Fiddling

I have been fiddling with this here weblog - specifically updating and simplifying things. I’ve chosen a new theme called Kiera. It’s still simple and clean but the text is larger and more easily readable - and yes, my old eyes have something to do with the choice.

I’ve also left the Disqus comments off for the time being as well. I felt they just cluttered up the place and they weren’t being used (unsurprisingly since this thing sees pathetically little traffic). Hopefully there won’t be too much wonkiness, but as always, your mileage will undoubtedly vary. If you like the new look, hit me up on G+ and let me know. If not… umm.. step off my lawn.

Things I learned along the way:

• Amazon S3 (where this blog is hosted) doesn’t always set the mime-type of my css files correctly. It worked fine for 2 years and then all of a sudden I have to set them manually in the AWS Console. I’m too distracted/busy/old to figure out exactly why.

• A static blog like this is easy to mess with. Just take the whole folder, make a backup, and start playing.

• The latest version of the Hugo blog engine is available via Snap package. I tried that… three times. And each time it hung and then seemed to almost work after a reboot and then still gave me problems. Instead I finally decided to install the latest version from a .deb file. Strategy: Pretend like Snap packages no longer exist for now.

• I simplified the folder structure of this blog so that images are stored where they’re actually supposed to be. To modify the path in the previous posts that used images, I actually used sed for the very first time. I know I know.

Bonus treats for those making it this far:

• I’m using the IBM Plex Mono font in my editors and terminal. I love it. So clear and purty. :-)

• Here’s a site that will make a 3D model from a single photo of a face. Neat, weird and ever so slightly creepy.