commit 7994149d79852571535d15f5ea7041ef76dd4b90
parent a9f3c8acf55984553e13e3343003717eaf1abc96
Author: Sebastiano Tronto <sebastiano@tronto.net>
Date: Sat, 21 May 2022 10:29:34 +0200
Added first blog post + makefile change to support local openrsync
Diffstat:
4 files changed, 108 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+DEST="tronto.net:/var/www/htdocs/sebastiano.tronto.net"
+
all: clean
./build.sh
@@ -6,7 +8,7 @@ clean:
rm -r http
deploy: all
- rsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync \
- http/ tronto.net:/var/www/htdocs/sebastiano.tronto.net
+ rsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync http/ ${DEST} || \
+ openrsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync http/ ${DEST}
.PHONY: all clean deploy
diff --git a/src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md b/src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md
@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
+# Blogs
+
+2022-05-21
+
+Why would I start a blog in 2022? The short answer is
+that I have recently enjoyed reading blog posts, and I thought it could be fun
+to write some too. I don't have a good long answer, so I am just going to write
+some random, loosely related thoughts in this post.
+
+## A history of the Web, starting from somewhere in the middle
+
+Once upon a time, the World Wide Web was a place where people could freely
+share infomation in the form of
+[hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext).
+Now it is a sort of universal application framework, largely run by
+advertising companies.
+In the last few months I have been reading, watching videos and thinking
+about this change. I feel a sort of nostalgia for "the good old days" of the
+Internet, although I did not experience most of them in person.
+
+My first encounter with the Internet was in the early 2000's. My parents
+were trying to set up a dial-up connection at home, and they told me very
+clearly that I should not touch the phone for the following few minutes. Why
+would a 7-8 year old want to use phone, if not because his parents explicitly
+told him not to? So of course I picked it up and put it back down multiple
+times, listening with curiosity to what many people my age and older remember
+as "the Internet sound". My parents spent a lot of time troubleshooting that
+day.
+I only have a couple of memories of that dial-up connection - I was of course
+not allowed to use it alone! I remember downloading a couple of pictures from
+the official Pokémon website, which we later printed and hung somewhere.
+I also remember trying to send an email to my dad, and my mom being
+clearly stressed about me typing slowly and wasting minutes of dial-up time.
+
+I really started using the Internet around 2006 or 2007. It was the time of
+forums. I liked forums, because you could talk about specific topics with
+people with common interests, and also browse old threads and learn
+without intereacting directly with people.
+
+Then social media arrived, and at first I liked those too. I made a Facebook
+account in late 2009, and found it a convenient way to communicate with
+my friends and classmates. Nowadays my Facebook feed seems more like a
+collection of posts by people or pages I don't know that some old
+friend commented on, and I think this is why I have basically stopped
+posting there.
+
+Anyways, later came smartphones - I got my first one in 2012 - and "apps".
+This used to be just a fancy word for "smartphone program", but apps quickly
+became the new way of accessing the Internet. Apps, and WebApps, now *are*
+the Internet, and have been so for the last 10 years or so. We now work
+on documents on the cloud, have video calls and share social media posts
+via apps - or browsers - that need at least modern, but preferably
+modern *and powerful*, hardware to run on, but are at the same time
+totally dependent on some huge server or data center somewhere else in the
+world. Of course, this services are run by the few huge companies that
+can afford to develop and mantain such a system.
+
+## So what now?
+
+I think it is cool that one can do all these things with the web. It is also
+nice that the modern Internet is very accessible: anyone can sign up to any
+social media platform they like and start sharing whatever they like, with
+little to no barrier of entry.
+
+But I think that we don't need all of this all the time.
+We should not need an expensive modern device running a
+[30 million lines of code](https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031)
+to get some basic information from the web.
+If people could put together a couple of lines of HTML in the 90's, we
+can still do it today.
+
+It would be nice to keep the "old Internet" alive.
+Small websites with interesting information on whatever the owner decides
+to talk about, no accounts, no subscriptions, no fancy endlessly-scrollable
+home pages making your PC fan spin like your house is on fire.
+The kind of websites that you can read and even create on a 13 year old
+[netbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook) - like I am doing now!
+
+"This is cool, I would like to do it too but..."
+
+* "...I don't know how" - Head to the
+ [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn) and start learning!
+* "...I don't know what to write about" -
+ Read [this short blog post](https://www.romanzolotarev.com/website.html).
+
+## This blog
+
+I have a few ideas on what to blog about. Mainly open source software and
+related things. I don't think I'll write much about personal stuff.
+In any case I will keep posting at a very irregular pace - don't expect
+regular new "content"!
+
+I think I'll keep writing in English - it is not my first language, but
+writing in my mother tongue would immediately exclude 99% of possible
+readers. And for the technical stuff I want to talk about it
+does not make a big difference anyway.
diff --git a/src/blog/blog.md b/src/blog/blog.md
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
[RSS Feed](feed.xml)
+* 2022-05-21 [Blogs](2022-05-21-blogs)
diff --git a/src/blog/feed.xml b/src/blog/feed.xml
@@ -8,6 +8,13 @@
Thoughts about software, computers and whatever I feel like sharing
</description>
+<item>
+<title>Blogs</title>
+<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2022-05-21-blogs</link>
+<description>Blogs</description>
+<pubDate>2022-05-21</pubDate>
+</item>
+
</channel>
</rss>
