Vision
To provide an exchange for commentary and insights
ThinkBlog.org is a place where you can come for interesting discourse on psychology and philosophy, theology and tips on technology; a place to find helpful and useful links; and a place (via the Forums) to have your own voice heard. The spirit of ThinkBlog (and, of course, of the ThinkForums) is discussion, dialogue: a means by which to share your thoughts, arguments, reviews, tips, tricks, poetry, or anything you like in the vein four “cardinal disciplines.”
History
From personal project to public blog
In mid-2003, I was running a Red Hat Linux 9.0 server/workstation in my apartment and wanted a way to access some crucial files from my home. I relegated the idea to the back of my mind until I went to my then-roommate’s friend’s home page, which I shortly learned was running off of a server in his house, and using a free DNS provider to point to the machine. Ingenius! I signed up at No-IP and registered a free domain or two, downloaded the UNIX-based dynamic IP update client, and soon was able to connect from anywhere to my own server. All I wanted to be able to do in the first place was not to have to remember my (then constantly-shifting) IP in order to get to the SSH/SFTP server on my personal machine when I needed some files.
But it didn’t end there. Eventually, I had the SSH Linux server (soon also serving as NAT router, DHCP server, and caching DNS server!) running on the cable modem, with a couple of machines attached to the Linux box through a simple hub. At some point, my two pet projects became configuring iptables scripts by hand (I ended up using Dr. Bob Sully’s at Malibyte.net) and setting up an Apache 2.0 server under Windows XP on a separate machine with MySQL and PHP just for kicks, and forwarding the traffic to port 80 to that machine.
Eventually, the setup came to be thus. The cable modem was plugged into a five-port router, into which was plugged a CAT5e cable snaking along the walls of the place, behind the couch, around the door, behind my bed, along the wall, and into my closet—where my Linux HTTP, SSH, SFTP, DNS, and DHCP server/firewall sat. The website was run off of that for a long time, with intermittent glitches and various Linux-specific curiosities.
For a long time, the site was hosted by Quickpacket, and now by Site5; I have been enormously pleased with the performance and quality of both.*
ThinkBlog has since become as you see it today, still a non-commercial weblog plus a public forum. (Google Ads go to the cost of maintenance, which comes straight out of my pocket.) From an average of fifty hits per month in its original conception, ThinkBlog now sees thousands of hits and is still growing thanks to readers like you who encourage and propel its development.
Thank you all for your support.
* In the interest of honesty, please note that if you click the link to Site5.com from this page and sign up for a hosting package there—and remain for 60+ days—I will receive a commission. However, in the numerous months I’ve been with Site5, I have been very pleased with their speed, space, price, and customer service, and would neither recommend nor support them if that were not the case.
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