oops
updates from may-june, notes on the process of setting up a blog
update
list
process
meta
written on 2020-06-14
hello warld - REDUX!
i'm back (i say to myself in my little text editor)! right now i'm listening some music and reflecting on the past two months. some very quick updates:
- finished school, passed it all (!!) and got a degree. i don't feel very strongly about this. it was very anticlimactic and i slept through it all
- swinging between my life is just beginning (!!!) and my life is just beginning (....????), which is very terrifying
- i'm depressed about job search and careerism (?) in general
- i'm depressed (maybe? about other things)
- i'm on the tail end of a sinus infection (i've been sick since march)
- i'm...still slowly trying to figure out what communication looks like with the people i love
- i'm currently participating in c*lumbia's "public interest technology lab", where i get paid to "read" book "attend" lecture and "design" tech (more thoughts on this forthcoming)
- i learned how to fix/adjust some parts of a bike (and restored a used one i had bought last year but didn't ride for a bit)
- i'm level 62 on animal crossing pocket camp
- i learned how to stir fry bok choy and make easy mac and cheese
update on blogging
after doing a bunch of research on blogs + cms tools, i decided to make my own blog; this is mostly because the platform i was most interested in (blot) cost 4 dollars a month, and i'm a cheapskate (this is probably very reasonable given the cost of hosting and all). i also looked up free/open-source alternatives that could be configured using python (eg: pelican, engineer, and hobo, which was almost the one i decided on but i installed it and i think it's just...helplessly outdated) but decided two things: 1) i'm only really ever going to need to publish markdown files and 2) maybe (haha) this will be a good opportunity to keep up my programming skills.
some requisites:
- need to convert markdown to html
- templates for a landing, article pages, and archive (?? actually i don't know how blog works)
- ~~search function (not hard to implement, but probably annoying to optimize)~~ actually i'm a fool, and this is only something that can be accomplished dynamically
- tagging function (probably easy to implement?)
some cool things that big brain future me might be able to do:
- publish html + javascript code snippets/sandboxes?
- adjustable theming on client side (like the poetic computation reader)
- really easy tagging system or content sorting system (i'm thinking of those apps that let you swipe to delete photos, maybe implementing a keybind to certain tags/"press key to assign tag" method)
- link bot tweets or recent listens/tabs/activity as a scrolling marquee...kind of like this
- create a series of lists (eg: reading, project) that can be accessed outside of posts and checkmarked
- port this into the p2p web (??)
the goal today is to just set up a quick and probably gross local system so i can just put markdown files in a folder and view them. i'll probably eventually host the blog on github or something else. florian dahlitz has a great guide to doing a simple markdown to html blog that runs on a flask architecture, thankfully i know what all those words mean ahaha...
eventually one thing i want to keep in mind is the computational cost of everything — not that this will be like that, but i'd like to refer to examples of "low-tech" publishing as a guide for figuring out hosting, databases, etc. some additional resources:
ongoing questions/notes on process
- flask + static sites vs. dynamic sites — static sites are basically HTML files served directly from a server to the client. in contrast, when a client makes a request in a dynamic site infrastructure, sites are generated through database query/server-side programming (this is how you're able to get things like, personalized user feeds, for example).
i guess a lot of these things would come easier to me if i paid attention in class, but i'm wondering where flask falls in relation to these categories. flask is a "framework" for "web applications," and i've used it to create dynamic infrastructures for assignments, but i don't really want that here. it seems like there are tools such as frozen-flask that can convert a flask app to a static site pretty easily...
A static website instead gets generated once and exists as a set of documents. They are always there, not only when a visitor visits the page. Like the tree in the forest that also falls when nobody is there to hear it. Static websites are thus based on file storage whereas dynamic websites depend on recurrent computation.
- sustainable server hosting — i'm thinking about what might be the most low-cost (energy, space, and money) way to host this site (after reading a bunch of the linked articles above). the end goal (another fun project!) would be to set up your own hosting architecture from recycled hardware (i'm still researching this). low-tech mag does this in conjunction with a solar panel. i'd like to build this eventually, not only for energy consumption concerns but also because i don't intend this website to get a lot of traffic (i don't really want it to be so broadly accessible). for now, i'll be hosting the site through github pages (it's the only free domain i know how to set up, lol!)...more to come on this!
- publishing/makefile configuration — i know this is possible, just don't know what the correct vocab for it is. i'd like to be able to have the following features:
- template for new markdown files with metadata pre-filled (mainly with the date, but also the other fields templated so i don't keep mixing "date" with "published")
- auto sort markdown pages into appropriate sub directories (year/date) based on that date metadata
- markdown extensions — let me use strikethrough please
- scss styling — i'd like to use this so i can practice writing it, but i literally can't figure out how to use pyscss. setting up a compiler would be fine if it didn't feel like installed 39424 different packages for this
- client-side styles — can probably do this in javascript, but how to change them for the entire site?
a tentative reading/watching/listening list
projects i'd like to work on (no order)
cu lion dance
- fix performance script + port to another database/sheet system
- update documentation for performance script
- create working draft of website
- update handbook
archivy
- disorientations.org
- scanning/digitizing all my paper ephemera/printed matter over the years (creating a scan-to-site infrastructure)
zine making
- succulent care zine
- pocket camp comic
build/fabrication
- not sure...just found out some of the clay i took from school is still kinda usable...
- thinking about incantation and ritual (specifically the one where you write things on paper and burn them). can sound escape vessels? can you trap words in a vessel..? (and then break, bury, release, or share them?)
- make a table
""creative technology""
- movement as notation/collective vocabulary
- making a twitter bot of some kind (practice python)
- doing some data scraping (again, practice python)
- fix up some old data visualizations
stuff i was looking at today (vaguely organized)
note: i hand typed the text for each hyperlink — not sure if i should do this consistently for future posts (before i just grabbed all open tabs and ported them into the markdown file)
projects
alternative/digital publishing