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<!doctype html>
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<html>
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<head>
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<meta charset=utf-8>
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<meta name=generator content="Pelican 4.9.1">
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<meta name=author content="LEdoian">
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<meta name=description content="My personal webpage">
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<meta name=referrer content=no-referrer>
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<link rel=stylesheet href="./theme/css/theme.css">
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<title>About this blog – LEdoian's Blog</title>
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</head>
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<body>
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<header>
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<h1>LEdoian's Blog</h1>
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</header>
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<div id=main>
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<nav>
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<div>
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<!-- Main navigation -->
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<!-- TODO! -->
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</div>
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<div>
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<h2>Categories</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="./category/talks.html">talks</a></li>
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<li><a href="./category/technology.html">technology</a></li>
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</ul>
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<h2>Tags</h2>
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<ul>
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<li><a href="./tag/meta.html">meta</a></li>
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<li><a href="./tag/infrastructure.html">infrastructure</a></li>
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<li><a href="./tag/smrst.html">smršť</a></li>
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<li><a href="./tag/trains.html">trains</a></li>
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<li><a href="./tag/software-engineering.html">software-engineering</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<div>
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<h2>Stalk me also at</h2>
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TODO!
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<h2>I stalk</h2>
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TODO!
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</nav>
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<main>
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<div>
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<h1>About this blog</h1>
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<p>This is my blog and this article describes its setup and other details about my
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intentions. The actual <a class="reference internal" href="#the-setup">setup</a> is probably the most
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interesting tech-wise.</p>
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<div class="section" id="what-is-this">
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<h2>What is this?</h2>
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<p>My own space on the internet where I can post whatever and link others to it.
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It might end up containing rants, guides, ideas, or maybe nothing at all in the
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end. Only the future will tell.</p>
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<p>The blog might even serve as my personal web page/introduction. Maybe. Maybe not…</p>
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<p>The main motivation is to have low-effort way to post random stuff. Which leads
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to my requirements for this thing.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="requirements">
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<h2>Requirements</h2>
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<p>(The requirements are a bit too idealistic, so not all of them were satisfied…)</p>
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<ul class="simple">
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<li>low-effort, me-friendly, low-maintenance – I don't want to have to learn too
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many new technologies to use this. This includes the required technologies:
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Python, Markdown/reStructuredText, Jinja2, git, …</li>
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<li>Technical and math content ~~friendly~~ compatible – I expect that to appear
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here.</li>
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<li>Static site – for security, coolness factor and control. Also static on the
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front-end, because I don't like JavaScript and/or running untrusted code on
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my machine (even when in a sandbox). The SSG should likely be aimed at
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creating blogs, not documentation. Also, self-contained, as in not depending
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on third-party sites.</li>
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<li>No moving parts in the infrastructure (or as few as possible) – if it works
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on my machine, it should just get mirrored to the public site with as few
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modifications as possible.</li>
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<li>Transparent – I should be able to understand it, maybe others could also use
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it as a resource or take inspiration. (At one point, this deployment itself
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started being interesting, so if I can share the background as well as the
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final webpage, it would be cool.)</li>
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<li>Followable – I know you internet guys like to ~~stalk~~ follow people :-)</li>
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<li>Aligned with my values: minimalist, simple, extensible/hackable, FLOSS</li>
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<li>If the platform could distinguish translations and do strikethroughs, it would
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be nice, but that is not a hard requirement.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>There are several features of conventional blogs that I consider to be a
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non-goals or even anti-goals. Mostly it is about interactivity – I don't aim
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for having any kind of comments here, or really anything that would require
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JavaScript or complex HTML/CSS. And appearance goes past me as well, I instead
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try to let the browser decide how to display this page – more on that <a class="reference internal" href="#design-considerations">below</a>.</p>
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<p>The workflow I wanted to achieve is something like: Write the content, git it,
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build it (locally, no CI/CD), push it, done. Single write, single push, very
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simple.</p>
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<p>And I managed to achieve something like that, via learning (too much?) about
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git.</p>
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<!-- TODO: fix the worktree bug already! -->
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="the-setup">
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<h2>The setup</h2>
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<p>Naturally for a sysadmin/netadmin, the setup consists of 7 ~~ISO/OSI~~ layers:</p>
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<ol class="arabic simple">
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<li><strong>Physical layer</strong>: cheap Hetzner VPS. Not physical, but whatever.</li>
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<li><strong>Network layer</strong>: Nginx</li>
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<li><strong>Persistence layer</strong>: <a class="reference external" href="https://gitea.ledoian.cz/LEdoian/blog">this git repo</a>. I will elaborate below why can
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you see this both rendered here and in the source form in Forgejo.</li>
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<li><strong>Content layer</strong>: Markdown or reStructuredText files.</li>
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<li><strong>Business logic layer</strong>: <a class="reference external" href="https://getpelican.com">Pelican</a>. It's rather
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popular and written in Python, I didn't look further.</li>
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<li><strong>Presentation layer</strong>: I hacked my own theme, because I didn't like any in
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the <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/getpelican/pelican-themes">pelican-themes repo</a>.
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I was a bit inspired by the layout of <a class="reference external" href="https://eev.ee/blog">eevee's blog</a>, but I wanted a dark theme. And as you can see, I
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can't do quality frontend, so it ended up horrible… :-D</li>
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<li><strong>Stalking layer</strong>: Pelican's built-in RSS and Atom feed generators. Not
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linked from anywhere at the moment, but <a class="reference external" href="https://gitea.ledoian.cz/LEdoian/blog/src/branch/blog/output/feeds">the repo will tell you</a> what
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hides under the <tt class="docutils literal">/feeds/</tt> path. Or you can utilize the repo (for personal
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use – the content's license is not decided at the moment)…</li>
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</ol>
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<p>Most of this is straightforward, the fancy part is my repo. The repo contains
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both source and rendered content, so that I can point Nginx right at a checkout
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and have Git solve both persistence and deployment without additional moving
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parts.</p>
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<p>There are two tricks in the configuration of Git repositories: pushing to a
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checked out repo is enabled by configuring <tt class="docutils literal">receive.denyCurrentBranch =
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updateInstead</tt> in the target repository (which is just a normal repo, not a
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bare one), and then I just told my source repositories <a class="footnote-reference" href="#multiple-src" id="footnote-reference-1">[1]</a> to use
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two push targets for the remote (the first line <em>replaces</em> the original push
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address for some reason):</p>
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<pre class="literal-block">
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git remote set-url --add --push blog_remote gitea@gitea.ledoian.cz:LEdoian/blog.git
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git remote set-url --add --push blog_remote blog_user@blog.ledoian.cz:blog_dir
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</pre>
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<p>The blog user is just a user with SSH access via authorized keys, no special
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sauce there. Nginx is then pointed to serve <tt class="docutils literal">~blog_user/blog_dir/output/</tt> at
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<tt class="docutils literal">blog.ledoian.cz</tt>. (The <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">git-remote(1)</span></tt> manpage requires me to have both
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repositories in sync, but as long as I configure all my repositories this way,
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I should be safe, and I think I could get away with my blog checkout getting
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behind accidentally.)</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="my-workflow-and-lots-of-drafts">
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<h2>My workflow and lots of drafts</h2>
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<p>It's Git so it's only natural for me to use various branches and repositories
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even for a dumb blog. There are in fact 4 stages an article may go through <a class="footnote-reference" href="#skipping-stages" id="footnote-reference-2">[2]</a>:</p>
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<ol class="arabic">
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<li><p class="first">A private draft: lives on a branch <tt class="docutils literal">priv/something</tt>, may contain private
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infos (like when I would just copy-paste from terminal without redaction)
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and this branch will probably never be merged to the main repo. Nothing
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about these branches is guaranteed.</p>
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</li>
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<li><p class="first">A public WIP draft: uses a branch called <tt class="docutils literal">pub/something</tt> which is pushed
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to Forgejo (and in fact also to the blog itself, but that is just an
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implementation detail). The draft is either does not build or is very
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incomplete and I expect to add stuff in a way that could break the build, so
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I put it on a separate branch. The branch will be probably merged to the
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main branch (called <tt class="docutils literal">blog</tt>) when it is ready.</p>
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<p>The <tt class="docutils literal">pub/…</tt> branches can be created either manually or by cherry-picking
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from the respective <tt class="docutils literal">priv/…</tt> branch, but that will likely not be
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distinguishable. (I am too lazy to keep the references even in the commit
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logs.)</p>
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</li>
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<li><p class="first">When a draft is almost ready (or the content has simple syntax), it gets
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placed on the <tt class="docutils literal">blog</tt> branch. The only thing that designates it as a draft
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is <tt class="docutils literal">status: draft</tt> in the frontmatter, which means that the article will
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get rendered and put somewhere on the public blog, but not reachable from
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the title page ("unlisted").</p>
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</li>
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<li><p class="first">Of course, eventually (and hopefully) the article gets published for
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everyone to see. At that point, it is complete (or at least that is what I
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thought when marking it as published). Possibly it might be updated in the
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future, but no such update is anticipated at the moment of publishing. <a class="footnote-reference" href="#update-this" id="footnote-reference-3">[3]</a></p>
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</li>
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</ol>
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<p>I use Git to synchronize my private branches among machines, so there are
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actually two "server-side" repositories (private and public one) and thus two
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remotes. <a class="footnote-reference" href="#private-branches-wish" id="footnote-reference-4">[4]</a></p>
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<p>As for the actual workflow, for the main branch it usually consists of: writing
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content, committing it, building the web, checking it locally, committing the
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built blog and pushing it. Sometimes I do the commits together, but I always
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separate the rendering/building commits from the content-creating ones, so that
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I can handle those differently if needed (i.e. there is no point in
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cherry-picking the built content, I can generate it). <a class="footnote-reference" href="#git-purists" id="footnote-reference-5">[5]</a></p>
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<p>For other branches I use some applicable subset of the steps above, probably.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="design-considerations">
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<h2>Design considerations</h2>
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<p>The appearance of the blog is maybe not nice. That is for two reasons: I don't
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have the right idea about how to make it much better and I want to have a
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rather simple CSS for the web. The latter wish is because I tend to tweak
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appearance of sites I visit using my own styles, so I would like you to be able
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to do the same.</p>
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<p>And for the former reason, if you have any ideas / improvements (including user
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styles), hit me at <a class="reference external" href="mailto:blog@pokemon.ledoian.cz">blog@pokemon.ledoian.cz</a> :-)</p>
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<p>My overall idea is a dark-by-default <a class="footnote-reference" href="#light-theme" id="footnote-reference-6">[6]</a> minimalist page with a single menu on the
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right containig all the relevant links. The page should not dictate too much
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but rather let the user agent decide the rendering (<a class="reference external" href="https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/rendering.html#rendering">it does anyway…</a>).</p>
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<p>I want my blog to render similarly in Gecko-, WebKit- and Blink-based browsers
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(e.g. Firefox, Badwolf, Qutebrowser). Others should be usable.
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Browser-/engine-specific styles are not welcome – let's keep it simple. And no
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JavaScript…</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section" id="work-in-progress-todos">
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<h2>Work in progress / TODOs</h2>
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<p>This thing is at the moment very barebones, which is sufficient for the main
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purpose. However, I would like to have some features here, one day, hopefully:</p>
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<ul class="simple">
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<li>Dates in the article headers (and maybe more improvements of the theme, see
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above)</li>
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<li>Stable category and tag names and a page with a description of them. As of
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now I haven't really invented a system of sorting my content, which leads to
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a mess… Please don't rely on categories having any particular name / URL for
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now.</li>
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<li>Link the RSS feeds from somewhere</li>
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<li>Personal info with links to my other profiles</li>
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<li>Some linking to the Fediverse and using it for comments (since there will be
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no comments here)</li>
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<li>Sensible translations, maybe (if I/someone ever get to write the same content
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again in a different language…)</li>
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<li>Improve the list of talks I've given (create some kind of sensible table maybe?)</li>
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<li>Decide on a licence for the content (If you want to utilize something here
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before I do that, please ask me, I think we can find a way :-))</li>
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</ul>
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<p>If you are so upset with this blog (or maybe bored) that you want to improve
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it, send me patches / ideas. I don't expect anyone to do that, though :-D (And
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I do not promise you that I will use the patch, even if it matches all my
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opinions above. I also have some gut feelings about what I like…)</p>
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<p>Also, tell me if you hate something else about my page. I want to at least know
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whom I upset :-D (but I will probably also think about your gripes and whether
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I can and should try to avoid them…)</p>
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<hr class="docutils" />
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="multiple-src" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-1">[1]</a></td><td>I also use multiple machines on which I can write stuff.</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="skipping-stages" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-2">[2]</a></td><td><p class="first">I am lazy and chaotic (good), so the stages are optional
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and non-linear, and sometimes involve paper. This article is a prime
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example: parts of it were on two different private branches, but at the end
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I wrote it from scratch directly on the main branch. And the requirements
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were written on a paper originally.</p>
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<p class="last">Nevertheless, the general idea still holds and may inspire others, so it
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makes sense to keep this part in the article. (Also, this footnote might not
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make sense before reading the definition of the stages, but I didn't find a
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better place to put it…)</p>
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</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="update-this" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-3">[3]</a></td><td>Well, given this article contains some future plans, I
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actually anticipate update of this one, but maybe not in the near future. So
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the outline is not really correct, but I make the rules :-) (There
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were some build breaks on the main branch, too :-D)</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="private-branches-wish" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-4">[4]</a></td><td>I would love if my Forgejo could have "private
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branches", but I understand that the overhead for doing this is not nice,
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since it would need to be able to decide for any object, whether it is
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public or not (you can do <tt class="docutils literal">git fetch <remote> <span class="pre"><object-hash></span></tt>) and somehow
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keep track even with rebases, merges, force-pushes, many branches, … Having
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a separate private repository is not a big problem in comparison.</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="git-purists" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-5">[5]</a></td><td>Git purists might want to tell me that committing build
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artifacts is not good practice. I know and I explicitly don't care in case
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of this repo, because here I prioritise my own comfort of being able to
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check everything locally and then be reasonably sure the deployed version
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will also work, all this with only a single push somewhere. Of course, one
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could argue that with that there is no reason to create two commits, but it
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does not really bother me to run something like <tt class="docutils literal">git commit <span class="pre">-m"render"</span>
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output/</tt> when I am sure it works, and this keeps readable diffs separate
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from the non-readable ones (i.e. the changes in generated HTML).</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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<table class="docutils footnote" frame="void" id="light-theme" rules="none">
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<colgroup><col class="label" /><col /></colgroup>
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<tbody valign="top">
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<tr><td class="label"><a class="fn-backref" href="#footnote-reference-6">[6]</a></td><td>Having the page be dark-by-default is my preference, but I
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respect that others may prefer light sites. However, I have not yet
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determined what colors should be used (probably still cyan / blue / maybe
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purple-ish, but I don't know what shade) nor understood how to use
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<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">@media(prefers-color-scheme)</span></tt> in a maintainable and simple way (in the
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context of my theme). So naturally, this is postponed to the future…</td></tr>
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</tbody>
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</table>
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</div>
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</div>
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</main>
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</div> <!-- #main -->
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<footer>
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