Blog Overhaul

Just launched an overdue overhaul of the blog, which has been in an undeployable state for the last month and a half. Here’s the major changes:

Octopress 2 to Jekyll + Octopress 3

Can’t thank Brandon Mathis enough for his work on Octopress. It’s been an absolute joy to use over the last three years. I’m thrilled by the humble design decisions that he’s made in Octopress 3 to bring the Octopress community into the Jekyll fold.

Minimal Mistakes theme by Michael Rose

By far the biggest blocker on the migration has been picking a theme. The old theme was for Octopress 2. I could have ported it seemed like a good time for a refresh. I’ve questioned that decision many, many times after looking at scores of themes and cloning at least half-a-dozen locally, only to ditch them for one flaw or another.

All my frustration melted away after stumbling across Minimal Mistakes by Michael Rose. He’s in a class of his own when it comes to code and documentation for Jekyll themes. About the only changes I’ve made so far is updating the typography with some styles stolen from Medium.

Heroku to Github pages

This, more than anything, forced the change. I hastily moved the site over a month or two ago after Heroku discontinued their free plans (and their new pricing just doesn’t make sense for a static site). Somehow after I got the site deployed I bonked Octopress locally and lost the ability to deploy. GitHub pages seems to be the de facto standard for Jekyll sites these days. Only downside is that GHP doesn’t support HTTPS for custom domains, which is understandable.

Onwards

Super pumped to start publishing again. Would like to write a lot more in 2016, even if it means shorter posts of less import. To kick it off, I shipped this post in <1 hour.

I’m inclined to start a Books and Now page as inspired by Derek Sivers via the Tim Ferriss Podcast. Also just got a FitBit again. Might be fun to put up a stats page for some public accountability.

Alas, one thing at a time.