+ Last edited: ${last_edit_date} + +
Whether it's to re-read a conversation, find a plane ticket I ordered or check -when a meeting was planned, I often find myself looking up old emails. It's -usually easy to do so because email clients are designed for the task: Many of -them support full-text search and some even complement that with neat tagging -and categorization systems. To be honest I have become completely dependent on ... Continue reading
-I love personal websites. It's amazing that people can share content with the -entire world just by writing some text and throwing it behind a web server. I -wanted to know what that is like, so I set out to create a personal website of -my own. As you can see I succeeded in doing so, but getting here wasn't as -straight forward as I initially thought it would be. I thought that, being a ... Continue reading
-Hello, welcome to my blog! My name is Hugo. I am a 22 year old Software -Engineering student from the Netherlands. Software development is a huge part -of my life, I write a lot of (weird) programs to scratch my own itch and most -software I create is open_source by default. I also run a one-man company that -provides some IT services on the side. ... Continue reading
-- Hello and welcome to my personal homepage! I'll add some info about myself to - this page soon. In the mean time, maybe take a look at my blog + Hello and welcome to my personal homepage! I'll add some info about my + projects to this page soon. In the mean time, maybe take a look at + my blog
diff --git a/posts/introduction/index.html b/posts/introduction/index.html index 1fa1c2a..eef6259 100644 --- a/posts/introduction/index.html +++ b/posts/introduction/index.html @@ -1,42 +1,28 @@ - - -
-+ Hello, welcome to my blog! My name is Hugo. I am a 22 year old Software Engineering + student from the Netherlands. Software development is a huge part of my life, I write a + lot of (weird) programs to scratch my own itch and most software I create + is open source by default. I also run a one-man + company that provides some IT services on the side. +
-- Hello, welcome to my blog! My name is Hugo. I am a 22 year old Software Engineering - student from the Netherlands. Software development is a huge part of my life, I write a - lot of (weird) programs to scratch my own itch and most software I create - is open source by default. I also run a one-man - company that provides some IT services on the side. -
++ Between working on projects and studying I like to watch movies & series, listen to music + & podcasts, ride my road bike and take hikes. +
-- Between working on projects and studying I like to watch movies & series, listen to music - & podcasts, ride my road bike and take hikes. -
++ Because I'm quite new to this and I want to keep myself interested, I won't be + limiting myself to a single topic. You can expect me to post about a variety of topics + that may interest/annoy/excite me at any given moment. +
-- Because I'm quite new to this and I want to keep myself interested, I won't be - limiting myself to a single topic. You can expect me to post about a variety of topics - that may interest/annoy/excite me at any given moment. -
+May my posts be interesting and my posting schedule be consistent 🤓🖖
-May my posts be interesting and my posting schedule be consistent 🤓🖖
- -I hope to see you around! - Hugo
-I hope to see you around! - Hugo
diff --git a/posts/introduction/last_checksum.txt b/posts/introduction/last_checksum.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..823d5d3 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/introduction/last_checksum.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +1911746966 1043 diff --git a/posts/introduction/last_edit_date.txt b/posts/introduction/last_edit_date.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..84a707e --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/introduction/last_edit_date.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Fri May 20 11:15:16 PM CEST 2022 diff --git a/posts/simple-static-blog/index.html b/posts/simple-static-blog/index.html index 4249da2..93b7baf 100644 --- a/posts/simple-static-blog/index.html +++ b/posts/simple-static-blog/index.html @@ -1,183 +1,171 @@ - - - -- I love personal websites. It's amazing that people can share content with the - entire world just by writing some text and throwing it behind a web server. I - wanted to know what that is like, so I set out to create a personal website of - my own. As you can see I succeeded in doing so, but getting here wasn't as - straight forward as I initially thought it would be. I thought that, being a - programmer and knowing a thing or two about web servers, setting up my own - website was going to be easy: How complicated can it be to throw some text - behind a web server, right?! I was wrong. Throwing text behind a web server - can be very complicated (and wasteful). But it doesn't have to be! -
- -- The first thought that popped into my head when I got started was: I need to - find myself a CMS. I had a few requirements: my site should be - self-hosted, be lightweight, have no JavaScript in it and it should look - pretty. I also wanted to be able to write blog posts in markdown using my - trusty text editor. The first CMSes that came to mind were WordPress, Ghost, - Jekyll and Hugo. I don't want to get into too much detail, so I'll summarize - my judgments here without any nuance: Wordpress is the devil, Ghost is great - but too bulky and both Jekyll and Hugo required me to learn about theming and - project structure which I deemed too much effort. I just wanted to write some - text and throw it behind a web server, but all solutions I saw were sophisticated - programs that were designed to "scale", support "modern - workflows" or be "easy to use with integrated WYSIWYG - editors". I didn't feel like exploring the idea further and gave up on - having a website for a while. -
- -- Then, a few months back, I learned about writefreely. Writefreely is an open - source web application from write.as that lets users create blogs that - federate through the fediverse. I had just started to become acquainted with - the fediverse and it seemed like a cool idea to me at the time, so me and a - friend decided to set up our own instance. It wasn't too hard to set up and - once it was running I only needed a couple of hours to add some custom - style sheets. I finally had a fully functioning blog that satisfied all of my - needs! -
- -- After that the holiday season came along and I turned my back on blogging for - a while. When I checked on our instance three or four weeks later I was - displeased to discover that spammers had created accounts on the instance and - were posting spammy garbage. Sure, we could just close registrations. But this - event reminded me that hosting any dynamic web application on the public - internet is a big responsibility that involves keeping software up to date, - monitoring and doing other configuration/maintenance work. Not to mention - having to do regular database backups. I didn't feel like having to do any of - that, I already have by hands full with self-hosting a bunch of other - services. Once again I had found a complicated solution for a simple problem: - I just wanted to throw some text behind a web server, remember? Why did I need to use a CMS - again? -
- -- CMSes seem to offer solutions to a problem that I don't have: I don't mind - writing plain html and I most certainly don't need a WISYWIG editor. I also - don't need plugins, dynamic code for analytics, pretty yaml or toml - configuration files, templates, extensive theming, admin panels, markdown, - mailing lists, comment threads or any other common CMS features. I just want - to throw some text behind a web server, so why not just write some HTML and do - exactly that? -
- -- It was decided: I was going to blog in plain HTML. Having figured out what I - actually wanted, I went to work. The first order of business was creating a - style sheet to make things look good. I made it my goal to use as little CSS - as possible and I managed to limit myself to just these 23 lines: -
- - - -- html { ++Creating a Simple Static Blog
+ ++ I love personal websites. It's amazing that people can share content with the + entire world just by writing some text and throwing it behind a web server. I + wanted to know what that is like, so I set out to create a personal website of + my own. As you can see I succeeded in doing so, but getting here wasn't as + straight forward as I initially thought it would be. I thought that, being a + programmer and knowing a thing or two about web servers, setting up my own + website was going to be easy: How complicated can it be to throw some text + behind a web server, right?! I was wrong. Throwing text behind a web server + can be very complicated (and wasteful). But it doesn't have to be! +
+ +The search for a CMS
++ The first thought that popped into my head when I got started was: I need to + find myself a CMS. I had a few requirements: my site should be + self-hosted, be lightweight, have no JavaScript in it and it should look + pretty. I also wanted to be able to write blog posts in markdown using my + trusty text editor. The first CMSes that came to mind were WordPress, Ghost, + Jekyll and Hugo. I don't want to get into too much detail, so I'll summarize + my judgments here without any nuance: Wordpress is the devil, Ghost is great + but too bulky and both Jekyll and Hugo required me to learn about theming and + project structure which I deemed too much effort. I just wanted to write some + text and throw it behind a web server, but all solutions I saw were sophisticated + programs that were designed to "scale", support "modern + workflows" or be "easy to use with integrated WYSIWYG + editors". I didn't feel like exploring the idea further and gave up on + having a website for a while. +
+ ++ Then, a few months back, I learned about writefreely. Writefreely is an open + source web application from write.as that lets users create blogs that + federate through the fediverse. I had just started to become acquainted with + the fediverse and it seemed like a cool idea to me at the time, so me and a + friend decided to set up our own instance. It wasn't too hard to set up and + once it was running I only needed a couple of hours to add some custom + style sheets. I finally had a fully functioning blog that satisfied all of my + needs! +
+ ++ After that the holiday season came along and I turned my back on blogging for + a while. When I checked on our instance three or four weeks later I was + displeased to discover that spammers had created accounts on the instance and + were posting spammy garbage. Sure, we could just close registrations. But this + event reminded me that hosting any dynamic web application on the public + internet is a big responsibility that involves keeping software up to date, + monitoring and doing other configuration/maintenance work. Not to mention + having to do regular database backups. I didn't feel like having to do any of + that, I already have by hands full with self-hosting a bunch of other + services. Once again I had found a complicated solution for a simple problem: + I just wanted to throw some text behind a web server, remember? Why did I need to use a CMS + again? +
+ ++ CMSes seem to offer solutions to a problem that I don't have: I don't mind + writing plain html and I most certainly don't need a WISYWIG editor. I also + don't need plugins, dynamic code for analytics, pretty yaml or toml + configuration files, templates, extensive theming, admin panels, markdown, + mailing lists, comment threads or any other common CMS features. I just want + to throw some text behind a web server, so why not just write some HTML and do + exactly that? +
+ +A CMS in ~200 lines
++ It was decided: I was going to blog in plain HTML. Having figured out what I + actually wanted, I went to work. The first order of business was creating a + style sheet to make things look good. I made it my goal to use as little CSS + as possible and I managed to limit myself to just these 23 lines: +
+ + + ++- -+ html { font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #5b4636; background-color: #f4ecd8; - } + } - body { + body { padding: 1em; margin: auto; - } + } - @media only all and (pointer: coarse), (pointer: none) { + @media only all and (pointer: coarse), (pointer: none) { body { - font-size: 5.5vmin; - } + font-size: 5.5vmin; } + } - @media only all and (pointer: fine) { + @media only all and (pointer: fine) { body { - font-size: calc(16px + 0.6vmin); - min-width: 500px; - max-width: 50em; - } + font-size: calc(16px + 0.6vmin); + min-width: 500px; + max-width: 50em; } --- This is all the CSS I need to have a responsive website that looks pretty (I - stole the colors from firefox's reader mode btw). It's such a small amount - that I don't mind copy-pasting it at the top of all new HTML pages that I add - to my website. This might make it harder to change the styling later, but it - has the added benefit that each page is a standalone document. So for - example
- -wget PAGE_URLwill download a HTML page that looks - exactly the same locally as it does on the web without having to download any - extra assets. -- The next challenge was creating and maintaining the article listing page and - the RSS feed for the blog. I don't mind typing HTML pages, but typing out a - page and an RSS feed containing excerpts/titles from other files gets old soon - and I'd be bound to forget updating its content every once in a while. This - seemed like a perfect occasion to write a little bash script, so I did. You - can find the script here (raw) and - here (pretty). What it basically - does is read in a file called posts.txt that has html filenames in it, - separated by newlines. Using those filenames and the contents of the files it - then generates a HTML page (called blog.html) - and an RSS feed (called feed.xml). -
- -- I keep all of this neatly stored under version control - here, so deploying a new version - is as easy as running
- -git pullon my web server. I can honestly say that - this is the simplest, most user-friendly CMS that I have ever used, and it - only took me several months to figure out that this is exactly what I needed 🤓. -- So, to conclude this story: websites are just HTML. You don't need fancy - programs or WYSIWYG editors to create a website. Just a text editor, a web - server and some spare time. -
- - + } +
+ This is all the CSS I need to have a responsive website that looks pretty (I
+ stole the colors from firefox's reader mode btw). It's such a small amount
+ that I don't mind copy-pasting it at the top of all new HTML pages that I add
+ to my website. This might make it harder to change the styling later, but it
+ has the added benefit that each page is a standalone document. So for
+ example wget PAGE_URL will download a HTML page that looks
+ exactly the same locally as it does on the web without having to download any
+ extra assets.
+
+ The next challenge was creating and maintaining the article listing page and + the RSS feed for the blog. I don't mind typing HTML pages, but typing out a + page and an RSS feed containing excerpts/titles from other files gets old soon + and I'd be bound to forget updating its content every once in a while. This + seemed like a perfect occasion to write a little bash script, so I did. You + can find the script here (raw) and + here (pretty). What it basically + does is read in a file called posts.txt that has html filenames in it, + separated by newlines. Using those filenames and the contents of the files it + then generates a HTML page (called blog.html) + and an RSS feed (called feed.xml). +
+ +
+ I keep all of this neatly stored under version control
+ here, so deploying a new version
+ is as easy as running git pull on my web server. I can honestly say that
+ this is the simplest, most user-friendly CMS that I have ever used, and it
+ only took me several months to figure out that this is exactly what I needed 🤓.
+
+ So, to conclude this story: websites are just HTML. You don't need fancy + programs or WYSIWYG editors to create a website. Just a text editor, a web + server and some spare time. +
diff --git a/posts/simple-static-blog/last_checksum.txt b/posts/simple-static-blog/last_checksum.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7a25150 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/simple-static-blog/last_checksum.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +699691065 7458 diff --git a/posts/simple-static-blog/last_edit_date.txt b/posts/simple-static-blog/last_edit_date.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d4100c1 --- /dev/null +++ b/posts/simple-static-blog/last_edit_date.txt @@ -0,0 +1 @@ +Fri May 20 11:25:14 PM CEST 2022 diff --git a/posts/use-your-mail-client-for-physical-mail/index.html b/posts/use-your-mail-client-for-physical-mail/index.html index 46d39cf..aa0b1db 100644 --- a/posts/use-your-mail-client-for-physical-mail/index.html +++ b/posts/use-your-mail-client-for-physical-mail/index.html @@ -1,98 +1,84 @@ - - - -+ Whether it's to re-read a conversation, find a plane ticket I ordered or + check when a meeting was planned, I often find myself looking up old + emails. It's usually easy to do so because email clients are designed for + the task: Many of them support full-text search and some even complement + that with neat tagging and categorization systems. To be honest I have + become completely dependent on those features for my day to day + life. Having full-text search and some sort of categorization for email + can be a huge time saver. When it comes to physical mail however, I still + have to browse through stacks of paper to (hopefully) find what I'm + looking for. I figured that it'd be nice to use my fancy email client to + deal with physical mail as well, so I found a way to do just that. Turns + out it's pretty simple! +
- - Home -- Whether it's to re-read a conversation, find a plane ticket I ordered or - check when a meeting was planned, I often find myself looking up old - emails. It's usually easy to do so because email clients are designed for - the task: Many of them support full-text search and some even complement - that with neat tagging and categorization systems. To be honest I have - become completely dependent on those features for my day to day - life. Having full-text search and some sort of categorization for email - can be a huge time saver. When it comes to physical mail however, I still - have to browse through stacks of paper to (hopefully) find what I'm - looking for. I figured that it'd be nice to use my fancy email client to - deal with physical mail as well, so I found a way to do just that. Turns - out it's pretty simple! -
++ The main objective here is to transform our physical mail into an email + that can be received, indexed and read by our email client of choice. Now, + one way to do that would be to type the contents of our mail into an email + by hand, but ain't nobody got time for that!. The (more appealing) + alternative is to use a document scanner. I have a single purpose scanner + unit from Canon that I hook up to my laptop for just this purpose. +
-- The main objective here is to transform our physical mail into an email - that can be received, indexed and read by our email client of choice. Now, - one way to do that would be to type the contents of our mail into an email - by hand, but ain't nobody got time for that!. The (more appealing) - alternative is to use a document scanner. I have a single purpose scanner - unit from Canon that I hook up to my laptop for just this purpose. -
+
+ It isn't as simple as just emailing a scanned document to ourselves
+ though: email clients are smart, but they can't understand a word of text
+ in our PDF or JPEG of a physical document. They need content to be in
+ plain text form in order to provide us with some of their best features
+ like full-text search. We'll have to somehow transform our scanned
+ documents into plain text that we can include in our email. To do this, we
+ can use tesseract. Tesseract is an optical character recognition (OCR)
+ engine, meaning that it can recognize text in images and extract it for
+ us. Installing it should be easy on Debian derivative distros like
+ Ubuntu. My laptop is running Debian unstable so I just ran apt
+ install tesseract and started using it. Using it is as easy as
+ upening up a terminal and typing tesseract FILE.jpg
+ OUTPUT. That command will save all the text that tesseract is able
+ to recognize in the image FILE.jpg to a file called OUTPUT.txt.
+
- It isn't as simple as just emailing a scanned document to ourselves
- though: email clients are smart, but they can't understand a word of text
- in our PDF or JPEG of a physical document. They need content to be in
- plain text form in order to provide us with some of their best features
- like full-text search. We'll have to somehow transform our scanned
- documents into plain text that we can include in our email. To do this, we
- can use tesseract. Tesseract is an optical character recognition (OCR)
- engine, meaning that it can recognize text in images and extract it for
- us. Installing it should be easy on Debian derivative distros like
- Ubuntu. My laptop is running Debian unstable so I just ran apt
- install tesseract and started using it. Using it is as easy as
- upening up a terminal and typing tesseract FILE.jpg
- OUTPUT. That command will save all the text that tesseract is able
- to recognize in the image FILE.jpg to a file called OUTPUT.txt.
-
+ All we have to do from there is copy-paste the contents of that file into + an email and send it to ourselves! Depending on the formatting of the + input document, the output may not always be pleasant to read. We can + account for this by including the original document as an attachment to + the email. That way we get the best of both worlds: we can use the search + functionality of our email client to find the document, and then read it + in its original form by opening the attachment. +
-- All we have to do from there is copy-paste the contents of that file into - an email and send it to ourselves! Depending on the formatting of the - input document, the output may not always be pleasant to read. We can - account for this by including the original document as an attachment to - the email. That way we get the best of both worlds: we can use the search - functionality of our email client to find the document, and then read it - in its original form by opening the attachment. -
- -
- This is all easy enough, but I'm lazy. I didn't feel like opening up my
- email client and doing manual copy-pasting, so I decided to automate the
- process a little further. I have postfix setup on my system to relay to my
- mail server, so I can simply use the mail command to send
- emails without a GUI mail client. I combined that with tesseract in a
- little bash script. The script iterates through all of its arguments and
- interprets them as filenames of scanned documents. It calls tesseract to
- extract text from them, concatenates the results, attaches the files to an
- email and sends it to my personal email address. Now all I have to do is
- run the script with filenames of some documents and my job is done. If
- anyone is interested in an actual program that does the same thing and
- doesn't require you to setup postfix, let me know! I might consider
- authoring one if it's useful to more people than just myself. The script
- I'm currently using can be found here
- (pretty) and here (raw), but I
- don't recommend using it if you don't fully understand its contents, it's
- not a polished user experience 🤓.
-
+ This is all easy enough, but I'm lazy. I didn't feel like opening up my
+ email client and doing manual copy-pasting, so I decided to automate the
+ process a little further. I have postfix setup on my system to relay to my
+ mail server, so I can simply use the mail command to send
+ emails without a GUI mail client. I combined that with tesseract in a
+ little bash script. The script iterates through all of its arguments and
+ interprets them as filenames of scanned documents. It calls tesseract to
+ extract text from them, concatenates the results, attaches the files to an
+ email and sends it to my personal email address. Now all I have to do is
+ run the script with filenames of some documents and my job is done. If
+ anyone is interested in an actual program that does the same thing and
+ doesn't require you to setup postfix, let me know! I might consider
+ authoring one if it's useful to more people than just myself. The script
+ I'm currently using can be found here
+ (pretty) and here (raw), but I
+ don't recommend using it if you don't fully understand its contents, it's
+ not a polished user experience 🤓.
+