So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Category: Blog

CoffeeSig blog setup

I was sick of the hassle of dealing with a hosting service for my previous blog because they rarely kept anything current and I paid a lot more than it seemed like it was worth. This time, I decided to do it on my own server at the house. I got a Virtual Private Server (VPS) account for a few dollars per month and set up everything on an Intel NUC (computer) in the house. You can see the setup in this image. Lorena went out and bought a little desk where we can set it up to look nice after she installs a basket and some holes in the right places to make it look nicer. She will use the computer for browsing and AI queries. It was fun and surprisingly easy to set up relative to what I have experienced in the past for these sorts of things.

First post in a new blog

My old blog has been permanently shut down and archived for printing. After twenty-two years I am making a fresh start here. I started the old blog, chapmankids.net/blog, in 2004 and never thought it would last as long as it did. I started it about the same time we started homeschooling our kids. I wrote about some of our house remodel projects and my retirement PhD that I finished when I was 68, but have still not retired a couple of years later. That all kind of fit in the old blog, but the kids are in a new place now and so are my wife, Lorena, and I. There were a lot of good reasons to end the old blog. It ended abruptly on April 5, 2026, twenty two years almost to the day of when it started.

The reason I decided to start a new blog was because, many, many years ago, I heard that people who journal tend to accomplish more in their lives than those who do not. I am not sure that is true or not, but I do know that I accomplished a lot more because I blogged than I would have if I had not. It organized my thoughts and efforts and kept me on track to myself and to God. Just a couple of years after I started the first blog, I started keeping track of my Bible reading and that, too, served the purpose of keeping me accountable and getting my priorities straight.

I plan to write about different stuff than I did before, although there will be some common themes and topics. I have several fairly longitudinal projects going that I plan to talk about, from my volunteer research on hydrological imaging, to the AI work I do in my day job, to health and exercise, and whatever else catches my fancy.

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