Excuses, Excuses
It's about that time for me to discuss my lack of content.
This site has been left idle for almost half of its existence. Every few months, I usually circle back trying to figure out why I struggle with adding new content. And every few months, I usually am able to pinpoint the reason(s) and attempt to correct for it. I don’t like the design. I don’t like the admin interface. I’m too busy to sit down and write. For the most part, this just amounts to me coming up with lame excuses to make myself feel better.
Over the last year, since I switched to a Mac, I’ve found myself becoming more and more comfortable with the command-line. Whether it’s simple tasks around my local machine, connecting and managing remote servers, or managing subversion. A large chunk of my time is in the command-line. And I’ve found I like the command-line. (Just not as an editor, but that’s a story for another day.)
This wont be a how-to on Jekyll or even how I have mine set up. If that’s what you’re after, it is already well documented.
With that revelation, I’ve decided to take a new approach for this site. I’ve gone the way of a static site generator. While there are many options to choose from, I chose to go with Jekyll. To be honest, it was merely the first I tried and suited my needs nicely, so I can’t really compare it to the other options. Also, this isn’t meant as a knock on the previous systems I’ve dabbled with (Wordpress, Textpattern, Chyrp, Habari) which are all great solutions as well. But for me, their interfaces always seemed to be a deterrent.
Each of those gave me one more website I need to check. One more thing on the internet that deserved my attention. But it required me to work, so why would I give it priority over the other fun things the internet has to offer? With Jekyll, I’m now able to update my site using my own text editor and some simple command-line work. Nothing new to add to my daily process, just more of the same svn and mate functions.
Or maybe I’m just fooling myself with yet another lame excuse for lack of content.