notes from /dev/null - blog

NFDN Finally Supporting OS Appearance Changes

2025-03-23T14:20:00-07:00

Finally got around to updating this blog to support OS appearance changes. Pleasantly surprised that the CSS was not difficult to figure out nor that much to do. Looking at my Org TODO timestamp for this task, it was back in[2023-10-26 Thu 15:20]when I really wanted this to happen. Better late than never, I suppose.

Side note - Mobile Safari (both iPhone and iPad) is stubborn in not refreshing updated CSS files. To force this, go to Settings › Apps › Safari › Advanced › Website Data. When there do the following:

Search for yummymelon.com
Press the Edit button.
Delete yummymelon.com data.
Press the Done button.
Kill running Safari app (Swipe up, Select Safari, Swipe Up).
Restart Safari.
Open http://yummymelon.com/devnull/.

Going back to feeds

2023-06-13T23:20:00-07:00

With the turmoil going on at Reddit starting from their stance on 3^rd party mobile clients, I'm taking this as an opportunity to shed even more of my social media consumption. On all my devices I have logged out of Reddit and deleted their mobile clients and browser bookmarks too.

For me, one of the larger conveniences of aggregating sites like Reddit was the one-stop shopping for interesting posts/articles on the web. But leaving editorial to the madness of crowds (as it's been for the past decade or so) has definitely shown its limitations. Going back to reading from syndication feeds (aka RSS/ATOM) and forcing the curation back on me seems like the right thing to do. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but I've no interest in joining some federated clone of Reddit to replace it.

With my newfound embrace of feeds from all over the web, I figured it was time to revamp this blog's feeds as well.

Go to the following page, Feed & Tags, to get the feed link for all posts from this blog, as well as separate feeds per metadata tag used by each blog post. The Feed & Tags link is at the bottom of every page on this blog as well.

Looking forward to seeing how well this works over time. Will return to this topic at the end of 2023.

Static Blog Generation: 9 Weeks In

2013-04-28T16:49:00-07:00

9 weeks in using Pelican to generate my blog and so far I dig it: I've been able to write more and write better with it.

Thinking about why, the reasons come down to:

Being able to define and automate your own workflows.
Being able to use Markdown to format your source files.
Easy customization (especially if you have a background in Python, templating and web development).
Using source code control (git in my case) to manage/sanity check what you post.
It's fast. Having worked with Python web frameworks like Zope (and Plone later on), TurboGears, and Django, it's easy to get stuff initially up and running but the price you pay is slow run-time performance, especially for content that doesn't need to be dynamic in the first place. Not all content needs to be stashed in a database.

Static blog generation with a tool like Pelican is not for everybody: you really need to be comfortable with working like a software developer. But if you're already there then you'll likely find yourself pleased with it.