Blogging on passthejoe

A new Ruby-based static-site generator from Shinobi creator Bradley Taunt

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 07:56:01 -0700

I wasn’t expecting a new static-site generator from Bradley Taunt, who created Shinobi, but I should have expected it because he has written a lot of short blog-generating scripts, as he details in Blogging for 7 years

He left Shinobi behind a few years ago. I don’t begrudge him that — it remains good to use and will continue to be so. Shibobi has issues for sure — the biggest being that it doesn’t support inline links or other HTML because it uses XML for web display.

Hugo in OpenBSD in 2024

Mon, 13 May 2024 19:19:14 -0700

Am I playing with lukewarm fire by syncing my Hugo blog files across Linux and OpenBSD systems and attempting to publish from both?

Maybe it’s my aging theme, but the Hugo binary in OpenBSD threw a whole bunch of errors when I created the file for this post.

If you see this, call the experiment cautiously successful.

Terminal — the Hugo theme used by this blog — is no longer being maintained

Sun, 14 Jan 2024 16:43:43 -0800

Every time I come back to Hugo as a static-site/blog generator after a long layoff, I look at all the themes available at https://themes.gohugo.io, and since I’m thinking about starting some new sites, I went back to see how my current favorite theme, Terminal (used by this site), was doing.

It still looks great but was “retired” by its developer Radosław Kozieł about 7 months ago.

Since I don’t update the Hugo binary very often (I tend to download it to my working directory instead of using “distro” Hugo), I didn’t notice any problems — mostly because there aren’t any.

What's the difference between blogging and a longer social post?

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 08:53:53 -0800

There’s a certain lack of permanence to social media posts – in my mind, anyway.

In some cases that’s a feature, but due to the ease of writing in this medium, it’s so easy to just open an app window, write a few lines and hit send. I haven’t published a “real” blog post in months.

I’ve written before about how I would create blog posts more often if doing it was as easy as creating a social post. I even have a script that makes it easy-ish to rsync my Hugo blog, but the Fediverse has such great tools (like Tusky, Semaphore and the new Elk.

How hard is it to move a Hugo setup from one computer to another?

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 20:48:34 -0800

I’ve done a lot of operating system switching over the past many months and not a whole lot of blogging. My question: Does this thing still work?

It’s not a terrible question. I’m maybe four complete OS changes away from the last time I really used this system, and now I’m on immutable/atomic Fedora Silverblue, yet the Hugo binary I stashed with this blog’s source still seems to work.

But will all of my scripts get this post to the live site? If you see this, it worked.

Dave Winer is too important to think he's accomplishing nothing

Sat, 04 Jul 2020 14:27:14 -0700

I read Dave Winer’s Scripting.com blog every day. I subscribe via email. Like everything Dave does, it makes me think.

Today I wonder if I should set up an email subscription service of some kind for this blog. Email is the new hotness in marketing. Email addresses are like gold.

Dave recently wrote about how he feels he’s reaching nobody with his blog, especially as it pertains to the political issues of the day (e.g. coronavirus, the Black Lives Matter movement and Trump).

Writing in git vs. blogging

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 14:10:21 -0700

Any of us who have been blogging over the past 10 or more years has written hundreds or maybe thousands of posts.

I’m pretty sure I have at least a couple thousand.

But blog writing and other writing are different. A blog tends to say “this is now, things below this are in the past, things above this will appear in the future.”

It’s reverse-chronological. That’s not a horrible thing.

WordPress and Disqus in 2019

Mon, 05 Aug 2019 09:37:43 -0700

WordPress is a vital resource that hasn’t taken undue advantage of its users like other free, hosted services have done. But right now, it’s not for me.

The one thing I miss about blogging with a static-site generator is the lack of native comments. It’s the one thing self-hosted WordPress (aka WordPress.org) gets right.

It’s probably because WP was “doing” comments before Twitter and Facebook came along. Back then, social was comments.

First post in Hugo for 2019

Fri, 02 Aug 2019 11:24:29 -0700

It’s been a long time since I messed around with Hugo.

Now I’m thinking it’s time for me to make a real blog with this static-site generator.

Here it is.