Github pages is a great way to host a Jekyll website. However by default github pages, runs an old version of Jekyll (3.9.0). I want to understand why, and remove this limitation. The approach I’m taking is to setup a new ‘site’ on github to trial this with. Starting with a new site as the template, and referencing this guide. Presumes you have Ruby / chruby setup. Create a new github repository https://github.com/new ...

Something I started doing earlier this week, to start editing a podcast audio recording for my wife and her friend for their, as yet, unreleased podcast. Early observations I’m still figuring out the editing process as I go with a few observations so far on what will be involved in editing: Setup (up a nice working environment) Error correction (remove ‘ummm’, or repeated words) Flow balance (remove silence to keep conversation flowing) Sequence (change the order of blocks of audio to create best experience) With increasing complexity and creative licence occuring the further down the list you progress. I’ve been using Audacity for this, ...

I’ve been thinking about the direction to take this blog for a little while now, and am looking to deviate from a self-commentary on setting up a blog on the various platforms I’ve tried so far (Ghost / Jekyll). Instead I’m experimenting with a new concept, which I’m calling, things I enjoy. More specifically, stationery. For those that know me they’d say I’m organised, and that I have a particular style to how I note things. Whether this is with fountain pens, or an everyday carry paper and pen notebook, or a diary in Japanese. It’s simply my curation of things, things I enjoy. ...

Now that Homebrew is installed we need to get Ruby installed. The Jekyll documentation recommends doing this with a version manager (which allows multiple different versions of Ruby to be installed at the same time). The version manager recommended is chruby. The installation of Ruby was then done by following this guide.

This blog is hosted on GitHub Pages, which uses Jekyll. Here’s a quick video on what that means. To test our blog posts look as expected we need a local installation of Jekyll. “Transform your plain text into static websites and blogs” Jekyll is written in Ruby “A dynamic, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax that is natural to read and easy to write”. The Jekyll documentation does not recommend using the system Ruby (the installation of Ruby that comes pre-installed with macOS).Instead it recommends installing Ruby via Homebrew ...

Hello and welcome back after a more than two year break. I’ve recently started reading, Show Your Work by Austin Kleon, and am using this to take the inspiration to start-up this blog again, but potentially with much shorter form content, aiming to share what I’m working on day to day, and more of my process.

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated. To add new posts, simply add a file in the _posts directory that follows the convention YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.ext and includes the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works. ...

TL;DR why and how to setup a mail-server Why setup a server If you’re like me you’ve never put much thought into your email, and you simply use a free provider. I see three main reasons to take an alternative approach Security: Email is the backup for every other online account, and this should be in your control as much as possible. Privacy: Everything sent and received on a free provider can be read and (generally) used to target advertisements to you Customisation: With an alternative approach you can have your own address (tom@libreengineer.com instead of tom@genericprovider.com) The server Our mail server has to run somewhere. In an ideal (privacy) world, this would be on self managed hardware. However as this is the first time I’ve tried to put together a mail server I’d like to separate the potential software problems from the potential hardware problems. I achieved this with an Amazon Web Services (AWS) 1GB Lightsail instance. Debian was choses as the operating sysem as the tutorial I use recommends it. It also fits nicely with my desired for long-term stability, and free and open source software. ...

Ghost comes with a nice default theme called Casper and also allows custom themes. I like the fundamentals of Casper. I would also like to make minor edits/customisations from time to time, which is not possible with the default Casper version. Goal I’d like to: Edit the theme Incorporate new Casper features as they’re released (which demonstrate new Ghost features) Avoid rework Strategy / Options There are a few ways that this can be accomplished: ...