@jwildeboer Let me explain the “glue record” for othes:

The DNS records for each domain must be physically stored somewhere and served by an authoritative DNS server for that domain. But how do other computers find that server in the Internet? Easy, they look at the NS record for the domain. However, that contains a host name, not an IP address. If the host name is in the same domain, how do you resolve it to an IP address? Well, you add a glue A and/or AAAA record to the parent zone file.

@jwildeboer But yeah, the memories… When the zone file refused to load, named stopped serving requests for that domain, and I had only a bit of time to fix everything while the previous records were still cached by all major ISPs…
No, we didn't have a separate staging system in 1997.

@jwildeboer FTR I gave up running my own authoritative name server long ago.
First, since I have only one domain, it required glue record in the TLD zone anyway, so it didn't buy much in terms of independence.
Second, my domain is properly signed, but my provider saved me all the hassle with DNSSEC.

@jwildeboer Oh, how so? Do you run your own name server? Or, does your provider let you upload a new zone file without checking it first?

@jwildeboer This is a nice idea, indeed!

I started in the 1990s, so I pretty much had to set up everything the hard way, but even the hard way was much easier back then. I still run my own email server, because adding the complexity step by step was manageable, but I don't think I could start from scratch today.

I never realized how much of my independence can be attributed to controlling my own DNS and not to running my own services.

@jwildeboer But you know how this is usually solved in practice, don't you?
Break up your text into individual glyphs and then align each glyph separately on a 2.54mm boundary…