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<p>These notes have to be considered more a random set of thoughts rather than an actual log. It was my original intention to track here the changes tommi.space undertakes, nevertheless, I fail at documenting everything because <u>it takes time and I am lazy</u>.</p>
<p>Also, being a developer or a designer is definitely not my occupation nor my main hobby, hence investing effort in documenting my decisions is not my priority, as well as to explain passages for educational purposes</p>
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<p class='date'><time datetime='2022-12-01T10:14:49+01:00'>Thursday, December 1<sup>st</sup> 2022</time></p>
By migrating [[Xplosion Server]] to a slightly more performant machine, I ended up messing up some configurations, and I also realized that my website publishing workflow was not really independent and stable. Therefore, I decided it was time to self host tommi.space.
Details on ![[Self-hosting tommi.space]]
<p class='date'><time datetime='2022-06-19T23:04:30+02:00'>Sunday, June 19<sup>th</sup> 2022</time></p>
Up to now, anything concerning website ideas and development was listed quite randomly on the website development page. My intention was to keep everything portable and within The Jam. Nevertheless, tracking both bugs, feature ideas and stuff to do with services dedicated to that is easier, simpler, and much more integrated with the development environment and workflow that git provides.
I am now using GitHub for issue tracking, even though the repository is currently being [hosted on Codeberg][source].
using GitHub for issue tracking
<p class='date'><time datetime='2022-04-21T06:14:30+02:00'>Thursday, April 21<sup>st</sup> 2022</time></p>
Since the beginning, Netlify has been where tommi.space is hosted. It has to be noted, though, that Netlify is no champion of openness, free software, or sustainable infrastructure, hence not a service whose values I completely share. Nevertheless, it is awesome, since at the same time it both has more than what I need, and it is fairly simple. It hurts to say it, but I love it and I am sticking with it, since it really makes much of the work easier.
All of the relatively big files on the website (such as images and podcast audios) are hosted on Storj, and through a couple of tricks they are seamlessly served through Netlify. Storj too has its red flags, since it is based on the blockchain and I am still quite skeptical concerning all of this stuff. But, again, it wonderfully does the work, at least until Cubbit won’t get around static hosting, as Stefano, its CEO, anticipated to me someday it will.
The sole aspect I am interested in is knowing how many people visit my website, specifically which pages.
Being Google Analytics definitely out of consideration, finding a simple, free, light (and hosted) analytics service is not simple.
Of course, I prefer to self-host analytics, but as of right now Matomo is the only analytics platform packaged for YunoHost (the OS I am using on [[Server|Xplosion Server]]). As soon as any light analytics software will get packaged for YunoHost, I will switch to it.
<p class='date'><time datetime='2022-03-23T16:21:06+01:00'>Wednesday, March 23<sup>rd</sup> 2022</time></p>
I love community-driven stuff, and I praise Codeberg values. Furthermore, there is all of that stuff that is not good about GitHub, so I moved.
I never gave too much attention to the size of the repository of tommi.space, until it clearly huge, with a size of ~1GB. I took advantage of the switch to Eleventy to start a new repository from scratch. The obsolete Jekyll-based website is on GitHub at old.tommi.space
My switching from [Jekyll] to [Eleventy] is one of those things that was not strictly necessary, yet I kept thinking about it every time I coded something, even minimal, on Jekyll. So I switched. It has been very stressful and intense, but I am now thoroughly proud of the fundamental structure of my website, even if [[Website development|it still lacks some features]] it had with Jekyll.
There are plenty of step-by-step guides to switch from Jekyll to Eleventy. Even though tutorials have been of little use for me, since tommi.space is heavily customized and tailored, I saved (and I am still continuing to save) insightful articles about Eleventy.
insightful articles about Eleventy
Equally, there are a ton of blog posts comparing the two static site generators, but, again, I am just interested in noting my personal reasons.
<p class='date'><time datetime='2021-01-09'>9<sup>th</sup> January 2021</time></p>
around three full time development funding
Sidenotes are awesome, and after taking a look at Koos Loijesteijn post about them, I figured it would be great to implement them on here, too.
I decided not to, for now, for three main reasons:
1. They are impossible to be implemented in Markdown, they need a lot of HTML and I don't have the skills for making a Jekyll plugin to transform footnotes in sidenotes (but it may be [[Website log#Sidenotes|a great idea]] to create one)
2. I could easily create an {% raw %}{% render sidenotes.html %}{% endraw %} where I could pass as arguments both the note content and the word linked to it, but it wouldn't satisfy me for two reasons: 1. In the case of printing, it would be a great mess. 2. On other readers or Markdown parsers outside of Jekyll I'd have a massive chunk of unrendered ugly text
3. Considered the reasons above, it’s not worth it. I use footnotes very few times (even though I massively over-use parentheses (as I am doing right now)) and with the lovely arrow[^test] automatically created, it’s painless to use them.
<p class='date'><time datetime='2021-03-14'>14 March 2021</time></p>
![[Minimalizing]]
<p class='date'><time datetime='2021-12-16T00:10:28+01:00'>Thursday 16 December 2021</time></p>
Notes concerning search implementation.
It is not the best solution in terms of speed and dependance, but it is still valid temporarily. Search functionality is very useful, so it is a trade-off I am willing to accept—temporarily).
Following these instructions the setup is quite simple. What is annoying and long to effectively customize is the front-end CSS, which I eventually decided would be simple to write from scratch by myself.
<p class='date'><time datetime='2021-12-17T00:33:16+01:00'>17 December 2021</time></p>
Even though I love [[Typography]], I am never fully convinced about this website layout and design. My concern is not much about coloring, and typesetting, but about layouting, spacing and positioning. I am trying to understand the core of how layouting works by reading at a tremendously slow pace Richard Rutter’s [[Web Typography]].
I will be noting below my doubts and, if solved, my conclusions.
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The most frequent questions I ask myself are the ones concerning technical aims I need help with, that are logged in the [issues labeled <mark class='blue'>help wanted</mark>]({{ site.issues }} 'tommi.space issues').
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To check all of the bugs, feature requests, and ideas, go to <a href='https://github.com/xplosionmind/tommi.space' title='tommi.space issues on GitHub'>tommi.space’s GitHub issues</a>
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<ul>
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{%- if p.data.todo -%}
<li><a href='{{ p.url }}' title='{{ p.data.title }}'>{{ p.data.title }}</a>:
<ul>
{%- for task in p.data.todo -%}
<li>{{ task | markdownify }}</li>
{%- endfor -%}
</ul>
</li>
{%- endif -%}
{%- endfor -%}
</ul>
[Jekyll]: https://jekyllrb.com 'Jekyll official website' [Eleventy]: https://11ty.dev 'Eleventy official website' [source]: {{ site.source }} 'tommi.space source code' [^test]: Lovely arrow test ->