< the skull

A PIECE OF ME IN EVERY CORNER OF THE INTERNET
=============================================
2026-09-24

I was looking through the servers I manage, and it’s kind of amazing how many
different pieces of software, systems, and random projects I’ve left scattered
around.

A lot of them were things I built and never came back to. Others were things I
installed, got working, and simply never looked at again.

I just left them there, drifting.

They weren’t really passions of mine. They were experiments.

Recently, I became obsessed with understanding how Usenet works, and before I
knew it, I was building my own server. I knew I’d probably never actually use
it, but I wanted to understand it.

A hunger to learn, to be more precise.

You can even visit it here: https://skull.black [1]

But Skull Black wasn’t what made me write this post.

What did was a visit to a little Intel NUC from 2019, quietly sitting there,
dusty and hidden away in a corner of my rack. Almost invisible on the bottom
shelf, except for the little RJ45 light still blinking away.

I decided to check what was running on it and, to my surprise, found a ghostly
little IRC network still alive at `irc.skull.black`.

I also found a Mumble server at `voice.skull.black`, and an XMPP server running
Prosody on some domain left over from some old idea or forgotten experiment.

Maybe it’s finally time to inventory my infrastructure.

Links:
  [1] https://skull.black


< the skull