Geek Gathering

Speak "Friend", and enter!  Your journey to the Next Cloud is about to take off! 

This Cloud is by invitation only and you have found staring down the rabbit hole!  So go ahead and take that leap.  This post is written for my mum to get her started on NextCloud.

We host NextCloud in our own data center, and therefore your data is private and shared with no one other than us. 

Getting Started

If you get added to a NextCloud server, you will receive a welcome email as follows:

-- WORDS IN PROGRESS - 

"You were talking like it was the end of the world"  -- U2,  'Until the End of the World'

First they came  for the socialists, and I did not speak out

But I am a socialist.... and many other identities that are now being vilified.   So yeah, in some ways, it feels like the end of the world as we know it.   

In case anyone was wondering, no: I do not want to try hemp products, your CBD oil, your business partnership, or offers for sexy meetings, just click here.  

I would like to keep this site open for any real person wanting to post a comment!  However, the thousands of - scripted, I am sure - weird comments I keep receiving are a bit of a pain.

A lot has happened in the past 6 months in generative AI and models and tools have substantially improved.  We've upgraded from Stable Diffusion to a new base model called Flux, so let's have a look at how to install and use it.  We're also upgrading to a new client WebUI Forge, which looks very familiar to those already using Automatic 1111 but has some new features.   Automatic 1111 is no longer maintained, and Forge is a fork.  Note that Forge currently has a memory leak, and to fix it you have to periodically switch to a different base model to clear the GPU memory.

Networking concepts are not easy and please don't ever let anyone make you feel bad for not knowing.   This is not something you are usually taught in schools, or by your parents, friends, or anyone!  Read "It is complicated" for my rant on this.

A typical home network setup

Let's start by looking at a typical home network after your local internet provider has set you up.  A typical home network will have the following three components: the internet, your ISP modem, and your home network with all your devices.

In case you're wondering - yes, yes you can make your home network more secure, with a little bit of effort and money.  

Why are computers and networks so complicated?  Why can't we protect ourselves from cyber criminals?  Why can't someone explain to me quickly how the internet works?   We don't get educated on these concepts that have now become essential knowledge to navigate the world.

Imagine you met a frozen-in-ice-come-back-to-life prehistoric person.    And you and your new friend were dropped off in the Save-On-Foods to get food.  You have so much acquired knowledge about things that will flummox your prehistoric friend, for example

Note: this article is applicable to home and small business network architecture

Introduction

I cleverly preempted your first question ("why the heck are you making it so complicated, no-one is trying to compromise my network anyway") by including "over-engineered" in the title... :)

WORK IN PROGRESS

I'm hoping to get a map page added to the blog that would allow me to provide a user experience that displays a number of locations, and clicking on that location would navigate to the blog post about that.  Most sites seem to recommend the 'Leaflet module" which seemed to do exactly that.   Sounds relatively easy!  Install the module, and off we go!

However, it has proven a lot more confusing that I thought it would be; here's what I learned.  Again, I'm using Drupal version 10.