Posts
The Holy Mail
Dr. McCoy said it so well in Star Trek: The Motion Picture: “I know geeks: they love to change things.” Well, actually, he said, “engineers,” rather than “geeks”; but I’ve taken the liberty of editing him because in this case I’m talking about me, not an engineer.
Boxed in?
Note: You’ve been redirected here automatically if you were trying to reach a former post, since deleted, called “Why I left Ulysses.” I explain herein why I deleted that post.
Publish or perish
This is a follow-up to my previous post showing you how to launch a Hugo-based static Web site. Assuming you followed the instructions in that post and now have a local Hugo site running and looking the way you want on your system, here’s how you publish it to the real Web.
Ec-static
Want to share your thoughts on the Web? Good for you. Considering using WordPress to do it? Ahhh, not so good. Let me suggest a better way: use a static site generator (SSG).
Mark it down
Before summer, 2015, if you’d asked me what Markdown was, I’d have said, “Cutting the price on a product, of course.” And I wouldn’t have been kidding, either. My first encounter with the Markdown I’ll discuss herein was part of an interview process for a Web development job.
Plain truth
I still have stuff I wrote fifty years ago. It’s not any good, mind you, but I have it. Whether we’re talking about an op-ed I wrote in a school newspaper or a pitiful attempt my almost-fourteen-year-old self made at a novel in the ensuing summer of ’69, the now-dingy sheets of typing paper on which they exist have long since seen their better days, but I can read them again any time I want.
Back up, Jack
No one will ever mistake me for a high-tech version of Henry David Thoreau (which is a pretty bizarre concept, if you go there), but I’ve been trying to simplify my computing setup—not so much where hardware is concerned but, instead, the services to which I have subscribed.
Old dog learns old trick
“What? You must be joking! Darth Vader was Luke’s father?” A few days ago, I felt like that guy: enlightened and glad for it, but chastened for my failure to “try to keep up,” as the impatient are wont to say.
iA for IO?
My comments at the end of my previous post aside, I have to say iA Writer can be a halfway decent editor for Markdown, after all. Once again, I’m not considering dropping Ulysses from my small collection of much-loved apps that I utterly must have when the muse is with me and I feel like writing.
Blox sux
There’s an old saying to the effect that “a poor craftsman blames his tools.” The only thing about that saying—which is supposed to be an indictment of anyone who gripes about said tools—is that I first learned it in a 1960s comic piece, “How to Be a Comic Book Artist!
On Edge
Earlier this week, there were reports that Microsoft was going to dump the EdgeHTML engine that has powered its Edge browser since its introduction in the summer of 2015, when Windows 10 also debuted.
Grid-locked no more
As Emily Litella said it so well: “Never mind.” I said in my last post that I’d use Bootstrap 4 for this site while learning CSS Grid over time. Then, only a few days later, I decided there was no time like the present.
Getting framed
In an ideal world, Web developers would never use CSS frameworks. There would be ample time, patience, and money for building everything from scratch to suit every single site to a tee.
Some curmudgeonish thoughts
Here are a few odds and ends—some a tad acerbic, some not so much. And I swear I’m not trying to sound like the late Andy Rooney, or even a parody thereof.
A stacked deck
In Part 1 of this two-part series, I posited that body text on Web sites should, y’know, be readable. O M G. Here, in the conclusion, I’ll explain the typographical choices on this site.
Readable Web text, pretty please
As I suggested in a recent post, I’m more than a little hung up on on-screen type; so I thought I’d do a little two-part series on Web site typography and share some appropriate insights and tips.
The client is too smart for you
It’s been nearly two decades since we tech marketing folks started counting on the majority of prospects and customers to have access to reasonably fast email. Hey, I remember when we used to send out mass faxes.
The version-control follies
If you, as did I, came late to all the static site generators (SSGs) fun, don’t feel bad. Besides, from what I can tell in some changelogs and various articles from the last few years, we picked a good time to get in.
Why I finally settled on Ulysses
As I write this in late September, 2018, it’s a little over a year since I began writing a novel I really, truly thought I’d have finished by now.
HardyPress: WP + SSG with a twist
While researching the static-site generator (SSG) scene for the first time in a while yesterday, I happened upon HardyPress. It’s an interesting proposition: it takes the whole WordPress-to-SSG idea one step further.
For media credits (where applicable), see the original posts linked herein.