Coffee Space

Build System

This site still relies on an old bash script to recursively build the site and build the RSS feeds, and it’s pretty ugly. One of the things I intend to do is to switch to a python based system, which will allow for things such as multi-threaded building, caching, building just the changed files, etc.

Python Cells

One of the things I have seen on other sites is “Python cells”, but the implementations have not been amazing. I have been working on creating something based on Brython that allows code to be run directly in the browser.

It is already working to some extent:

There are still a series of outstanding tasks, though:

• Code required to get the cells working should not be visible.
• Un-hack the implementation and fix re-run bugs.
• Statically compile the code and results, and only offer the live Python cells if operational.
• Allow resetting of cells.
• Dependant cells should indicate that they need to be re-run.
• Dependant cells should re-run all previous changed cells.
• Allow for modified code to be saved in some way.

It means that in theory, people could change the code on the site itself and see the results. It could make for some amazing demos and learnings!

Container System

Instead of running all code directly on the server, the idea is to run super lightweight containers when they are required in order to perform a task. It would enable some cool concepts:

• There could be more containers on the server available than can actually be run simultaneously, but they are shutdown when not in use to save resources.
• Experimental code could be run more easily and safely without potentially compromising the entire server.
• More dynamic content could be generated and embedded into pages, such as live stock trackers and other “widgets”.

There’s a few things I want to experiment with but have not been able to, due to the nature of the site:

• Share the resources of a connected system(s), enabling the server to have access to greater resources than exist directly on the server itself. An example could be a GPU on a desktop machine that is made available for processing by just being connected to the server, rather than being local. Another idea has been to share files from a non-server disk with >1TB of space, rather than the small 20GB SSD that this server offers.
• Different types of experimental chat systems, such as video chat or custom encryption.
• A web page converter for small devices that allows them to render a web page that they couldn’t otherwise interact with. Imagine, for example, an ESP32 using my site as a proxy to browse Youtube or Reddit, when the available RAM would tell you that the device has no business doing so.
• Access to my personal music library from anywhere (login would be required).
• A portal for publishing and searching published content for niche concepts.

The point is that all of these things collectively running all of the time would sink a cheap VPS, but loaded as and when needed, could provide a cool experience.

To make this run, the idea would be to have a small kernel (originally Linux, but considering also NetBSD) boot via qemu with a small set of pre-built tools. Initial experiments with Linux have shown that ~128MB of RAM would be needed, but I believe I could get this down to ~32MB of RAM or less per virtual machine.

Questions

I have my been using my trusty Pandoc Highlight Filter for quite some time, complete with it’s own internal mini plotting library. The issue is that I now want to do projects which require much more complex plotting, and I don’t really want to extend it further. For example, I have been thinking about doing some simulations and 3D projects, but the tools are holding me back. Do I continue to try and self-host/write all of my site’s tooling?

The hero images have a somewhat ‘sexual’ nature to them, which at the time I thought was a “my site, my rules” idea which I stand by, but has since made me hesitant to share the link to others. My ability to express myself against censorship, is in turn, meaning that I self-censor when wanting to share content. Where is the middle ground?