Journal Update 29: Git Annex, Signed Commits, and Axing Email

What’s New

Maintenance

• Readopted Git Annex for tracking large binary files. I ceased using it in 2022 because I misperceived it as overly complex, but it works pretty well actually. No one was going to leech the torrents anyways and I certainly wasn’t seeding them.
• Removed my contact email from the about page. I was only keeping it for Git patches, which can just as easily be sent over SimpleX, my preferred messaging protocol. This change saves me the overhead of running an email server, rotating DKIM keys, etc.
• Started signing Git commits directly instead of signing Git tags. I thought I needed to sign the tags due to git-signify, but there’s no need.
• Added a README. I didn’t want familiarity with Hugo and Git Annex to be a requirement for reproducing this journal, so I just spelled out the commands there.
• Changed entry dates to “day month year” because it’s my personal preference.

Certificate Expiry

The certificate for this journal’s ICANN site mirror expired weeks ago. I didn’t notice it until today. It turned out to be an issue with Certbot’s autorenewal failing.

This could’ve been detected sooner or even prevented by having monitoring and observability. If I had my server configuration documented as code, I may have noticed the issue beforehand, or already implemented monitoring and observability. Yet another reason to automate server configuration, in addition to the reasons I gave in my prior journal update.

Future Plans

• Automate server configuration (Gemini capsule, website, SimpleX, CGit, etc)

Coming up with more tags to add to existing journal entries is no longer in my future plans. It’s just not how I want to spend my time.