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-rw-r--r--Makefile6
-rw-r--r--src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md96
-rw-r--r--src/blog/blog.md1
-rw-r--r--src/blog/feed.xml7
4 files changed, 108 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index b14b77f..06441fc 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
1DEST="tronto.net:/var/www/htdocs/sebastiano.tronto.net"
2
1all: clean 3all: clean
2 ./build.sh 4 ./build.sh
3 5
@@ -6,7 +8,7 @@ clean:
6 rm -r http 8 rm -r http
7 9
8deploy: all 10deploy: all
9 rsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync \ 11 rsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync http/ ${DEST} || \
10 http/ tronto.net:/var/www/htdocs/sebastiano.tronto.net 12 openrsync -rv --delete --rsync-path=openrsync http/ ${DEST}
11 13
12.PHONY: all clean deploy 14.PHONY: all clean deploy
diff --git a/src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md b/src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4f5f104
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/blog/2022-05-21-blogs/blogs.md
@@ -0,0 +1,96 @@
1# Blogs
2
32022-05-21
4
5Why would I start a blog in 2022? The short answer is
6that I have recently enjoyed reading blog posts, and I thought it could be fun
7to write some too. I don't have a good long answer, so I am just going to write
8some random, loosely related thoughts in this post.
9
10## A history of the Web, starting from somewhere in the middle
11
12Once upon a time, the World Wide Web was a place where people could freely
13share infomation in the form of
14[hypertext](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext).
15Now it is a sort of universal application framework, largely run by
16advertising companies.
17In the last few months I have been reading, watching videos and thinking
18about this change. I feel a sort of nostalgia for "the good old days" of the
19Internet, although I did not experience most of them in person.
20
21My first encounter with the Internet was in the early 2000's. My parents
22were trying to set up a dial-up connection at home, and they told me very
23clearly that I should not touch the phone for the following few minutes. Why
24would a 7-8 year old want to use phone, if not because his parents explicitly
25told him not to? So of course I picked it up and put it back down multiple
26times, listening with curiosity to what many people my age and older remember
27as "the Internet sound". My parents spent a lot of time troubleshooting that
28day.
29I only have a couple of memories of that dial-up connection - I was of course
30not allowed to use it alone! I remember downloading a couple of pictures from
31the official Pokémon website, which we later printed and hung somewhere.
32I also remember trying to send an email to my dad, and my mom being
33clearly stressed about me typing slowly and wasting minutes of dial-up time.
34
35I really started using the Internet around 2006 or 2007. It was the time of
36forums. I liked forums, because you could talk about specific topics with
37people with common interests, and also browse old threads and learn
38without intereacting directly with people.
39
40Then social media arrived, and at first I liked those too. I made a Facebook
41account in late 2009, and found it a convenient way to communicate with
42my friends and classmates. Nowadays my Facebook feed seems more like a
43collection of posts by people or pages I don't know that some old
44friend commented on, and I think this is why I have basically stopped
45posting there.
46
47Anyways, later came smartphones - I got my first one in 2012 - and "apps".
48This used to be just a fancy word for "smartphone program", but apps quickly
49became the new way of accessing the Internet. Apps, and WebApps, now *are*
50the Internet, and have been so for the last 10 years or so. We now work
51on documents on the cloud, have video calls and share social media posts
52via apps - or browsers - that need at least modern, but preferably
53modern *and powerful*, hardware to run on, but are at the same time
54totally dependent on some huge server or data center somewhere else in the
55world. Of course, this services are run by the few huge companies that
56can afford to develop and mantain such a system.
57
58## So what now?
59
60I think it is cool that one can do all these things with the web. It is also
61nice that the modern Internet is very accessible: anyone can sign up to any
62social media platform they like and start sharing whatever they like, with
63little to no barrier of entry.
64
65But I think that we don't need all of this all the time.
66We should not need an expensive modern device running a
67[30 million lines of code](https://caseymuratori.com/blog_0031)
68to get some basic information from the web.
69If people could put together a couple of lines of HTML in the 90's, we
70can still do it today.
71
72It would be nice to keep the "old Internet" alive.
73Small websites with interesting information on whatever the owner decides
74to talk about, no accounts, no subscriptions, no fancy endlessly-scrollable
75home pages making your PC fan spin like your house is on fire.
76The kind of websites that you can read and even create on a 13 year old
77[netbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook) - like I am doing now!
78
79"This is cool, I would like to do it too but..."
80
81* "...I don't know how" - Head to the
82 [MDN](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn) and start learning!
83* "...I don't know what to write about" -
84 Read [this short blog post](https://www.romanzolotarev.com/website.html).
85
86## This blog
87
88I have a few ideas on what to blog about. Mainly open source software and
89related things. I don't think I'll write much about personal stuff.
90In any case I will keep posting at a very irregular pace - don't expect
91regular new "content"!
92
93I think I'll keep writing in English - it is not my first language, but
94writing in my mother tongue would immediately exclude 99% of possible
95readers. And for the technical stuff I want to talk about it
96does not make a big difference anyway.
diff --git a/src/blog/blog.md b/src/blog/blog.md
index aa51ab7..2026656 100644
--- a/src/blog/blog.md
+++ b/src/blog/blog.md
@@ -2,3 +2,4 @@
2 2
3[RSS Feed](feed.xml) 3[RSS Feed](feed.xml)
4 4
5* 2022-05-21 [Blogs](2022-05-21-blogs)
diff --git a/src/blog/feed.xml b/src/blog/feed.xml
index 7154cf8..1ecace0 100644
--- a/src/blog/feed.xml
+++ b/src/blog/feed.xml
@@ -8,6 +8,13 @@
8Thoughts about software, computers and whatever I feel like sharing 8Thoughts about software, computers and whatever I feel like sharing
9</description> 9</description>
10 10
11<item>
12<title>Blogs</title>
13<link>https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2022-05-21-blogs</link>
14<description>Blogs</description>
15<pubDate>2022-05-21</pubDate>
16</item>
17
11 18
12</channel> 19</channel>
13</rss> 20</rss>

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