Okay, let me walk you through this thing I tried setting up, which I kinda jokingly called the “barry wood eclipse” in my notes. It started pretty simply, really.
Getting Started
First off, I got really tired of certain… unexpected images popping up when browsing. You know the one. So, I thought, right, I gotta do something about this on my home network. Not just for me, but, you know, gotta keep the internet clean-ish for everyone using it here. Called it the “barry wood eclipse” project just to give it a name, something to track.
The Setup Process
I dug out my old Raspberry Pi, the model 3B I think. It was just gathering dust. Figured it’d be perfect for a network-level filter.
- I flashed a fresh copy of Raspberry Pi OS onto an SD card. Standard stuff.
- Got it connected to my network, updated everything. Took a bit, downloads were slow that day.
- Then, I installed Pi-hole. Heard good things about it for blocking ads, thought maybe I could use it for this specific mission. The installation itself was straightforward, just followed their script.
This is where it got tricky. The basic blocklists Pi-hole comes with are great for ads, but they weren’t catching that specific problem. It’s not exactly an ad, is it? So, I had to get my hands dirty.
I started searching for custom blocklists. Found a few, added them. Still no dice. The infamous picture could still show up if you stumbled onto the wrong corner of the web.
Next step: I tried adding specific domains I knew were notorious for hosting it. Manually typed them into the Pi-hole blacklist. That helped a bit, but it felt like playing whack-a-mole. New sites pop up all the time.
Then I thought, maybe regex? Regular expressions could maybe catch patterns in URLs? Okay, I spent a good afternoon trying to figure out regex patterns that might work. Let me tell you, regex is powerful but it can break things spectacularly if you get it wrong. I accidentally blocked half the internet for about 10 minutes. Whoops. Had to quickly remove that rule.
Testing and Tweaking
After getting a few filters and manual blocks in place that seemed okay, I configured my router. Made it use the Raspberry Pi as the DNS server for all devices on my network. Phones, laptops, the TV – everything.
Then came the testing phase. I browsed around, cautiously. Tried visiting sites I thought might trigger it. It seemed… better? Definitely saw less unwanted stuff. But was it the “eclipse” I wanted? Not quite.
Sometimes, legitimate sites would load funny because maybe I blocked a crucial domain by mistake. Other times, the picture would still sneak through from some obscure source I hadn’t blocked yet. It was a constant battle of tweaking the lists, checking the Pi-hole query log, and trying not to break normal internet usage.
Final Thoughts
So, did I achieve the full “barry wood eclipse”? Honestly, no, not 100%. It’s tough to block something specific like that completely without breaking other stuff. But, the setup definitely reduced its appearances. The Pi-hole is still running, filtering out ads and some of the nastier corners of the web. And I learned a ton about DNS, blocklists, and how fragile network filtering can be.
It wasn’t a perfect success, but it was a practical exercise. Kept me busy for a weekend, and my network is slightly cleaner now. Still call the Pi the “eclipse machine” sometimes. Makes me chuckle.
