Tagged blogging

• Sep 14, 2023, 8:11 PM -04:00

  On the Durability of Plain Text

  If you want something to last, use ASCII

  My blog is 16 years old. I've rotated through several blogging engines in that time (Bloxsom, YAWT 1.0/2.0, Pelican and finally Eleventy) but they all have one thing in common: they all process blog entries stored as plain text files.

  The fact that all my blog entries are stored as plain text files on my computer is, I believe, one of the main reasons my blog has lasted this long. Text files are trivial to back up. Text files don't really crash and rarely get corrupted. Text files are readable and writable on any computer manufactured since the 1980's - hell, the 1960's if I let punch cards into this conversation. When you contrast this simple durability with, for example, a MySQL data store (used by several blogging engines, including one of the most popular ones, WordPress), with all of its attendant version compatibility and data corruption issues, the superiority of plain text becomes undeniable if you're trying to write something that lasts.

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• Jun 1, 2022, 8:44 AM -04:00

  Fifteen Years of Blogging

  Fifteen years ago today, I started blogging

  Fifteen years ago today, I published my first blog post and I wanted to mark the occasion with - you guessed it! - a blog post. I didn't really have a strong sense of what I wanted to say but, anniversaries being a chance to reminisce, I found myself revisiting what I've written over the years.

  It's definitely a mixed bag. The tone and content vary quite a bit. For this reason, when people ask me what this blog is "about", I don't usually have a ready answer, and this sometimes catches them off guard because common wisdom states that blogs typically have themes. People will manage a cooking blog, for example, or a programming blog, or a reading blog. Among other things, it's a way to collect followers - people seem to place greater trust in a blog when it focuses on one subject.

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• Apr 4, 2022, 3:00 PM -04:00

  Link Contexts In Eleventy

  An #indieweb aware approach to unfurling URLs in @eleven_ty

  As a participant in the IndieWeb, I publish my share of likes, replies, reposts, and bookmarks. These posts all have one thing in common - they refer to another, external URL and only make sense in the context of that URL.

  This being the case, it's nice to give my readers (and myself) some sense of what I'm referring to when I post that content. The process of scraping metadata from URLs for display purposes is called "URL unfurling" and implementing it efficiently on an Eleventy based website is not entirely trivial, especially when you're trying to save your Netlify build minutes, so it's worth sharing what I've learned.

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• Mar 23, 2022, 3:33 PM -04:00

  Taming Eleventy Tags: Or How I Learned To Tolerate Double Pagination

  Pagination in Eleventy is bit strange. Out of the box, Eleventy comes with support for something the developers call "pagination", but it might not be the sort of pagination you're used to.

  As you probably already know, Eleventy is a static site generator. It generates output HTML files from input template files. In the simplest case, one HTML file is generated for each (non-layout) input template.

  The feature known as pagination in Eleventy is basically a way of getting around that limitation, allowing you to generate multiple output files from one template file. If you squint, you can see how this maps to the traditional idea of pagination (i.e. we want to break down a long list of items into smaller sized pages, writing only one template for the page) and although this is, indeed, a common way to use pagination in Eleventy, it turns out that the feature is much more generic than you might think - and, paradoxically, less useful than you might think.

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• Mar 21, 2022, 6:53 AM -04:00

  Changes To Post Organization

  After some consideration I've decided to remove the articles from my "Posts" feed and rename it to "Notes". It now contains just my notes and photos (and videos if I ever start posting those). As before, my articles are available in my "Blog" feed.

  Initially, my reason for mixing articles, notes and photos into one "posts" feed was that I suspected at least some of my readers would want a feed just for "original content", and the "posts" feed provided that. I still think this is true, but some other insights have led me to reconsider the approach.

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• Mar 9, 2022, 4:46 PM -05:00

  Eleventy For IndieWeb Enthusiasts - Basic Setup And Post Organization

  Classifying your #indieweb posts with @eleven_ty

  As mentioned previously, I recently converted my website over to Eleventy. I'm an IndieWeb participant and, moreover, my website is fairly complex so I ended up writing (or, in some cases, pilfering) a fair amount of code to make it all work together in an acceptable manner. I thought I would document the process via a series of blog posts in case anyone else finds it of value.

  None of this is intended to be an Eleventy tutorial and you'll get the most from these posts if you already know something about how Eleventy works.

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• Mar 6, 2022, 12:08 PM -05:00

  From Pelican to Eleventy

  Making the switch from Pelican to @eleven_ty

  After roughly five years, I've finally decided to switch my blog over from Pelican to Eleventy. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't at least partially swayed by the fact that all the cool kids seemed to be doing it but, with that in mind, I do have some (hopefully) legitimate reasons for making the switch.

  Pelican bills itself as a static site generator, and so it is, but one that focuses more on traditional, single user blogs. Pelican can, of course, be used as a CMS, and you can certainly use it to create arbitrary, standalone pages and websites, but the features in support of this usage seem more bolted on than organic. There are certain assumptions built into Pelican that stem from its original purpose as a blogging engine that are occasionally irritating to circumvent.

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• Feb 27, 2022, 5:51 PM -05:00

  A Place For Everything

  Taming the #indieweb post type zoo

  If you're a programmer of a certain age, you've either read or know about Design Patterns, a book on software architecture popular in the 90s and early 2000's. The book was sort of like a repository of TV tropes for the Object Oriented Programming (OOP) world in that it provided a convenient vocabulary for describing what were usually eminently recognizable software engineering techniques that nonetheless often lacked punchy, easy to remember names.

  Notably, the book was more descriptive than prescriptive. It described preexisting techniques that were already in use in the "wild", so to speak.

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• Oct 8, 2021, 12:03 AM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://css-tricks.com/considerations-for-using-markdown-writing-apps-on-static-sites/

  

  CSS-Tricks

  

  Considerations for Using Markdown Writing Apps on Static Sites | CSS-Tricks

  If you run or have recently switched to a static site generator, you might find yourself writing a lot of Markdown. And the more you write it, the more you

• Mar 19, 2021, 8:04 PM -04:00

  Thinking of trying eleventy.  But I've put some much effort into my pelican setup.  Hrm.
• Oct 14, 2020, 7:38 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://hacdias.com/articles/2020/01/dynamic-static/
• Sep 7, 2020, 11:16 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://jlelse.blog/dev/miniflux-blogroll/

  

  Jan-Lukas Else

  Jul 9, 2020, 9:00 AM -04:00

  How my blogroll gets generated (now completely automatic!)

  Yesterday I teased a new post about how I automated my blogroll generation by writing a Go script and using the Miniflux API. Here it is.Up until yesterday, I always updated my blogroll manually. I wrote about that process here. It was a bit of automation but not completely automated. I fixed that and now do what Robert van Bregt suggested or what Jan Boddez does with his WordPress plugin.To generate my site I use a self-hosted instance of Drone CI (I already wrote about that a few times) wit...

• Aug 24, 2020, 8:02 AM -04:00

  Reply to https://twitter.com/jackyalcine/status/1297669737896239104?s=20

  My personal website is https://desmondrivet.com I have a blog on it and a kind of microblog as well. It's not wildly beautiful.  I write about whatever strikes my fancy, so I definitely wouldn't call it "cohesive".  But it's there and I use it and it's mine.
• Jul 31, 2020, 4:15 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of http://interconnected.org/home/2020/07/29/improving_rss

  

  Interconnected, a blog by Matt Webb

  

  How would I improve RSS? Three ideas

  Posted on Wednesday 29 Jul 2020. 1,702 words, 7 links. By Matt Webb.

• May 24, 2020, 12:12 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of http://tttthis.com/blog/if-i-could-bring-one-thing-back-to-the-internet-it-would-be-blogs

  

  Datenstrom Yellow

  

  If I could bring one thing back to the internet it would be blogs

  Nowadays especially it's nice to have things to read. New things, things from various sources and various voices, various minds talking about their t…

• May 13, 2020, 2:46 PM -04:00

  Reply to https://twitter.com/ASpittel/status/1260612610686361600

  I don't know if I'd call it my favourite, but I use @getpelican, @NetlifyCMS and @CircleCI.  Mostly because I'm semi-familiar with Python and Jinja2, CircleCI was faster than TravisCI, and Netlify is just easy.

  

  X (formerly Twitter)

  

  Ali Spittel (@ASpittel) on X

  What's your favorite tech stack for building a blog site right now and why?

• May 12, 2020, 7:02 AM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/02/24/a-text-renaissance/

  Venkatesh Rao

  A Text Renaissance

  There is a renaissance underway in online text as a medium. The Four Horsemen of this emerging Textopia are: Roam, a hypertext publishing platform best understood as a medium for composing conspiracy theories and extended universes.Substack, a careful and thorough ground-up neoclassical reconstruction of the age-old email newsletter.Static websites, built out of frameworks like Jekyll or Gatsby (full disclosure: a consulting client).And finally, Threaded Twitter, a user-pioneered hack-tur...

• May 9, 2020, 6:40 PM -04:00

  I wonder about combining static site generators and photo galleries.  I know it's a thing, and yet it feels a bit off, especially when you have 10GB of photos.
• May 1, 2020, 6:24 AM -04:00

  On Gardens and Streams

  Digging into the differences between wikis and blogs #indieweb

  I attended my first IndieWebCamp session last week, on the subject of "gardens and streams", otherwise known as wikis and blogs. Given the current global situation, the entire thing was remote; I participated via Zoom. It was fun! I'm glad I got to meet everyone.

  Wikis, and how they differ from blogs, is a topic that interests me. You may not know it, but my domain sports a wiki, powered by MoinMoin. I mostly use it to store technical notes and recipes.

  I'm no historian, but it seems obvious that wikis were created mostly in order to make certain kinds of websites easier to build and maintain. In the days when "webmaster" was an actual job title and when traditional websites were maintained by an elite group of technical people, using arcane languages like HTML, wiki powered websites:

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• Apr 28, 2020, 12:52 PM -04:00

  Reply to https://twitter.com/jevakallio/status/1254823758784856065?s=20

  I maintain website/blog at https://desmondrivet.com It's a statically generated site using @getpelican, hosted on @NetlifyCMS.  Updated semi-regularly and cross-posted to Twitter.

  

  X (formerly Twitter)

  

  Jani Eväkallio (@jevakallio) on X

  HI! Do you have a self-hosted personal website/blog? If yes drop a link in replies! 🙏 I'm also interested what are your main problems in hosting your own website? Effort? Cost? Tech? Getting engagement?

• Apr 28, 2020, 12:01 PM -04:00

  Pieces of Thinking

  Why I write #indieweb

  Jan-Lukas Else recently asked the Hacker News community why most of them don't have blogs, and published his thoughts on their answers to his own blog. The conversation was interesting and got me thinking about my own motivations for maintaining this site.

  The first thing that stands out for me in the responses is the number of people who said that they quit blogging because they didn't have any readers. It was more than I expected. I don't think I fully realized how important readership was to some people in the technical community, probably because I think can safely say that it's not of great importance to me.

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• Apr 27, 2020, 2:06 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://boffosocko.com/2020/04/26/a-short-post-mortem-video-and-note-links-and-challenge-from-the-garden-and-the-stream-indiewebcamp-pop-up-session/

  

  Chris Aldrich

  Apr 26, 2020, 1:32 PM -04:00

  A short post mortem, video and note links, and challenge from The Garden and the Stream IndieWebCamp Pop-up session

  Thank you everyone! For those who attended yesterday’s The Garden and the Stream IndieWebCamp session, thank you for participating! I honestly only expected 4 or 5 wiki fans to show up, so I was overwhelmed with the crowd that magically appeared from across multiple countries and timezones. I’ve heard from many–both during the session and privately after–that it was a fantastic and wide-ranging conversation. (I never suspected memory palaces or my favorite 13th century Franciscan tertiary to ...

• Apr 23, 2020, 1:06 AM -04:00

  Reply to https://janboddez.tech/notes/ab8cca73e5

  Well, this is quite embarrassing.  Thank you for the information! Actually, my blog entries on my feed page did have p-names but I think I accidentally made them part of the e-content, and I suspect that's why they were not showing up. And, yes, my published date was embedded in my h-card for silly reasons that I won't get into. Anyway, I think (hope) I've fixed both issues if you want to try again.
• Apr 22, 2020, 1:34 PM -04:00

  Bookmark of https://jlelse.blog/posts/why-no-blog/

  

  Jan-Lukas Else

  Apr 19, 2020, 3:31 AM -04:00

  Why HN readers don’t have a blog

  Yesterday, I asked the Hacker News community why they don’t have blogs, even though they have the necessary technical skills.Many Hacker News readers and contributors have the technical skills to run their own blog and post their opinions. But instead they prefer to use Twitter or other social networks. Why is this so? Is it the effort?I want to respond to some of the answers in this post:I don’t want an extremely public record of my personal opinions or thoughts today, because I know they’re...

• Feb 25, 2020, 12:59 PM -05:00

  Bookmark of https://boffosocko.com/2020/02/24/exploring-pine-blog/

  

  Chris Aldrich

  Feb 24, 2020, 3:39 AM -05:00

  Exploring Pine.blog

  I’d noticed Pine.blog before at a previous IndieWebCamp, but not had time to delve into it very deeply. Seeing some of what Brian Schrader has been working on while following IndieWebCamp Austin remotely this weekend has reminded about the project. As a result, I’ve been spending some time tonight to check out some of the functionality that it’s offering. In part, I’m curious how similar, or not, it is to what Micro.blog is offering specifically with respect to the idea of IndieWeb as a Servi...