If you are setting up your Droplet for the first time, follow “How To Install the Apache Web Server on Ubuntu 20.04” to install Apache. Step 5 is where you set up virtual hosts.

Create the directory for your_domain:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Assign ownership of the directory:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Set up permissions:

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Copy an existing virtual host file:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

Make updates for the new directory and domain name:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com.conf

Edit thee following lines in :

ServerName yoursite.com
ServerAlias www.yoursite.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/yoursite.com/public_html

Enable the file with the a2ensite tool:

sudo a2ensite yoursite.com.conf

Disable the default site defined in 000-default.conf:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Restart Apache

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Let’s Encrypt

To set up SSL certificate using Let’s Encrypt, follow “How To Secure Apache with Let’s Encrypt on Ubuntu 20.04.”

Obtaining an SSL Certificate

sudo certbot --apache

Select the numbers according to the domain name with a space. Example: 10 11

Let’s Encrypt will generate the follow file, you can take a look:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/yoursite.com-le-ssl.conf

Verifying Certbot Auto-Renewal

sudo systemctl status certbot.timer

Do a dry run

sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Reading Richie Hofmann’s reminds me of Ocean Vuong’s. They are both very open about their sexuality. In “Mosquitoes,” Hofmann confesses: “I projected my homosexuality onto everyone.” And he sure did beautifully in A Hundred Lovers with lines such as, “the T-shirt he wiped his penis with,” in “Coquelicot.” I find his poems easy to understand and enjoyable to read.

It is so easy to imagine your absence.
Maybe it is night, we are still handsome.
All the young are.
It is so easy. Another thing to be beautiful.
How gently the curtain falls back down
and the room is dark again, the season
of in-betweenities,
my eyes heavy, my lips numb.
Fingerprints on the unjacketed books.
Inside the collars
of the shirts in the open closet—
An affluent night.
You’ve touched everything in my small room.

Richie Hofmann

How the hell did I miss Clipse’s Lord Willin’? The album released in 2002 and I only discovered it in the past week. I am 21 years behind the time, but better late than never. With Pharrell Williams on the beats and on the hooks, Clipse dropped dope rhymes such as “I understand that the envy is part of the game / But make no mistake, you and I, we are not the same,” boasted Malice. One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Young Boy,” in which Pharrell sang the hook: “When I was a young boy / My mama always told me, “Don’t take no shit” / “Motherfucker hit you, you better hit ’em back.” Sounded just like my own mother.

I read all the poems from Baker’s Whale Fall, but I didn’t fully get them. For example, I like the vibe in “Extinction,” but I am not sure what he’s talking about:

When you are gone they will read your footprints,
if they still read, as they might a poem about love—
wandering in circles, here and there obscured,
washed out in places by weather, sudden landslide.
Keep walking, pilgrim. This is your great tale.

I need to keep learning about poetry by reading more poems.

Coming home early in the morning,
I heard withered cats

behind the sycamores, the canal rushing
from a different century. The alleys

so quiet in this city I never really liked.
The widow with an Hermès scarf tied around her head

walked her ugly-beautiful dogs.
I lived behind a Louis XV door

in a room that imprisoned winter
even as spring was rife outside—

I was not in love, there was nothing to experience.

Richie Hofmann

Who can say
what the tulips dream
in a hard frost,

the sky as cold
as it is clear
and still unreadable.

Or how pain
decides what stays
in memory, a gift

broken by the time
it reaches us,
silvered, gleaming with age.

Maya C. Popa

Money, time, and resources are wasted because of one incompetent idiot. I am so sick and tired of that shit.

I gave myself a baldhawk—a mohawk to cover my bald spot. I have been shaving my head ever since I started to bald. It’s time to do something creative. Worse to to worse, I can just shave it all off and become a monk again.

I read Nicholas Montemarano’s memoir in one sitting and my eyes were watery. My sister and I went through what Nicholas and Jen had gone through. Our mothers fought fiercely against Covid, but they didn’t make it. I captured my experience through my blog posts while Nicholas captured his through poetic prose—what a heartbreakingly beautiful book.

I cried alone like Montemarano had eloquently expressed:

it was easier to cry alone
and I hoped that no one
would walk past and see me
and I hoped that someone
would walk past and see me
and ask are you ok
I prayed that my mother
would remain peaceful
and free from pain
and would be taken soon
though I didn’t want her to be taken
anywhere