Should I build this app?
I had a need. I chopped away a few hours here and there and built the prototype of an app. Blogging with Hugo or similar static site generators means using three tools: the Terminal, to create new posts and start the local server an editor, to write the post a web browser, to preview the draft I couldn’t find an app that embedded all these functionalities. So I built one, to feed the inner beast.
From Octopress to Hugo
I moved this blog form Octopress to Hugo. Octopress was good but hasn’t been updated in a while. Version 3.0 was promised a year ago but still no news. I don’t blame the author, I know plans can go sideways. Plus I wanted an excuse to use Hugo, because it’s a good candidate for the core of a new product I am designing. I kept an eye on Hugo for quite a while.
A February of Blogging
In February I blogged every week day. It was fun, sometimes demanding, but overall rewarding. I started these challenges to push myself a bit. I have discovered that I am much better at committing to a daily task than to a weekly one. In the past I struggled quite a bit with blogging because I blogged when I felt the need, and that meant one post a month on average.
Hunting for a Static Site Generator
Last week, pretty much in a hurry, I had to setup a blog for Podrover. I wanted to host it on AWS S3, where also the landing page is hosted. Why? To keep it very simple. I am sure that if I had used Wordpress or Tumblr I’d have started toying with themes, layouts and plugins. So I forced myself in a corner again and decided for a static site generator.