I'm not trying to solicit, but explain.

I write this blog as a bit of a shared journal. Not shared in the sense that others are invited to contribute, although comments are allowed and appreciated. Shared in the sense that it's out in the open for anyone to read. It's largely filled with random mental meanderings that catch my attention, or bits I want to try to remember later. I use it as a tool to loosen the fingers and shake up what is rattling around in the circuitry.

I also use it to play with things. My whole set of websites and hobby projects are a playground. Few are any good or even complete, but I keep my skills sharp by tinkering past what I need to know, even if a completed product doesn't result out of it. Sometimes I do a little more and deliver things to share.

For example, his blog software is a package that used to be maintained by someone else. They've stopped maintaining it, and the OS and software around it have continued to be updated, so now there are conflicts and the software doesn't work if the OS and bundles are updated. So I tinkered and made a Docker version with the last working versions, and then share it at https://hub.docker.com/r/jekewa/b2evolution for any other fan. I've tinkered with creating my own blog software, too, of course, but this works and has decades of entries that I don't want to lose or think about how to migrate (just yet).

One of the things I tinker with is monetization. I don't make any money on this blog, or really any of the websites I run. But I do put a Google ad on the side or bottom of some web pages. This blog has one on the right banner.

I also recently added a "buy me coffee" link. This came a little bit out of "why not," but also to understand how that kind of generosity sharing system works, and to hook it all to a crypto wallet. I added the link to understand, not make money. And I mention it here only because someone asked about it, not to encourage contribution. I'm not going to discourage it, but this is about learning, not earning.

But, wait...crypto?

Yeah. That angle turned out to be a bit of a bust. Based on an article I'd seen a while ago, it seemed possible to back a BuyMeACoffee (at least indirectly) with a crypto wallet, and have the contributions either come from crypto, or turn donated dollars into crypto purchases. Turns out that the support I needed wasn't there, having been deprecated a year or so ago. Oh, well. Sometimes what we learn is "can't do that." There's probably still a way to connect the payment system I did sign-up for to a crypto wallet, taking the donations from people and building a tiny crypto base for free. Just not today. Or maybe to connect to a different payment system that does it, but I've not investigated far enough.

Still, the connection to a donation system that allows people to be generous when they take something away from a site, be it info, entertainment, insight, or just a desire to be supportive on a whim...all of that struck me, so after I bought someone a coffee, I signed up and added it to this site. It also served as a reminder of how to add things to the site, and reminded me how sophisticated this software really is.

So, don't feel like you have to drop in and send money. Or do, if you want to. But, if we run into each other, let's have a coffee or whatever!