September 2011 Archives
September 19, 2011
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P on Linux
The Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P motherboard is mostly supported on Linux, but there is one caveat: the default Ethernet driver included in the kernel used in Ubuntu 11.04 is garbage. Upon installation, the Ethernet adapter would never go faster than 65 kB/s, and would only work for 30 seconds at a time, failing to transfer any data for several minutes at a time.
Solution: Gigabyte does not officially support Linux, but fortunately it is possible to get an updated driver from Realtek which works perfectly.
September 9, 2011
Why I chose Movable Type
I've been blogging off and on since 2006, and yet, as you can see, I don't have any of my old content. There are a few reasons for this, one being a lack of quality and relevance, but the biggest reason is that I've always used cumbersome blog software. The first couple iterations of my blog were self-written, the first in PHP, then another in Django. I had always thought it was best to generate static files, and thus I created StaticGenerator, which allowed me to generate static files while still publishing via the Django admin interface.
Later I decided to scrap Django altogether and go with something simpler so I went with Jekyll, a static site generation tool. In using it I had to write my own templates and setup my own atom feed, each of which I did by using examples written by someone else who also uses the tool. Unfortunately I didn't blog that often and I found that each time I wanted to write I struggled with the emotional hurdle of remembering how to use Jekyll with its types and meta data, and how to deploy it to my server. I simply didn't want to remember and just ended up not writing.
Now, don't let me make you think Jekyll is a bad piece of software. It's written well and does exactly what it's intended to do. At the same time, it's just not for me. I no longer relish in creating websites as I once did. These days I write software that is far removed from the "web".
The past few days I've been playing with different blogging software, things that would install easily on a simple vps, would require little administration, and have an interface that enables me to just write and be done with it. After playing with Wordpress, Movable Type (5.12) and Melody (a Movable Type 4.x fork), I've decided to go with Movable Type. As much as I like Wordpress, I prefer to have static file generation as a first-class freature, not an optional plugin like WP-SuperCache. And that's the power of Movable Type: You can write and publish your site in a way that is wholly dynamic, but with the performance of static files. The additional win is that all the features I want just work, like feeds, drafts, previews, comments, et cetera. In other words, I don't have to figure out why my self-written blog software sucks; I just write.
So here's to a fresh start, brought to you by Movable Type.
