I'm not having as much luck as I'd hope getting an iPad-only solution to posting entries here. I can't get my Dropbox to sync after following Tyler Hall's entry. I know it's possible...but maybe not possible with my host, which is currently a VPS on Dreamhost. I'm sure it is... I've just not been smart enough to figure it out as of yet.
Another option which I think I'll explore is utilizing Github Pages, and point the i-am.ski domain there. Assuming I can get it working (Github Pages has built-in support for Jekyll right out of the box), there will be the added benefit of becoming more comfortable with Git. I use Git daily at work, and while I'm not near as gun-shy as I used to be, if anything goes awry and I need to use some other git commands, then I tend to get a bit nervous. Particularly when I end up having merge conflicts, or similar issues.
Otherwise, isolation goes on. Given the time I've been spending in my basement where my home office is, I've been wondering how hard it'd be to add another window. Probably more money than I want to spend on this house.
I think the end goal that I have in mind for this website — aside from the obviousness of blogging — is to be able to update from wherever I am. As I’ve switched to Jekyll, this isn’t as easy a task to accomplish, as say, something built on Wordpress, or even Grav. Both of those CMS’s have Admin areas that you load up in a browser to compose your pages in. As far as I know there’s no admin plugin available for Jekyll. Not that I’ve looked that hard.
I’m intending to write most my posts on my iPad. I know there are various Markdown editors available, but currently I’m using the iOS version of Scrivener. I’ve setup a project where I’ll write my posts, that is currently synced to Dropbox. Currently I’m using iA Writer, and will hopefully get this to sync with Dropbox, or similar. This isn’t something that’ll be completely fool proof anytime soon. After all, I’m quite the fool and excel and breaking stuff. I’ve also finally uploaded the site to the domain, so I’m not just talking to myself on my local machine. Now I’m talking to myself in the great wide open digital domain.
There are still a few things to button up before I’m completely happy:
Otherwise, I feel pretty good about the state of the site. Good enough to currently show it to the public at least. The list above can be worked on in my spare time.
After a failed update and a couple of months of apathy, I'm finally back to having my site looking how I want. Simple and clean is the name of the game here.
The fallout took place when trying to update Ghost and basically things did not go well. I wasn't in the mood to troubleshoot (again!) after that first go round, so I figured I'd revisit later. Later became days, which turned into weeks... before I knew it, five months had gone by and I was still looking at the "I broke it again" html page I'd thrown up.
I decided to move on from Ghost, and opted instead for Jekyll, a static site generator. The big benefit here is there's no need for a database. No database means less maintenance, less overhead, fewer options for script kiddies to try to take over my site (who'd want to??). It also uses Markdown which is something I've been wanting to get more familiar with.
I'm also going to collect all my previous posts (at least those that I can find) and import them here. There are posts from Wordpress and Blogger that date back quite some years. I plan on dating them when they were originally posted, so there will be posts back from the early 2000's. I won't be posting items that were simple one liners ("It's snowing!" for example) and would've been better off as tweets.
Now on to the fun of importing entries and ripping out all the extraneous markup that some of these tools add. Joy.
In one of my previous entries, I mentioned that I have a hard time getting better than proficient at something:
one of my bigger shortcomings -- at least in my eyes ( and if you think there are other, bigger ones, please keep it to yourself, thank you very much) -- is my lack of digging deeper and really getting to know how to work with, and learn what it is I'm tinkering with. So lately I've been trying to focus on just one Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). I've been working with Bitwig, because it's still fairly new (v3.0.3 as of this writing), and somewhere down the road I'd like to be someone other people turn to to learn this software. Then I can brag about how I've been using Bitwig since v1.0. I even have the badge to prove it. A bit childish and maybe narcissistic, sure... but it's the small things.
Like any piece of creative software, whether it be Affinity's Photo or Designer, Scrivener, or Ableton Live (Bitwig's main competitor in the DAW field), they're all easy enough to do something basic up front, but the real power comes from digging deeper, and learning the ins-and-outs of the software. And of course, the more one digs, the more complicated the software can become. Bitwig is no different, so I've been trying to break it down into smaller bits, making the knowledge easier to digest. The smaller bits also help with trying to keep focus, an issue I'm constantly struggling with.
I'm not, however, taking a very practical approach. It would make sense to start at a high level, learning the basic interface to an expert level. I know the basics well enough to feel comfortable working through the project.
continue >>There's a plethora of JavaScript books available for those who learn best by reading. Every single book I've picked up over the years (and I'm embarrassed to say how many I have that I've only picked through), has started with "The History of JavaScript", to some degree.
This annoys me.. I really don't care about the history. Does a mechanic open a manual on how to fix an engine and the first chapter is "The history of the internal combustion engine"? While I haven't checked any manuals lately, I would bet not. So why does it seem every JavaScript book needs to delve into the history of the language? The syntax and structure of JavaScript is nothing like it was back in 1995, much like a modern engine only slightly resembles an engine from 100 years ago. Maybe that's a bad analogy, as they're still using combustion to force pistons to turn a crankshaft to power a drivetrain (man, why hasn't the engine developed past that?), but you get the idea. I want to get to the practicality of the language, I don't believe I need to know it was originally called Mocha, then Livescript then blah blah blah.
continue >>