DELIVERY RECEIPT
via homestar.ink · docs · HomeStar
Stop 1 of 7
Hello, neighbor. I'm so glad you came by today. Let me walk you through exactly what happened when you visited — we'll take it slow, like we always do.
Before you could come over, your computer asked the friendly folks at DNS, "Where does mail.homestar.ink live?" They looked in their big phone book and wrote back with my address. That's how you knew where to come.
mail.homestar.ink
When you arrived, your computer first made a TCP connection — a quick three-way greeting (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) that says "hello, are you ready to talk?" Then we exchanged a secret key with TLS, so nobody along the way could listen in on what we said. That's what HTTPS does — it's just HTTP with the TLS code-sharing baked in.
You wrote me a polite little HTTP note. It said you wanted to come in (that's GET) and look around at the front door (that's /). You also told me about yourself — what languages you speak, what kind of mail you can read, and which browser is reading along with you.
GET
/
I took your note into my house and looked at it carefully. Caddy — that's the gentle giant who watches my mailbox — figured out which room you wanted. Then it walked over to the landing room and found the picture you came to see.
templates
I sat down and wrote out the page you're reading right now — including a special stamp with today's date and time, just for you. I added a few labels (those are called headers) so your browser knows how to display it nicely. Then I sent it back along the secret path.
It's such a good feeling, knowing that you stopped by today. You make this neighborhood a more special place, just by being yourself. Come back any time you'd like — the door is always open.
— mcfeely, on behalf of the whole neighborhood