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diff --git a/about/whereami.html b/about/whereami.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ca1dc06 --- /dev/null +++ b/about/whereami.html @@ -0,0 +1,55 @@ +<p> +Since you are on this page, you're presumably lost. That's ok. I don't really +get all this stuff either. Let's start with some easy stuff. +</p> +<p> +<i>You're on the Internet</i>. Known to some as a +<a + href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes">series of tubes</a>, +but in reality much more complicated than it has to be. +The way you get here is through a device you have at home called a router, +which literally does what the name implies--it routes signals to where they +need to go to make things go beep. In the 60s and +70s, routers tended to be people-based and would spend their time plugging +cables into and out of ports so calls could connect.</p> +<img src="/static/human_router.jpg" /> +<center> + <i>Image of a switchboard courtesy of + <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jersey_Telecom_switchboard_and_operator.jpg"> + Wikipedia contributors</a> + </i> +</center> +<p> +Fortunately, we figured out that was dumb and made robots do the job for us. +Internet companies, governments, and anyone else with enough money and +influence bought huge routers and hooked them all up to talk to each other. +Then they convinced us all to go out and buy a router from our ISP of "choice" +so we could all send cat pictures to each other seemlessly. We got rid of +phones, replaced our phone with our IP address and email, just to ironically +end up back at phones again. All of our devices serve, or at least can serve, +as a router in some way, and all these little robots talking to each other +makes it so you can get lost on some person's home page. +</p> +<p> +In a way, you could say you've made it to my router. Not my home router of +course--that one sucks. I'm mooching of someone else's, also known as a Virtual +Private Server. These companies run whole bunch of servers, hook them up on a +bulk connection and rent them out for people to run blogs about cats and porn +sites. +</p> +<p> +Precisely speaking, you are in a chrooted web server running on rented virtual +machine in a server farm located roughly in New Jersey browsing the "about" +directory on the "whereami.html" page. +</p> +<p> +Less precisely, all that means is you're looking at some files I left in a directory +at this address, and paid some people to host for me since local ISPs tend to +be ridiculously expensive if you want to do anything besides host some private +servers for you and your friends and family. +</p> +<p> +A helpful tip, CRTL+W will close any webpage you don't like. Not that you +wouldn't like this page... you did read all the way here through all that +pedantry didn't you? +</p> |