Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Website (not blogging) Ennui

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I’m not really happy with my website — I’m tired of WordPress, and ‘view source’ just makes me cringe at all the junk, cruft, and JavaScript bogging down what could and should be relatively simple, clean, HTML/CSS — but I don’t know how to reinvigorate it in a way I like.

I don’t want to entirely stop blogging, nor do I want to lose all the stuff that’s here already, or break existing URLs.

I’ve been looking into various flat-file or static CMS backends, and though grav is the one that most caught my eye, it (as far as I can tell) would mean losing the ability to post through micro.blog or any other third-party app that uses the MetaWeblog API, which would make spur-of-the-moment posts more difficult.

Even if I did resign myself to only adding posts through the admin UI (or by FTPing in to manually build the folder/file structure that grav uses), if I figured out how to import all my past entries from WordPress (this might do it), I haven’t been able to find a way to tweak the URL structure, which means I’d probably have to figure out how to generate a huge .htaccess file to handle the 5,170 or so redirects so I didn’t break any existing URLs. I may not get linked to a lot, but it happens occasionally, and I’d prefer not to 404 those.

(Plus, as I was playing with grav, I kept getting blank screens where I should have been getting post entry or edit screens, which…well, not sure if that’s a grav issue, a Safari browser issue, or some other issue, but it didn’t bode well.)

Other backends either looked too complex for my current needs/skills/available time (I just don’t have the time or impetus to try to learn Jekyll, which kept popping up), or didn’t fully support Markdown at all or enough, or had one or another thing that made them feel “not right” for me.

Really, what I’d kind of like to do is go back to hand-coding my site, so I have full control over the HTML/CSS (even if it looks like crap, it’ll look like my crap…so to speak), only to still be able to blog easily using micro.blog or Ulysses or other such tools. Not sure that’s really a possibility, though.

In the end, this isn’t much more than a bit of whinging and trying to figure out what exactly I’m looking for. But if anyone actually 1) reads this, and 2) has a magical solution for all my woes, I’d be happy to hear it!

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Unsolicited Mac app recommendation: I don’t have to use the command line very often, but when I do, I really enjoy using Cathode, a vintage terminal emulator.

Scan lines! Green/amber (or whatever) screens! Curved CRTs! Fading scroll artifacts! It’s ridiculous and a lot of fun.

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I’ve been thinking about moving away from WordPress for a while now, and I think I may have found my replacement backend: Grav.

I’ve got a base install running. Next: play with settings and design, look for WordPress importers, external editor/microblog support options, etc.

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⌚️ day! New Series 4 Apple Watch (on the right), along with an original “Series 0” watch on the left. Wearing both was just for the photo, the older model is going to a new home.

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Oh, wow — well, that’s it for Google+, folks. It was probably only a matter of time, but going out on a customer-data exposing bug is a bad way to go.

Siri shortcut for “xyzzy”

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Old-school geeks will (well, maybe) be amused by this: a very simple, very stupid, tiny iOS 12 Siri shortcut. Tap it in Shortcuts and Siri will reply with, “Nothing happens.” Or if you set it up to respond to your voice, you can say “XYZZY” and she’ll say, “Shortcuts says: ‘Nothing happens.’ Done!”…which is less than ideal, but seems to be how it works. The joke is still there, at least.

(If you don’t get the joke, this might help.)

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Well, crud. I was worried this would happen, but hoped it wouldn’t: Apple has discontinued the iPhone SE. While it doesn’t affect me directly, it does make it probable that when it’s time to upgrade, my wife will move away from Apple in order to get a comfortably sized phone.