of trying to get a job as a programmer. It has been such a big part of my identity. My day job isn't great. Lets just say that my day job it's just for paying the bills, but I always had that thing of having something to look forward to doing after work. That other thing that wasn't my irritating day job. That thing that I was actually going to be doing for, you know, meaning and purpose and shit. If I'm not going to be what I wanted to become, what am I then?

I was considering for a while doing the Coursera BSc in Computer Science through The University of London. I almost signed up. I was also taking other Coursera courses in Machine Learning. I completed Andrew Ng's Machine Learning specialization a few months(about a year now?) ago and put on hold the Deep Learning Specialization.

But I have distanced myself a bit from programming related stuff overall. At least from the context of getting a job. Part of me feels liberated on not having to care and worry anymore about having to learn new things, practice stupid Leetcode problems, and think of "real world problems to solve" in order to be considered for a Software Engineer job. Right now the LLM coding thing is disrupting everything about being a professional programmer. But I miss tinkering and making stuff with code.

One thing that I've been considering recently is totally pivoting back to my first interests like music and writing. A part of me wants to go back to school and get a degree in Creative Writing. It makes sense right? Because I like writing. Been looking at courses, workshops, and college. But it feels so naive. Writing? In this economy?

Intellectual Loneliness

I think what I'm seeking is having real life people that can match me intellectually. I encountered the term Intellectual Loneliness while having a "therapy chat" with ChatGPT the other day. (Don't worry, I'm aware that ChatGPT makes people delusional). It seems like the LLM got this from Dave Perell's post on the idea, which is so on the money with the way I've been feeling lately.

I'm thinking a lot. Reading a lot. Reconsidering.

That's all I got for now.