This post has one purpose — get me off my bum and write something to get this blog going. Don't expect coherence. In fact, you might want to stop reading now and do something more productive with your time.
Some meandering thoughts on starting a blog, or for that matter, starting anything…
Starting Trouble is a very old friend of mine.
I used to have a blog on Blogger back around 2004-2007 where I published occasionally. True to the era, it even had a very superfluous name! I remember trying to switch to LifeJournal, but that didn’t quite materialize, for reasons.
I did switch to a self-hosted WordPress blog, which I posted to occasionally. But I’m pretty sure I spent more time customizing the blog than writing posts. Plug-ins! Themes!
If Starting Trouble is a friend, Yak Shaving is family.
I eventually abandoned WordPress. I could claim it was due to security concerns, excessive complexity, or maintenance overhead. Or maybe it was because Static Site Generators had arrived on the scene and were too difficult to resist. Your guess is as good as mine.
I do have a thing for Shiny New Thing, much to the chagrin of Starting Trouble and Yak Shaving.
No seriously, I went through so many technologies from Jekyll, Hugo, Next.js, Gatsby, and so many more I don’t even remember the names. And at least as many hosting providers. I finally ended up on a Raspberry Pi sitting in my network cabinet.
All this while writing a grand total of zero blog posts. Yay?!
That brings us to today. I found pika. This has the right mix of simplicity, beautiful design, and basic customization.
Critically, it does not have enough customization to accommodate Yak Shaving. And this post is seeing off Starting Trouble. That’s two out of three daemons slain. Not bad!