So - this is in fact the test site. Thanks for visiting.

Hello and WELCOME to the test site!

Feel free to post here, anything you do post will be deleted when the site goes live.

Test, ignore

.. just while I take a copy of the database and the content.

Quote from: The Picnic Wasp on July 29, 2026, 10:20:02 PMGreat AI photo of Geddy & Alex online today as complete wrinklies. Posted by Alex allegedly but who can tell these days?

Highslide Image Viewer

I really didn't think UEFA had the balls for this:

"No UEFA national teams will participate in any FIFA competition for so long as these proposals remain alive, unless this proposal has been abandoned in its entirety and binding assurances have been given that FIFA will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership."

Who could have thought Infantino would turn out to be worse than Blatter?

I would hope that most people do care about reducing their environmental impact, even if they recognise hypocrisy in others.

Moved my cycling blog database to the new host, then set up the SSL certificate, moved the blog content and the Apache2 config. I changed the DNS last night to give it time to propogate. Works! Live at:

https://bikediary.uk/

So I've established that DNS, Cloudflare, Apache, PHP 8.3, MySQL 8, WordPress and automated TLS all work on the new server.

Going well so far, next thing is to make a copy of this site and set it up as a test site on the new host. I'll have to put the site in maintenance mode for 25 minutes or so to take a copy but I'll give advance notice. Maybe tonight.

"Alex Lifeson went off on loose-limbed benders, taking madcap detours and stretching out phrases just to see where they'd land"

While I haven't actually seen this performance, I strongly suspect that's a positive spin to say the least.

I've installed the usual packages necessary for Wordpress sites and forums like this to work - MySQL (database), Apache2 (web server), PHP (website language / processor).

The old server was based in a data centre in Virginia so I called it 'virginian'. The new one is based in a data centre in SE London, Erith to be precise. I lived in SE London for seven years and had never heard of Erith. But Denis Thatcher ran his family's chemicals/preservatives business there until the mid-1960s, so I'm calling it 'denis'.

Quote from: pxr5 on July 29, 2026, 04:29:02 PMWould it help if we could make a donation to help with the running costs James?

That's thoughtful of you but at slightly more than £4 a month (I added regular snapshots to the original quote) and considering I have other sites on there, and it's a bit of a hobby as well I'm more than happy to cover it myself. Really do appreciate the offer though.

OK but as I thought we'd established, these things only have a lust for power to achieve their objectives. Power isn't an end in itself for them.

So I've bought the host, logged in to it:

ubuntu@vps-91aee39a:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache  available
Mem:            3819        391        2807          1        846        3427
Swap:              0          0          0
ubuntu@vps-91aee39a:~

Updated the OS, checked out the console. Just to make sure I can start it from the console I shut it down, and restarted it. That worked.

So far so good .. will install the database software, PHP etc tomorrow. Feels a bit like coming out of retirement.

And what task, what objective might AI, singular or general, be working toward, in which it / they decide to hold the world's governments to ransom?

I had a guy round to install new fibre broadband. Works for a company contracted by Openreach, as far as I can tell. He was friendly, polite, did a neat job on fitting the equipment. Couldn't get it working because apparently there's some sort of cable blockage further along the close. He promised me that someone would come out to sort that out in the next few days.

But that's not what I'm annoyed about. The guy stank. I didn't say anything, he's gone now but I've had to leave the front door and a window open to clear the body odour out of the hall.