After a long, smoky intermission, I’m reopening the doors to my blog. The short version: my old host went offline after a data‑center fire in 2021, I couldn’t recover a backup, and the archive vanished. The long version is below, along with what survived from 2020, how I’m rebuilding, and what I’m doing to keep everything safer and sturdier this time around. Welcome back—really, truly, welcome back.
Welcome Back: A New Blog Rises After the Fire
First things first: hello again, friends. If you’re reading this, it means the lights are on, the pages load, and we’re officially back. Losing the old site when the host went offline after the fire was gutting. One day I was planning drafts; the next, the archive was smoke and silence. There was no usable backup on the provider side, and what I had locally wasn’t enough to piece everything together.
That experience left me a little heartbroken and a lot reflective. A blog isn’t just posts—it’s a living conversation, a timeline of experiments, mistakes, and small wins. After the outage, I took a long pause. Months turned into years, and somewhere in that stretch I decided that if I came back, I’d come back with intention, not just momentum.
So here we are: new home, new setup, same voice. I’ve kept the spirit of the old place—general musings, notes on security and tech, and slices of life—while accepting that some chapters will remain memories. Think of this as a rebuild with sturdier beams, clearer navigation, and a promise to treat resilience as a feature, not an afterthought.
If you’ve been waiting, thank you. If you’re new, welcome in. You might spot a few scuffs and “under construction” corners as I polish things, but the foundation is solid. Pull up a chair. Comments are open, drafts are hatching, and the door is propped wide.
Some 2020 Posts Survived, 2021 Is Our New Start
Here’s the archival situation: I managed to salvage a handful of 2020 posts from old files on my PC. They’re not perfect—some images are missing, a few links lead nowhere, and the formatting occasionally shows its age—but they represent a piece of the blog’s DNA that I’m grateful to still have. If you happened to love one of those pieces, I hope it still feels familiar.
That said, I’m calling 2021 the official restart. That’s when I rebuilt the structure, retagged what I could, and started mapping how everything should fit. You’ll see 2020 entries in the timeline, but the rebuild mentality and editorial compass really kick in from 2021 onward. Consider 2020 the prologue to a sturdier second act.
When I re-post recovered articles, I’ll add small notes if something’s been updated or reconstructed from fragments. Where I can, I’ll replace broken media; where I can’t, I’ll leave a clear marker so you know it’s not your connection—sometimes the past is just missing a puzzle piece. Transparency beats pretending nothing happened.
If you catch a link that 404s or a screenshot that never loads, please drop me a message. Your eyes help me fix what my memory missed. Together we can turn those surviving posts into a tidy little museum wing while keeping the main hallway focused on what’s new.
Security, Plans, and Gratitude: What Comes Next
Let’s talk security and resilience. The new stack has multiple, automated backups: daily incrementals, weekly full snapshots, and off-site copies stored with a different provider. I run restore drills to ensure backups aren’t just boxes checked but lifelines that work when pulled. There’s also a cold export I keep offline, because air gaps are still underrated.
I’ve hardened the surface too: automatic TLS, strict security headers, two-factor authentication for admin access, role-based permissions with least privilege, and a web application firewall sitting in front to filter nonsense. Uptime monitoring pings the site from several regions, and I get alerts if anything looks odd. No single point of failure is the goal; fewer surprises is the result.
Content-wise, expect a mix of general posts, practical security notes, and the occasional personal update. I’ll write about what I use to protect this place, lessons from the outage, simple threat models for individuals, and behind-the-scenes notes on how I actually work. Frequency will ebb and flow, but the cadence should feel steady rather than frantic.
Finally, thank you for sticking around, for the kind messages when things were dark, and for the encouragement to try again. I appreciate every word, every visit, every nudge. Love you all. Welcome back—truly—welcome back. Let’s make this next chapter calmer, clearer, and a little more fireproof.
We lost a lot, learned even more, and rebuilt with intention. Some 2020 echoes remain, 2021 marks the fresh start, and stronger security keeps watch. Thanks for being here—you make the work worth doing.