Angelo Stavrow [dot] Blog

Missives and musings on a variety of topics.

Like many folks who keep a blog, I like to fiddle with setups and reorganize my “online presence” every so often. But I've come to realize that the problem with fiddling is that it's a distraction from doing. And if I want to do more (of whatever), then I've got to not only reduce the fiddling, but the friction as well.

Hugo is an excellent static site generator, and I've had a lot of fun building the Indigo theme that powers this site (as well as a few others!) — but it's time to retire it. If I want to write more (and I do!), being tied to a desktop and having to run incantations on the terminal to create a draft and publish the final article is… well, it's a pain. Yes, I can keep my drafts in Drafts or any other cross-platform writing app, but the fact remains that I still have to get to my Mac to publish. And if that Mac has to go in for servicing, then I need to find another machine, deploy all the fiddle bits that generate and publish the site, and hope that I remembered to commit any changes I'd made, either to the theme or the content.

It's a headache.

The way things are set up, I also need to switch contexts if I choose to publish a short, title-less “update” — for a few years now, long-form posts have been published to angelostavrow.com, and short posts have been published to Micro.blog, with some additional plumbing set up to get each feed into the other site, as well as everything pushed out to various communities that I like to engage in.

Fact is, nothing takes the fun out of creating a thing more than having to maintain it.

So, in the interest of offloading the work that I'd taken upon myself, let's discuss how things will be changing.

Since late November, I've been writing everything —that is, both long-form articles and short updates— on angelostavrow.blog, which is a Write.as-hosted blog. This will be the new home for my writing; the RSS feed is pushed to my Micro.blog account, where the cross-posting bot syndicates that content out to my Twitter and Mastodon accounts. I really like the focus Write.as puts on writing, but I like the communities with which I share my writing too, and this works really well to combine frictionless writing with frictionless sharing.

(Disclaimer: I've been working with their team building the official iOS app for WriteFreely, the open-source software that powers the Write.as service.)

I'm going to slowly import all posts on the old blog and Micro.blog to this new blog, and I'm going to try to make sure that old permalinks continue to work. Then, I'll be free to do a bit of re-working of my online presence:

  • My dot-com site will become a landing page of sorts, hosting some info about me and links to the various social networks I like to participate in.
  • My dot-dev site is already a landing page for software-development-related links, but I'm going to take some time to improve it a little bit.
  • I'm not decided yet whether I'll simply archive the Indigo theme, or see if someone else wants to take it over. I don't need to make this decision now, but I will share this in the GitHub repo.

So there you go. Happy New Year, friends, and if you'd like, consider updating your feed readers to the new blog's RSS feed.

#news #indigo

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Fear is a teacher.

He says things so clearly. He understands you completely. He knows what motivates you. He speaks with confidence. And he wants you to be safe.

Fear is a teacher.

She knows how to get your attention because she knows what scares you. She was there when it happened. She remembers how you got that scar and she wants no further harm to come of you. Fear is a reminder that it’s time to learn and then act.

— Rands in Repose, Fear is a Liar

Experience deeply, then reflect deeper still, and —since history always repeats itself— use your learnings to move through life with grace, confidence, and kindness.

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Hello!

It’s the dawn of a brand new year. The last one… well, the last one felt like a Total Dumpster Fire™️.

I deeply hope that 2021 finds you happier, healthier, stronger, and better. I’m rooting for you.

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Oh you know, just working on my annual retrospective.

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Maybe I'm missing something here, but the hierarchical-override approach SwiftUI takes to .disabled(_:) feels a bit… backward? Why have the parent view override the child view?

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“Cannot convert value of type 'String' to expected argument type 'Text'” feels like a great candidate for one of those 'FIX' buttons in Xcode. 🙂

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Having to restart my Mac just to update SF Symbols feels like a bit of a regression, no?

"The Software Update preference pane showing that an update is available for SF Symbols 2.1, with a Restart Now button."

Update: click “More info…”, then click the “Install Now” button, and it all sorts itself out — no restart required.

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Trying to figure out how to add the Sparkle updater library to a SwiftUI-lifecycle Mac app is... non-trivial.

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Heads up: if you’re looking to write more in the New Year, WriteFreely for iOS is 33% off until December 31st. 🎉

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This is your yearly reminder that if you’re planning on starting/changing/breaking a habit in 2021, it’s not a bad idea to give yourself a running start at the end of 2020.

Also: you got this. 🙌

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