Category: blogging

Posts about blogging

A New Version of Concrete Lunch?

I’ve been doing nerd things.

I’ve been playing around with a static site generator called Jekyll.

What is a static site generator, you might ask?

Well, if you created web pages/sites in the old days, you likely wrote every one by hand. That HTML file contained the whole page, with links to images or whatever. There was no database backend, no embedded javascript, etc. If you were really fancy and smart (like me!), you used Server Side Includes to standardize your header and footer, so you’d only need to change it in one place if you wanted it to change across your whole site.

Flash forward to the late 2000s/early 2010s, and platforms like WordPress, Blogger, etc came about. They use more sophisticated means to deliver webpage. There are databases involved, lots of code and other shit. It’s all very cool. This site runs on WordPress.

You also have to update your site’s content management system (in this case WordPress) pretty often, as hackers and scumbags are constantly trying to log into it, hack it, steal your information, blah blah blah. All that complexity-based convenience comes with a price.

Another price – in theory these content management systems are kinda slower serving up pages, since they are doing a lot more on the backend.

BUT — these days there are number of programs like Jekyll that generate static pages for you, which you then upload to your space on a server (just like in days-of-yore). Since the pages are just HTML, some CSS, and whatever media you might embed in them, they are less vulnerable to hacking.

Also in theory, all else being equal, since there are not database calls involve and other technical fuckery, the static site should serve up to readers much faster (again – depending on connections speeds, etc., which is true for CMSs too).

The drawback?

You have to work harder setting it all up. You have to understand some stuff like installing things from the command line/terminal/whatever. It is all a lot nerdier than just going a Blogger or WordPress site.

Clearly I have too much time on my hands (I don’t).

So here is test.concretelunch.info. Since I’m just figuring this out, the homepage is still a level down in the directories, but whatever. You get the idea. There is supposed to be a process for moving a WordPress blog over “easily” (it is never easy). We’ll see ….

Science Fiction Micro.blog

A few friends know I’ve been keeping a blog just about my science fiction reading for the last year or so. I started it back in April 2023 (I think), when I began my 5% per day reading challenge. https://bloftin2sf.blog. I haven’t really promoted it much because it is really just a personal blog for my own tracking and reflections on reading. In other words — probably not that interesting to most people.

One feature I love on micro.blog is the built-in ability to track your reading. Could have something to do with the fact that the developer, Manton, is a reader. Might also have something with his wife, Tracy, having gone to library grad school and being a reader.

Here’s my 2023 year in books, as tracked via Epilogue and Micro.blog. https://bloftin2sf.blog/2024/02/28/year-in-books.html

At any rate, Manton has created a simple system for tracking and blogging about your reading. He has a companion app for micro.blog called Epilogue, which makes it simple to track your reading from your phone or tablet. He’s done all the work to draw the book information from legitimate bibliographic sources. This is available even on the base $5 per month micro.blog account.

I’m not planning at this point to move Concrete Lunch to micro.blog, as I have a few friends who enjoy commenting here. Micro.blog does not have a comment function, and thus there is no comment spam or harassment. You have to comment through the micro.blog interface, which is limited to users. They do a great job of keeping the system clean.

As part of the fediverse, micro.blog makes it easy to post there and syndicate your writing and other media to other parts of the fediverse, like Mastodon, BlueSky, etc.

The simplicity of being able to post from my computer or easily from my phone with micro.blog is great. The $10 per month premium account allows you to upload videos or podcasts of up to 45 megs, which is a short video or a mid-length podcast. All of this is unattached to Google, Youtube, Facebook, or any of the other commercial sites. Hell, you can run a podcast from micro.blog without having to have an account anywhere else. Amazing value.

Forgot to mention. They just changed the $10 per month account so that you can host up to 5 blogs for that one monthly charge. The service just keeps getting better.

Yes, I can create a post on the mobile version of WordPress, but frankly the interface it clunky and crowded. WP is still great for running a more full-featured site or portal, but it has really grown beyond the notion of “blogging” — a web log. Micro.blog is focused on blogging.

More and more I’m convinced the future of a quality internet is going revolve around pay services. Sure, there will be social media and massive sights like Youtube that are full of great stuff and lots of shit to wade through and put up with, who sell your data to every marketer in the world. And there will be a small fraction of the web that is curated, not free to every lunatic with a phone or computer, and of higher quality, that respects the privacy of its users.

Skate Blog(s)

Connecting with one blogger (Kyle Duvall of the Parking Block Diaries) a few months ago has resulted in meeting some good people online. I found David Thornton, and was on his Luchaskate podcast, and I’m enjoying his writing and his podcast. We’re going to trade some actual physical copies of our zines.

Then a yesterday I connected with Chris Sedition, of Concrete Existence. He’s been writing a while, and yesterday he began chronicling his own life in skateboarding more biographically. It’s a really good read, and I agree with Chris that reading the stories and tall-tales of everyday skaters is a lot more interesting than reading a pro biography.

It’s great to be connected with some really smart new people. The artists, writers, and musicians I’ve met through skateboarding continue to blow my mind. And it’s so good to have some cool shit to read!