Using Jekyll in 2021

I am currently selecting a static site generator for an upcoming project. I value technical simplicity (exit React based solutions), like ruby and in the Static Site Generator category Jekyll is an established name. But doesn't the project that started in October 2008 show signs of age?

Pro’s:

• It is ruby based (whether that is a pro for you depends on your aesthetics)
• It is simple
• It is easy to extend
• Format for posts is Markdown
• Hosting it is simple

Con’s:

• Liquid (a templating language developed by Shopify) is limiting, I’d preferred ERB as a template language.
• “There is a plugin for that” disappoints, many are pre-bundler era (hence requiring copying code) and quality differs a lot.
• Lacks even a simple asset pipeline for JavaScript; hence bundle minified JS files together or build the final JS in a separate webpack-process.
• The builds won…

PHP revisited

I've been able to stay away from PHP-based projects for quite some time. Until recently. I needed a small API. The idea was that the API would be transferred to a relatively old server that had been running stable for years and the client didn't want to risk installing additional script interpreters on it. It might even have been my own suggestion, it would be a really small API, requiring no special changes on an already operational 24x7 managed server. On top of it I'd write a modern style front-end, running entirely in the browser.

Of course the API that was intended to be simple got a bit more complex. I wanted the API to output clean JSON messages, which required some data mangling, as data was stored in CSV's, TSV's, and misused XML-files or only accessible through crappy soapy API's. So what does present-day (well, the Red Hat PHP version I was able to use is still in 5.x-series) PHP look like? TL;DR: sometimes it was definitely ugly, but at I can happily live with the cod…

Een beter e-mailprogramma voor Mac OS-X

De afgelopen tijd heb ik geëxperimenteerd met alternatieve e-mailprogramma's voor mijn Mac. Een alternatief dus voor Apple's eigen Mail.app. Ik stuur zo'n 30-40 mails per dag waarvan een groot deel naar Outlook gebruikers. En hier begon mijn frustratie: zij zien mijn mails niet zoals ze er uit horen te zien, sterker nog: delen vielen soms weg en de gebruikers ontvingen spookbijlagen (meer hierover later). Naast deze, en andere kleine frustraties en gewoon nieuwsgierigheid leidde er toe dat ik actief op zoek ging naar het beste e-mailprogramma.

Tijdens deze zoektocht heb ik mijzelf verplicht tot het daadwerkelijk gebruiken van de e-mailprogramma's in 'productie'. Dat was gelukkig niet zo lastig meer zoals het vroeger ooit was. Alle mail staat immers tegenwoordig op IMAP servers, en wordt niet langer 'definitief' gedownload vanaf (POP) servers (een Exchange-server forceer ik overigens actief in IMAP door gebruik te maken va…

Friday at the Next Web

My ticket was sponsored by The Bean Machine.Friday was the last day of this next web. In this post I'll be discussing the talks of Bradley Horowitz, Jim Stolze, Eric Meijer and Michael J. Brown.Bradley HorowitzBradley Horiwitz's background is in technology. He is currently employed at Google and responsible for its apps. Google's main philosophy is: think big, change the world as we know it. But as an advise to startups: if you ain't got nothing, you've nothing to loose (Bob Dylan). Attention is limited, so there, computers can be of help. One thing is to use all types of context parameters when you're recording data. A photo taken in the time that I was on holiday in Scotland, is probably made in Scotland (made up example by ed.). Bradley pleads for not neglecting the power of wetware, humans. Take advantage of what humans do, e.g. click through, interactions, tagging. Main point: try to solve the problems we have tomorrow, look forward, like those guys wh…