Blogging

Have you ever been so enamoured with plain-text-static-html publishing that you’re willing to burn down a month of implementing a blog using Kirby CMS in order to go back to using Emacs and Markdown and Hugo? I have.

I don’t need a new blogging platform, but if I did, I’d certainly be looking at Prose.sh. It’s blogging via sftp and rsync, which sounds awesome.

My current thinking is that our little blogging society doesn’t need secrecy, it needs visibility.

How I reimplemented my Daily Notes feature from my Tinderbox blog to baty.net in Kirby

Let’s not overthink it, eh?

It’s possible that no one will ever see this post. I’m writing a Hugo-formatted markdown file in Emacs. This means it will be published to a defunct copy of my blog1 Unless of course I decide to bring it back as baty.net. If that happens, then 👋! ↩︎

⚠️ This blog is no longer running Kirby, but I left this here just in case. I’ve recently whittled my servers at DigitalOcean down to a single 2GB instance running Caddy. When I started playing with Kirby, I tried getting it running there, but had issues with php-fpm and Caddy not playing well together, so I spun up a hosted instance at (link: https://fortrabbit.com/ text: Fortrabbit). Running Kirby doesn’t require a database or anything fancy, just a web server and PHP, and it bugged me that I couldn’t get it working, so yesterday I tried again, and finally figured it out. I’m writing this down so that I don’t lose it. ...

How long do we all think my Kirby experiment will last? It’s a fair question.

The Kirby experiment has been fun, but I’m not sure I’ll finish anything useful.

How to fix URLs in RSS feeds when using relative paths in page bundles in Hugo

Blogging options. Where I’ve landed.

As much as I love Tinderbox, I’m wondering if it will continue to make sense long-term as a blogging engine. I get along great with most of Tinderbox’s features, but export is one that has eluded me for going on 20 years. I can muddle my way through, but it’s always a challenge. This blog’s export templates have become complex enough that I don’t want to touch anything, for fear of breaking something. The HTML/CSS is aging and janky, but the thought of updating it is daunting. I mean, look at this thing… ...

The notebooks I’m actively using right now. Seriously. We all know that I have too many blogs. What’s less obvious is that I use too many different notebooks. Here’s what’s currently in rotation: A yellow legal pad. It’s nice to just throw stuff on the top page without thinking. Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Notebook (lined). This is my sort-of bullet journal. I keep lists and notes here, mostly. Hobonichi Techo. This is my calendar/planner. I keep appointments and important dates here. I also try to jot down a quick summary of the day or a small drawing representing something that happened. Field Notes “Dime Novel” edition. I recently found this on a shelf and thought it too pretty to ignore. This is likely to become my next journal, even though I’ve cheated and started writing in it already. Midori MD Notebook (lined). This is only for journaling. I like the paper and the 7mm lines. Index cards. I can’t decide what goes on index cards, but I keep them everywhere, just in case. Usually, I write quotes on them so I can pin them to my bulletin board. I also have maintained a half-assed Zettelkasten on the cards, but that’s mostly died on the vine. Is this too many? I don’t know. Some days it feels like a huge mess and I worry that I’m writing something in the “wrong” place. Other days, it’s perfect and I like having the options. ...

I needed a change, so I brought the Papermod theme back.

So yeah, I’ve been putting Daily Notes at that other blog.

What’s up with RudimentaryLathe?

I have been wondering if the benefits of using ox-hugo just so I can write posts using Org-mode format is worth the extra layer of abstraction. I prefer Org-mode to Markdown, but Markdown is fine. In fact, Markdown-mode makes editing Markdown in Emacs quite pleasant. Ox-hugo is a great package, but increasingly seemed like a clever but unnecessary abstraction. One of its best features is that it makes creating new posts super easy. I never liked using the Hugo CLI, so ox-hugo solved that problem. ...

Edward Snowden quote. Ox-hugo. Featured images and the Congo theme.

A new Hugo theme

For the few of you who’ve been following along, you’ll have noticed that I’ve changed blogging engines several times recently, even more frequently than my usual pace. The most recent moves happened over just a few weeks. I went from WordPress to Blot to Hugo and back to WordPress. I wrote this about moving away from WordPress only two months ago: Mostly, I switched because I don’t enjoy using WordPress. WordPress is powerful and easy and everywhere, but the editor is unpleasant and everything just feels heavy and overwrought. I also tire of plugins nagging me to “Upgrade to Premium!” all the time. I tell myself I can live with it, but in the end I never can. ...