Becoming A Linux God

It's been a long time goal of mine to become proficient at using Linux, but for the longest time, I've never had the need to do it. Windows was good enough. MacOS was good enough. There wasn't a huge incentive outside of privacy or curiosity for me to use Linux

Self-Hosting email - Hello Mailcow

It's been a wild ride since deciding to self-host all the things. It started with the web server, finally migrating Fifthdread.com to my own infrastructure. Now, it's time for email. If you've read my previous article about Skiff, than you know that self-hosting email is now a necessity. Skiff

RIP Skiff email - You were too good to be true after all

And so it goes- the mail service which was "too good to be true" was in fact, exactly that. They say if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, than it's a duck. Skiff looked like an insane value compared to the competition, and with supposedly no catch

Finally Getting into GameDev

As an avid gamer and tech enthusiast, it's probably no surprise that I'd be interested in starting Game Development. I have a lot of respect for indie devs. They are able to work on passion projects that interest them, and share their vision for a game with the world without

I Switched to ProtonMail, then Switched Back to Skiff

Recently, I migrated Fifthdread.com from my web-hosting provider to self-hosting. During this switch, I had to decide on an email provider for the many Fifthdread.com email addresses. There are a vast amount of email providers out in the wild, so I had an uphill battle to find the

The ROG Ally SLAPS The Steam Deck And I Feel Bad Saying It

Trust me, it hurt to write as much as it probably heard to hear, but it's true. The ROG Ally is a fantastic device- one that outshines the Steam Deck in so many ways. While I still love what Valve has done with the Steam Deck, and I believe it's

One of my Fifthdread emails was sending spam, and I caught it

Yeah, it's a blunder. It's probably been going on for some time as well, and I didn't think to check. Too be honest, you're more likely to get your account compromised than you think. It's happened to so many of my accounts that it's my policy to use multi-factor authentication

AI Art Is Cool, And That's OK

Yup, here I am again with another Fifthdread Hot Take. I love AI Art, and I'm tired of pretending that I don't. Turns out, AI has blown up in the past year. From ChatGPT for text based generation, to MidJourney or Stable Diffusion for Generated Art- AI is here, and

Service Dashboards - Testing Three Popular Options

Yup, it's that time. We gotta have a dashboard discussion. No ifs ands or buts about it- Fifthdread Services needs a dashboard for all the various self-hosted services I provide. If someone asks me again for the Element URL, imma flip. "Fifthdread Services" as we call it, is anything ranging

Welcome to the new Fifthdread.com

It's funny, because if you scroll down just a little, a similar post was made a while back. But this time, it's a little different. Fifthdread.com and Fifthdread Services has gone through a few big changes which I want to talk about. First, I've finally made the transition to

Quick update on Fifthdread Services

A week ago, I was devastated. I accidentally cloned a drive to the wrong destination, and as a result, I lost all my HyperV VMs. I’ve since spent the past week rebuilding everything from scratch, but this time, I was going to do things a lot cleaner, smarter, and

Fifthdread had an Oopsie!

My Server PC had a C Drive which was only 180GB in size… It was full. That’s when I decided to upgrade to a 2TB drive. It’d be a simple procedure. Clone the old drive onto the new drive, GG. Nope. I made a small but HUGE mistake.

Welcome to the new and improved Fifthdread.com

It looks the same as before… BUT, it’s DARK MODE! New dark theme, saving your eyes from the evils of white backgrounds. The truth is, we at Fifthdread Services have some new cool services for you to enjoy. Let’s talk about them now! New Fifthdread Services are available!

Devlog 1 - My Dream Game, NPCs, and game logic around schedules and locations

Bethesda upsets me. Not because I hate them or anything, but because they aren’t making the game I want them to make. I’ve been wanting a new Skyrim like game for a long while now, but it just seems like we aren’t getting it. The next Elder

Discord VS Element - My thoughts on the matter.

Honestly, I’m not keen on this discussion. It’s tough to have, considering people exist in two camps. Mostly me in one camp and everyone else in the other one. Discord has become a huge platform for both small and large communities alike, and many are quick to adopt

More Fifthdread Services Stuff

One thing that I wish I could improve about Fifthdread Services is making it easier to access stuff. For example- Look at my portal page. Now look at the URLs for a lot of Fifthdread services. Yeah, it’s all server.fifthdread.com:port number. That’s annoying. How are

The NEW Fifthdread Services

Those of you who know me are well aware of Fifthdread Services- my collection of self-hosted services which I maintain for a variety of reasons. You likely use Element for chat, or Teamspeak for voice communications when online. You may use Bitwarden or my file services. There are several services

Why I absolutely love the new M1 Macbooks

If you came to my blog for an objective view on the new M1 Macbooks. you came to the wrong place. I already spoiled it in the title- I LOVE the new M1 Macbooks, and I want to do my best to explain why. For as long as I remember,

The new Apple M1 chip and my thoughts

Apple recently released their new Apple Silicon equipped devices, and I have a lot to say about them. For starters, the new chip, the Apple M1, has been blowing away reviewers left and right. I could get very VERY wordy here, but I’ll try and summarize how I think

FifthCraft

FifthCraft Patch Notes 1.2.1a

Quick FIfthCraft Server Patch notes. There have been some server side changes that I want to discuss, and you will not need to update beyond 1.2.1 as of now. When we updated to 1.2.0, we added Cyclic and some other mods. Cyclic specifically has issues related

Syncing save data (or anything) between PCs

For those of you who like to play Emulators, it’s highly possible you have had the desire to play your save file on multiple platforms. Maybe you have two different PCs that you’d like to play your games on. Most of the time this isn’t a problem,

Server Upgrade Rant!

My servers have been something I have always taken pride in, as I enjoy not only self-hosting stuff for personal use, but also for my friends. It’s sort of a hobby of mine, and has the added benefit of keeping me sharp when it comes to technology in general.

Recovering from Disaster! Chat server almost died.

Self Hosting… Worth it, but it’s hard sometimes. Specifically, right now. While I LOVE self hosting from a privacy perspective, it can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. I have been working on the Matrix Synapse server for the past day with mixed success. I started out

Welcome to the new Fifthdread.com

It’s been years since Fifthdread.com was up in any official capacity, but I decided to bring it back online. Why? Well, I wanted to create a portal page for my friends who happen to use my “services”. The point is that I have been on a sort of