鼠兔湾的来历。
This is Pikabay’s tale.
The inception of Pikabay was born out of a simple desire: to create a remote test lab at home where I could experiment, evaluate, and test my ideas, new technologies, or uncharted territories. This required a small yet robust server, a domain, and an SSL certificate.
Selecting a server was straightforward. After weighing several options, I chose a Synology NAS for its adaptability and effectiveness.
The domain name, however, was a different story. My wife and I were enjoying dinner together when the idea for ‘Pikabay’ surfaced. At that moment, I was feeling overwhelmed by all my thoughts and had even resorted to using various internet domain name generators to find a suitable name. Then, almost magically, ‘Pikabay’ came to us. It was a name that resonated with both of us, easy to pronounce and remember. Plus, the ‘Pika’ is quite an adorable creature.
The next hurdle was the SSL certificate. I was torn between purchasing a Wildcard SSL certificate or a single-domain SSL certificate, primarily due to financial reasons. After expending a considerable amount of time and energy, I eventually opted for a wildcard SSL certificate. This decision, although costing me an additional $50 annually, saved me from numerous headaches when tinkering with web services settings. It was a valuable lesson learned: sometimes, it’s better to spend money than time.
Despite having a test lab without an enterprise-level firewall, yet accessible via the internet, having a public site with open 80 and 443 ports is not only futile but potentially hazardous. Consequently, for a long time, I only opened a secure port for pikabay.com and made every effort to make it appear as a black hole on the internet.
A significant shift occurred in 2021 when Apple announced custom domain capability for iCloud Mail.
Concerned about Google’s lack of privacy protection, I had been searching for a new email service provider for my family to replace Gmail. I was on the brink of switching to Microsoft Exchange Online, my company’s email provider, when Apple made their announcement. After conducting thorough research, I decided on iCloud Mail.
Shortly after setting up the pikabay.com email service with iCloud Mail, I realized that people might feel let down if pikabay.com merely displayed a stark 404 page when they tried to visit after seeing the email address.
It became clear that a well-crafted public website was necessary to satiate people’s curiosity. With the help of server virtualization and Cloudflare’s services, I finally felt at ease hosting a public site locally. And so, the website you are currently viewing was born. It serves as a platform for me to share a plethora of information that I have amassed in my Evernote over the years. Additionally, I will use it to test some fascinating online services like Open AI, HTTP/3, and Cloudflare Tunnel.
And thus, a new chapter in Pikabay’s journey has commenced.
Thank you for reading.