BLEH!

2020-02-08

Originally, this article was called “Hello world”. It’s a tradition: The first program you write in a new programming language just prints “Hello world!”. I’m not really fond of traditions, and now that I think about it, my first programs usually take the shape of

print("BLEH")

Or some variation of that.

So BLEH it is.

In a way, the most interesting aspect of starting a blog is that I don’t even remember hearing the word “blog” from an actual person, recently. It seems most of the people who still use blogs are people who are working in the tech industry. Most other people use some social medium like Facebook, but even Facebook is getting pretty empty these days. Maybe Instagram is more popular?

Anyway, for the technical details, this website is hosted on Github pages . The website itself is generated using Hugo . As for its looks, I used the Notepadium theme.

I personally had a blog on blogger.com , which apparently still exists (the platform, not the blog). I had been wanting to write for a while now, but I didn’t want to do it on Medium, or Facebook, for two reasons:

  1. Vendor lock-in: I suspect this got better with GDPR, but I want to write “on my own terms” so to speak. If there is something I don’t like about the way my website is published, I want to be able to change. Having access to the original files of the articles is then really important.
  2. Learning skills and customization: I want to learn more about how to set up websites, and I want to be able to have them evolve with time.

In other words, I want to have more control over the content and its presentation. I am not even sure what I want to write about, but it seemed like an important step to take to have a setup that satisfies me, and having the power to change it. I’ll probably talk about programming because this is what I do most of my days, probably about technology because I am interested in its impact on the world, but most likely, I’ll want to mention other things.

Anyway, welcome!

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