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Assorted Geekery

2023

We Need To Talk About Obsidian
·820 words·4 mins
Articles Obsidian Assorted Geekery Markdown Productivity
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve recently come down with a case of the mind-virus that is Obsidian. I was infected by the dastardly Daniel Rodriguez, whose dark exploits are well known.
Weeknotes for 2023-01-13
·534 words·3 mins
Weeknotes Personal Explorers Wanted Obsidian Books Movies D&d Ttrpg Horror Assorted Geekery
This week I’ve been in the Netherlands for work, so between jet lag and meetings I’ve been pretty wiped out. Still, I’ve managed to get a few non-work related things done as well.
Migrating My Site to Hugo
·420 words·2 mins
Articles Go Ssg Personal Tech Assorted Geekery
I feel like “migrating to a different static site generator” is the new “installing a new Linux distro.” It’s something nerds do for almost no reason besides curiosity, boredom, and perhaps no small amount of masochism.

2018

New year, new nerdery
·1217 words·6 mins
Articles Aws Assorted Geekery Personal Vps Linux Gentoo Funtoo
It’s the January of 2018, and the sickness is upon me again. Sometimes you can feel it coming, like that first head fog that warns of a coming cold, or the klaxon of a stomach churn that alerts you to an impending flu.

2017

18 Essential Apps for Getting Shit Done
·2366 words·12 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Tech Productivity Writing Security
OMG, a workflow post! Apps, tools, productivity, oh my! Listen, we all know that no app can make you more productive by itself. Your methods are always more important than your tools.
My faithful companion: mutt
··482 words·3 mins
Articles Email Assorted Geekery Personal
About a month ago, on a whim, I started an experiment where I stopped checking my personal email on my phone, or via the web. Instead, I moved all my personal email activity over to Mutt.
Now supporting JSON feeds and scheduled posts
··237 words·2 mins
Articles Meta Assorted Geekery Development Pelican
I’m happy to report that this site now produces a valid JSON feed for your consumption. If you are using one of the few feedreaders that support them, that is.
Soaring with Pelican
·737 words·4 mins
Articles Personal Development Assorted Geekery Meta Python Pelican
Get Pelican: it’s good! There comes a time in every young man’s life when he begins to neglect his digital lawn, and the weeds grow so thick you wouldn’t think there was any home there at all.

2013

Hacking on Octopress
·1111 words·6 mins
Articles Meta Development Ruby Assorted Geekery
As previously discussed, I recently switched to Octopress on this site. I’ve been pretty happy with that decision thus far. Performance is good thanks to static files. It’s a joy to compose in Markdown, preview it on my own machine, and then deploy to my site.
Switching To Octopress
·1512 words·8 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Meta Ruby Octopress Django Development Python Jekyll Hyde
This site is now powered by Octopress. The tentacles compell you! It’s tentacly delicious ! The Search> The Search # As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been looking to try out a new CMS for this site.
CMS Blues
·876 words·5 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Administration
I’m down with a case of the CMS Blues. I’ve got them so bad. A Little Background> A Little Background # So, I’ve been using my own custom [Django][2]-powered CMS for several years now.

2010

Review: Linode
·1018 words·5 mins
Articles Reviews Hosting Assorted Geekery Webfaction Linode Linux
Well, after many years of posting my nonsense on the internets, I have finally made the transition from shared hosting to a VPS. This last week, I migrated this site over to a Linode VPS, and I must say that the whole experience has been pretty painless.
A Very Lovecraft October
·836 words·4 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Board Games Books Games Lovecraft Reviews
There’s something about Halloween that always draws me back to H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. I’m not alone in this, of course. My good friend Quentin Lewis has taken to releasing recordings of himself reading stories from Lovecraft each Halloween as a podcast, which I highly recommend you check out.
Review: The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
·1128 words·6 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Books Epic Fantasy Fantasy Reviews
What’s that you say? Another epic fantasy by Brandon Sanderson? Sold. I swear, the rate at which Brandon Sanderson produces his massive books is a bit intimidating. The added fact that they are so consistently good marks it as an indicator of an almost terrifying amount of talent and skill.
Boredom & Stats For Nerds
·732 words·4 mins
Articles Assorted Geekery Personal
Last night I found myself looking through old blog posts on this site in an attempt to avoid thinking about any of the other things I need to get done. As I was looking back through the posts from 2004-2005, I was struck by how much my writing style changed when I switched from blogging anonymously to using my real name.

2009

The Nerd Handbook: Rands in Repose
·111 words·1 min
Articles Assorted Geekery Geek Nerd Psychology
This is an excellent essay written for the poor benighted souls who have taken on having a relationship with a nerd. Honestly, I prefer the term "geek", but in this essay the words are interchangeable.

2008

Quick Post: My Pownces, Let Me Show You Them
·154 words·1 min
Articles Api Assorted Geekery Development Django Pownce Programming Python Social Networking
Heh, I had a little fun this afternoon writing a little Django app for my site that will regularly import my public Pownce notes and allow me to display them in the sidebar.
Quick Post: Pownce API 2.0 Now Available
·161 words·1 min
Articles Api Assorted Geekery Pownce Programming Social Media Social Networking Tech
In case you missed it, Pownce announced the release of the second revision of its public API today. The new API is much more elaborate than the previous version (which was honestly kind of a joke), and promises to be robust enough that interested parties could use it to rewrite the Pownce desktop app from scratch without losing any functionality.

2007

Updates, ToDo and a Request for Feedback
·553 words·3 mins
Articles Announcements Assorted Geekery Development
Hopefully not too many people tried to stop by the site today, because I had a pretty severe outage due to my own foolishness. I’ve been trying to implement a few new features to the site, and in one particularly bad move I managed to wipe an important file that isn’t stored in my SCM because it is server dependent.
Creepy Sleepy: Mahalo
·66 words·1 min
Articles Appearances Assorted Geekery Creepy Sleepy Mahalo Tech
Just another quick post that Dan and I just recently did a short podcast on Mahalo. Our contention is that Mahalo, while ostensibly a search engine, has far more in common with Wikipedia than anything else.