Jekyll2020-07-08T08:55:50+10:00https://www.ozzmosis.com/feed.xmlozzmosis.comandrew clarkeBBS software collection2020-07-07T09:20:00+10:002020-07-07T09:20:00+10:00https://www.ozzmosis.com/2020/07/07/bbs-software<p>In the 1990s before the Internet took off I was a regular user of dialup
Bulletin Board Systems. For a year or so I was co-sysop of a Melbourne
BBS named The Programmers Corner, later renamed Valhalla.</p>
<p>Back then I taught myself C by working on the code to various bits of open
source BBS software, particularly anything
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FidoNet">FidoNet</a>-related. One of those projects
was a message editor originally written by Jim Nutt named Msged which had been
ported to OS/2. I modified the user interface to more closely resemble another
message editor named GoldED, and cobbled together a Windows port.</p>
<p>Over the years I’ve kept a small collection of <a href="http://blizzard.ozzmosis.com/bbs/">BBS
software</a> written in the 1990s, for
historical value. Some software was closed-source “shareware”, which was common
at the time. And some of it is a bit hard to find now.</p>
<p><a href="http://blizzard.ozzmosis.com/bbs/">http://blizzard.ozzmosis.com/bbs/</a></p>
<p><img src="/img/maximus-1.0.png" alt="Maximus 1.0" /></p>In the 1990s before the Internet took off I was a regular user of dialup Bulletin Board Systems. For a year or so I was co-sysop of a Melbourne BBS named The Programmers Corner, later renamed Valhalla.Blog hosted on GitHub Pages2020-07-07T07:07:07+10:002020-07-07T07:07:07+10:00https://www.ozzmosis.com/2020/07/07/github-pages<p><img src="/img/github-logo.png" width="150" height="150" alt="GitHub logo" /></p>
<p>Some months back I’d taken my blog offline, but it’s now hosted on <a href="https://pages.github.com/">GitHub
Pages</a>:</p>
<p><img src="/img/github-pages-settings.png" width="623" height="465" alt="GitHub Pages Settings" /></p>
<p>I’d known about their free web hosting but was unaware it was possible (and
common!) to use a CNAME DNS record to map to a GitHub Pages site using a
<a href="https://docs.github.com/en/github/working-with-github-pages/configuring-a-custom-domain-for-your-github-pages-site">custom domain</a>.
For my blog, the important lines in the DNS record for ozzmosis.com were:</p>
<div class="language-plaintext highlighter-rouge"><div class="highlight"><pre class="highlight"><code>@ 3600 IN ALIAS zoomosis.github.io.
www 3600 IN CNAME zoomosis.github.io.
</code></pre></div></div>
<p>The ALIAS line allows anyone visiting
<a href="http://ozzmosis.com/">http://ozzmosis.com/</a> to be redirected to
<a href="http://www.ozmosis.com/">http://www.ozmosis.com/</a>. Because I have “Enforce
HTTPS” enabled on the Settings page for the <a href="https://github.com/zoomosis/ozzmosis.com">GitHub repo of the web
site</a>, this in turn redirects to the
secure site at <a href="https://www.ozzmosis.com/">https://www.ozzmosis.com/</a>. Security
certificates used by HTTPS are automatically generated by GitHub Pages and
issued by <a href="https://letsencrypt.org/">Let’s Encrypt</a>.</p>
<p>Many domain registrars also provide <a href="https://docs.gandi.net/en/gandimail/index.html">free e-mail
hosting</a> for domains registered
with them. Combine this with free web hosting on GitHub Pages means you can
quickly and easily set up a web site and email address for just the cost of a
domain name (approx AU$25/year), with a domain name you control.</p>
<p>The advantage of using your own domain name means it’s portable. In the
unlikely event GitHub Pages is discontinued I can host my web site elsewhere
and keep using the same web site address. I can also choose to move my e-mail
hosting elsewhere, keeping the same e-mail address.</p>
<p>I’ve since learned <a href="https://www.netlify.com/">Netlify</a> provides free hosting
for web sites with a <a href="GitHub">https://github.com/</a>,
<a href="https://about.gitlab.com/">GitLab</a> or <a href="https://bitbucket.org/">Bitbucket</a>
repository, so that may be something to look at in the future.</p>
<p>Also it appears GitLab has its own free version of GitHub Pages, appropriately
named <a href="https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/pages/">GitLab Pages</a>.</p>
<p>For this blog I’m using <a href="https://jekyllrb.com/">Jekyll</a> for static page
creation, currently using a modified dark version of the Minima theme.</p>