At long last, the blog is vapourware no more!
So, it has finally happened. After trying to figure out the best way to share my thoughts with the world and share what I am up to, exactly - I have a blog up and running.
Oh, sure, WordPress is easy - and also insecure. Squarespace and Wix gave me so much trouble, even though I was totally willing to not have to geek out so hard to have a blog. But the more I looked at the landscape of possibility, the more I began to realise that I would need something very very different.
Static site generators - I was aware of this concept for a while, and came to this path because after dealing with the above bloated solutions, it was either this or :
coding the site by hand, like it's 1997, or
coding a quick and dirty Flask app. Not that there's anything wrong with that, I just really did not want to put yet another project on my plate, not until I at least finished a few that I already started...
Somehow, looking at people who use Sphinx to generate their website stretched my brain in the right direction. Serendipity ! I finally got my head around the static site generator concept. And I can type in Vim (neovim, more to the point) so the process is as simple as it can get. No browser crashing whilst trying to load some cleverdick javascript WYSIWYG pixel peep show. No fighting my iPad for screen space. No proprietary file formats. Just pure text, Python, and....
Ah, yes, setting up the site. But beyond that part, all is well. I can make it pretty later. I can style and theme it later. I can add pictures later. And there is no db config or anything weird either, just plain HTML autogenerated by Nikola.
Why Nikola ? For this use case, it is lighter than Sphinx. I want to lower the cognitive load of computing, and by focusing on tools that play nicely with ReStructured Text I can leverage one markup language for all my needs. Until I learn LaTex, that is. But Sphinx can generate LaTex.
At any rate, the next few posts will be about my raison d'etre, the grand schemes that I have for world domination, et cetera, ad infinitum. Thank you for visiting !