New site, Paper Cups, and projects
Honestly I was pretty surprised I was able to pick up the domain seanedmunds.com, but I'm pretty glad I did. I haven't been using my Squarespace site, and the domain associated with it, halfaperture.com. I've been doing less paid photography work and it just doesn't make sense to keep it around any more. That being said, I still like photography quite a lot, and wanted to keep a place where I could showcase my work, other than social media. This new site is what comes of that need. I set it up using a self hosted solution called Koken. It allows the use of templates, similarly to Squarespace, which makes for easy edits so I don't have to spend a lot of time worrying about updating HTML, CSS, or any other code to keep a good looking site. From here on out, halfaperture.com will be directed here as I make this my new home for photography.
Keeping that in mind, this new change corresponds with my good friend Melina releasing her newly published book Paper Cups. We did some promo shots which I have happily displayed on the new site, both on the home page and in the portraits album with her name on it. As always, we got some really great shots, and her new house has some really amazing natural light to shoot in. You can get her new book in paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon now.
I, personally, have been spending a lot more time working on personal projects at home related to IT and my job, practicing systems administration. This site happens to be a product of this practice as well. Full disclosure, the rest of this will be a little on the nerdy side.
A while ago when Toys R Us was going out of business, I was able to buy one of their Dell servers for just $400. This allowed me to start getting practice with virtual server environments at home, specifically VMWare ESXi. Most of the servers I'm running are Linux - Ubuntu 18.04 to be exact. I migrated a lot of the stuff that was previously running on a Windows desktop to different virtual servers and ended up learning a lot. I started running my web server and reverse proxy using NGINX. The free version of their web server software lets you host any number of websites assuming you have the domains and hardware for it, and allows for what's called a reverse proxy, as I mentioned before. This means that I can have as many sites and services behind ports 80/443 as I need without having to open up more ports and risk my network security. NGINX allows for what are called server blocks, which lets you point web requests to certain sites based on domain names. This is how I can service seanedmunds.com and halfaperture.com at the same location as I host other, not publicly accessible pages. I also setup Let's Encrypt auto renewing SSL certificates to keep the site safe for people browsing and for myself in administration. I also currently have the sites configured to redirect unsecured HTTP traffic to the HTTPS version with valid certificates. All in all, this means that I can eliminate the need for Squarespace, although I am sacrificing some reliability, as I do not have any real server infrastructure or business class internet. I did however learn some good job related skills and will end up saving around $20-30 a month in various fees.
I hope to keep updates coming here for both interesting personal projects and more photography stuff. I have plenty of film that needs to get developed and scanned, and may feature the process or the cameras I shoot with. Keep an eye out here for more.
-Sean
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New site, Paper Cups, and projects
Honestly I was pretty surprised I was able to pick up the domain seanedmunds. com, but I'm pretty glad I did. I haven't been using my Squarespace site, and the domain associated with it, halfaperture. com. I've been doing less paid photography work and… Read more
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Today I turn 31. My 30th rotation around the sun didn't go exactly as I thought it would. Granted I didn't have any grand plans to travel the world, move somewhere new, or do anything that would have been largely impacted by a global pandemic, but it… Read more