Bcc

Initially, I thought, I needed to get bcc.npdoty.name to load over HTTPS. Previously I had been using TLS transit part of the way using Cloudflare, but I've moved away from that, I'd rather not have the additional service, it was only a partial solution, and I'm tired of seeing Certificate Transparency alerts from Facebook when CloudFlare creates a new cert every week for my domain name and a thousand others, but now I've heard that Google has announced good HTTPS support for custom domain names when using Google App Engine and so I should be good to go. HTTPS is important, and I should fix that before I post more on this blog.

I was plagued for weeks trying to use Google's new developer console, reading through various documentation that was out of date, confronted by the vaguest possible error messages. Eventually, I discover that there's just a bug for most or all long-time App Engine users who created custom domains on applications years ago using a different system; the issue is acknowledged; no timeline for a fix; no documentation; no workaround.* Just a penalty for being a particularly long-time customer. Meanwhile, Google is charging me for server time on the blog that sees no usage, for some other reason I haven't been able to nail down.

I start to investigate other blogging software: is Ghost the preferred customizable blogging platform these days? What about static-site generation, from Jekyll, or Hugo? Can I find something written in a language where I could comfortably customize it (JavaScript, Python) and still have a well-supported and simple infrastructure for creating static pages that I can easily host on my existing simple infrastructure? I go through enough of the process to actually set up a sample Ghost installation on WebFaction, before realizing (and I really credit the candor of their documentation here) that this is way too heavyweight for what I'm trying to do.

Ah, I fell into that classic trap! This isn't blogging. This isn't even working on building a new and better blogging infrastructure or social media system. This isn't writing prose, this isn't writing code. This is meta-crap, this is clicking around, comparing feature lists, being annoyed about technology. So, to answer the original small question to myself "what to do about the blog", how about, for now, "just fucking post on whatever infrastructure you've got".

—npd

* I see that at least one of the bugs has some updates now, and maybe using a different (command-line) tool I could unblock myself with that particular sub-issue.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/66984633
Maybe. Or maybe I would hit their next undocumented error message and get stuck again, having invested several more hours in it. And it does actually seem important to move away from this infrastructure; I'm not really sure to what extent Google is supporting it, but I do know that when I run into completely blocking issues that there is no way for me to contact Google's support team or get updates on issues (beyond, search various support forums for hours to reverse-engineer your problem, see if there's an open bug on their issue tracker, click Star), and that in the meantime they are charging me what I consider a significant amount of money.