phildini.dev
Homage for the Holidays: Pebble.Ink
I’ll admit, the next Homage for the Holidays post is kissing the line between “homage” and “abject copy”.
Here’s the backstory. A couple weeks after XOXO 2014, Internet’s Paul Ford started a project called tilde.club. You should go read the original post about the project, but here’s a quick tl;dr: Tilde.club is a delicious piece of nostalgia from the beginning of the world wide web. Every member gets shell access, email to other members, and small piece of web real estate.
I feel like “nostalgia” may not be the right word to describe tilde.club, because that word has become a little overloaded. The explosion of pixel-art games and the social conservative rhetoric of a return to simpler times has added a context to “nostalgia” that can leave a bad taste in the mouth. This is a little unfortunate, because things that are older are not necessarily bad. (see above re: pixel-art. Some fabulous examples there.)
A better word might be “ownership”. Being a member of tilde.club means you have a little slice of the web that is yours, you can put whatever you want there, make it look however you like. While owning a chunk of the web may sound like no big deal, and in fact I would wager that most tilde.club members have their own dedicated web presence elsewhere, there’s a fundamental difference.
Having your own space on the web, on a server you own or rent with your own domain name, is like having a massive plot of land a few hours outside of town. It’s yours, you can do whatever you want with it, but you have to push people to come over and visit. Having a space in tilde.club is like leasing an apartment in the trendy new complex on the town square. You can still do almost anything you want with it, but your neighbors are all in shouting distance, they’re probably really friendly, and you can see what their places look like as well. And, because the place is run by Internet’s Paul Ford, a lot of people are always dropping by to visit.
That’s the setup, here’s the homage. I applied, and did not get into, tilde.club. This mildly bummed me out a bit, until I realized that I possessed the materials to build my own. So I did. I spun up the cheapest Digital Ocean box that they make, installed apache with user directories turned on, and opened it up to friends. It’s called Pebble.Ink
Now, I want to open it up to. As of today, if you’re a member of Pebble.Ink, you get shell access, email forwarding, and you’re own little slice of the web to do whatever you want with. More features will be coming soon, including (possibly) the ability to run rich python and php apps.
If you’ve been paying attention to the tilde.club story, you probably noticed that other people had the same idea I had, and started their own versions. This put a damper on my plans somewhat, but I’m charging forward. I have not added Pebble.Ink to that list, although I plan to try and do so soon. I’m not using the official tilde.club puppet script, either.
I would be thrilled to have you along for the ride. Check out Pebble.Ink for more info, and watch this space for updates.