+-------------------------September 4, 2025-------------------------+
|         Hello world! This is my first entry in my nexlog!         |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

I wrote the first version of the index page using just nc. I thought 
that was pretty neat, as I've never used netcat before! However, I 
wanted to be able to edit my pages, write them using an editor I'm 
used to, and version control them with git. What follows is probably 
going to seem basic to people who are used to unix/linux, but even 
after two years, I still consider myself a newcomer, so I'm excited 
to have figured this out using only the instructions that are in 
various places around nightfall city. For the record, this is not 
going to be an exclusively tech-oriented station, and I will write 
about more interesting things in the future.

I created a directory to keep my nightfall city files in, then copied 
the contents of my index file to a local one. Next, I created a 
couple of test files:
=> /shore/mathpunk/test.txt
=> /shore/mathpunk/test2.txt
I figured out that if the file was structured like this:
> /shore/mathpunk/[file]
> [citizen ID]
> [stuff goes here]
> .
I can post it using `cat [file] | nc nightfall.city 1915`, which 
basically tells the computer "use the output you get from 
concatenating [file] as input for netcat at this URL."

Next, I created a directory for my nexlog, and then created a 
matching directory on my local machine. Since the files are being 
sent over netcat, this isn't necessary, but I imagine it will be 
easier to keep track of where things are and where things should go 
if the directories of my station match the directories on my machine. 
After that, I created a file canned generic.txt that I can simply 
copy, so I don't have to write my entire citizen ID every time.

The next step was to create a file called README.txt which explains 
all of this to my future self, including warnings like "by design, 
each file in this repo contains your password, so DO NOT push it to a 
public remote." Smart, intelligent, present me knows that dumb, 
foolish, future me will not remember any of this after I go a month 
or two (or 24) without posting.

Finally, I put it all in a git repo, and then wrote this post!

However, I immediately noticed that using `fold -w 70 -s [file]`, and 
then posting it with `cat [file] | nc nightfall.city 1915` resulted 
in very long lines that were not folded at 70 characters. My mistake 
is believing that `fold` edits a file, when in reality, it prints the 
result to standard output. So instead of cat, I use:
fold -w 70 -s [file] | nc nightfall.city 1915

To make sure that's correct, I did another test:
=> /shore/mathpunk/test3.txt

Then edited the README.txt file to reflect my understanding.

I imagine that won't do if the path of a file to be posted is longer 
than 70 characters. I'm not sure what to do about that, but for the 
time being, I can just keep my file and directory names short.

UPDATE: when trying to post this nexlog, I found out that file names 
are limited to 15 characters, so "what if the path to a file is 
longer than 70 chars" is something that will never actually matter, 
and I can keep using fold without worrying about it!

I'm really enjoying nex. I enjoy exploring and finding cool things 
online, which I'm going to talk about in another post very soon.

Keep being you.
-mathpunk