New house, new blog, new me
First of all, apologies to all the RSS readers of my blog, you'll most probably get all the posts again.
Almost two months have passed since the last blog post. The reason for the hiatus is simple. Three weeks ago I have finally, finally moved into my new house. Those were hectic two months, endless calls, decisions, talking to the construction crew, buying materials, tools, and then packing, unpacking, sorting, throwing away surplus stuff. I can probably go through the local hardware store with my eyes closed. But all that is mostly done, there are of course still things to sort out, like the paperwork, or the garden, or getting a contract for dealing with trash, but the actual move is done.
The cat is enjoying the new place
And I've been loving it here, it is so great to be able to just go out into the open air, without any stairs or corridors. There are so many new possibilities. I already tried astrophotography and being able to just carry out the equipment through the door, and then sit on the coach as the exposures are taken is a totally new level.
The homelab is is also migrated to its new place, soon there will be a new blog post dedicated to its current state.
New blog
For a long time now I have been wanting to do something with this blog. I started it three years ago, and I took a ready template from the Astro template site. It allowed me to start easily without spending time on writing the boilerplate, which was a big plus. But as time went by, and I started adding new features, the codebase started to feel cobbled together with sticks. I never really learned Astro, so my edits were mostly trial and error, and putting stuff where it worked, not where it should be.
So I decided to rewrite the blog from scratch with a new technology, in order for it to be actually mine, with the code I understand and know how it works.
First I tried Hugo, but I got confused with it quickly, that framework just not clicked with me. My second attempt was Eleventy and that was the total opposite. Eleventy feels so simple, so straightforward, after doing a few tutorials and going through a sample site I had no problems with writing this blog how I wanted it to be. I don't need much, just a way to generate static HTML, handle navigation, and generate an RSS feed.
The aim has been to keep the look similar to the previous version, but make it simple and understandable for me. I'm a backend person, my frontend skills are very basic and rooted in mid 00s, but I think I made a reasonably good job. One thing that I dropped was the light/dark theme switcher, it has been a source of problems on the previous version, and I did not want to overcomplicate the new layout. On the other hand, the RSS feed now provides the full text of the blog posts, so you can read them all in your RSS reader of choice.
I made sure all the links stay the same, so as no referrals to my blog get broken. The RSS feed URL also did not change.
I took this opportunity to update old blog posts, add some alt text, fix typso, update/remove broken links and comment on things which have become outdated.
I have many ideas for the next blog posts, there will be something about the homelab's hardware, about Woodpecker CI, about local TLS, going back to Meshtastic, and now is finally the time when I have the time (time time time) to write them. Exciting times!
Thanks for reading!
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