Blog update 2021

Author: Solène
Date: 15 September 2021
Tags: blog life

Hello,

This is a simple announce to gather some changes I made to my blog recently.

The web version of the blog now display the articles list grouped by year when viewing a tag page, previously it was displaying the whole article contents and I think tags were unusable this way, although it was so because initially I had two articles when I wrote the blog generator and it made sense.
The RSS file was embedding the whole HTML content of each article, I switched to use the article original plain text format, HTML should only be used in a Web browser and RSS is not meant to be dedicated for web browsers. I know this is a step back for some users but many users also appreciated this move and I'm happy to not contribute at putting HTML everywhere.
Most texts are now written using the gemtext format, served raw on gemini and gopher and converted into HTML for the http version using gmi2html python tool slightly modified (I forgot where I got it initially). I use gemtext because I like this format and often forced me to rethink the way I present an idea because I had to separate links and code from the content and I'm convinced it's a good thing. No more links named "here" or inlined code hard to spot.

If you think changes could be done on my blog, on the web / gopher or gemini version please share your ideas with me, it's also the opportunity for me to play with the code of the blog generator cl-yag that I absolutely love.

I have been publishing a lot more this year, I enjoy much more sharing my ideas or knowledge this way than I used to and writing is also the opportunity for me to improve my English and when I compare to the first publications I'm proud to see I improved the quality over time (I hope so at least). I got more feedback for strangers reading this blog, by mail or IRC and I'm thankful to them, they just drop by to tell me they like what I write or that I made a mistake so I can fix it, it's invaluable and allows me to make new connections to people I would never have reached otherwise.

I should try to find some time and motivation to get back at my Podcast publications now but I find it a lot harder to speak than to write some text, maybe it would be an habit to take. We will see soon.