Blogging

A couple of years ago I switched this blog from a WordPress site hosted on GoDaddy to a statically generated site. The new setup is faster, more secure, and cheaper to operate. And it was easy to do!

Static vs Dynamic websites

WordPress is a very popular blogging platform. You can use it hosted on WordPress.com, or any number of other web providers that offer it. Because it’s open source, you can also host it yourself easily. In my case, I had a virtual server running in GoDaddy where I maintained the installation myself.

I spend a fair bit of time working on this blog. More than I probably should given my unimpressive view metrics. It does help me to crystalize my thoughts and practice articulating points that are important to me, but I’m spending an awful lot of time doing it. Ultimately, I write because I enjoy writing. I just wish I could spend less time per post.

For a while there I was getting hammered by ads from Grammarly, and in a fit of frustration, or maybe I was avoiding yet another hour of editing, I signed up. I didn’t start with the free trial, I went straight to Grammarly Premium expecting that it would be great.

I’ve been spending time on the first part of the shared resource service project: “Receive event invitations by email and send an acceptance email”. I hadn’t considered the difficulty I would face receiving emails. This is the most important part of the application, and if I can’t make it work, there’s really no point to continue.

I don’t want to write my own POP3 library, I’ve done that before and it’s much more complicated than it appears. Buying a commercial component isn’t going to happen either. That left me with one option: To scour the Internet for an open source library.

I’ve finally gone and done it.

To be honest, creating my own blog wasn’t foremost in my thoughts until fairly recently. Scott Hanselman had a couple of interesting videos on his blog that finally convinced me to do it.

I hope you like it.