First off, while out fixing our doorbell this morning and cursing the curse of tiny screws, I saw this cool looking snail:

How Dare You, Wordle!?

Second, how dare you Wordle!? It is October for goodness, sake…

Click to see the actual problem.

And yes, I partially posted that just to see if I can work out the mechanics of a “spoiler” type image. It should “enlarge” to the unspoilered image. If it doesn’t, I might just remove this whole section.

Just in case you don’t want to do that, here’s my explanation (click to expose spoiler): 2v Zo oj336s oS0o35, o3 2 J0o vEZ56Z5h vE0v W0szS vES J3RI J3pYI zS blxx4 05I h3v S9mZvSI 0z3pv Zv. n3JSkSR, V3RIYS jY0sSI WS YZ6S 0 M33Y!

EDIT: I’m going to leave it like th at for now, where instead of opening into a lightbox it opens another tab with the unspoilered version. I really don’t think it’s worth it, but I’ll give it a think about how to do it better without needing plugins.

Big Old Whoops on the Website Backend

I have been cleaning up a good bit of the backend of my old wyrmis.com website and today was chunking out a few hundred-ish tiny files from the file structure that were no longer used and at least potentially, therefore, a security risk [at worst] but just a hindrance to sort through, at best.

I ran what I took to be a basic rm -rf * type command but apparently the software does it a bit more complicated than that (and even has the option to move the files into a local recycle bin).

This was treated as me {moving | uploading | downloading} a lot of files and triggered an automatic kick. The software got booted from the server and I am at least on a temporary ban. My assumption here was very wrong, see UPDATE below.

I can still log on to the server through other means, and the website seems completely unimpacted. Now I’m waiting an hour or two to see if it clears up on its own or I might have to contact someone for some technical support.

While I can still edit the website in a number of ways, I had a nice workflow going.

I’ll spend the time, instead, building up a tool that might help me to semi-automate some of the process of fixing hundreds of HTML files and then like, get back to house repairs, instead.

Now I am off to take some photos of damaged bookcases that the shipper broke and wants more photos to prove despite sending them a number of photos.

[2 hours later] Update to Website Woes

Turns out my previous assumption was just plain wrong. The [re]moving of a large number of files might have exacerbated the situation by making it harder to tell what was happening, but the actual culprit was that after I backed out of the directory that had the files, I thought it was sending me {Doug's Directory} while instead it was sending me {The Directory ABOVE Doug's Directory} and then, because the program I was using had the option to recall last directory, it entered into a loop where it kept trying to enter a forbidden zone.

I figured this out when at a whim I tried to enter directly into a sub-directory, which failed and then kicked me back out into the directory I was supposed to be in and I realized what was wrong.

The reason it wasn’t immediately obvious before was because when it kicked me out it essentially prevented me from even seeing what sort of directory I was in. It was the sort like finding a NO ENTRY sign in the middle of a very dark room and having to guess your location. Only every time you re-enter the room, a helpful guide runs up and escorts you to the same place you were just told you not to enter.