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#+TITLE: A New Start
#+DATE: <2022-02-10 Thu>
#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. - JRR Tolkien
#+END_EXAMPLE
I used to have an old site, which I hosted at nistur.com /(Edit: I let
this domain lapse, and now it appears to have been snapped up by a
Chinese video streaming site?)/. I had an ancient version of Wordpress
which I pretty much abandoned. I kept the page around because I had my
CV linking to various parts of it. I wanted to keep the domain name,
because it was a handle I had used since I was a teenager, but the
site itself didn't bother me. When the site just totally gave up, I
had to decide what to do. Either I could try to put it onto life
support for the purpose of just expanding on the information in my [[file:pages/cv.org][CV]]
or, I could create something new.
I did procrastinate, trying to decide what was best to spend my time
working on. I could install a brand new version of Wordpress on a
site, I could write something from scratch, I could run a Wix site, I
could use one of a million different solutions.
I am not a web developer. I have done a small amount of web
development, enough to know that while I can write some backend tech
for services I need in my projects, I do not want to be writing
sites. So this ruled out my normal goto, write it from scratch. Using
something like Wix wasn't "on brand" with my CV though, which is
esoteric and awkward, solving a problem in an interesting way.
I also didn't know where I wanted to host it. I had been using a big
CPanel based host system for the past 10+ years, but I think I'm
probably overpaying, and I definitely don't feel comfortable in that
system, it's both too complicated for what I actually use, but at the
same time feels too simplified for me to get stuck in and use it.
Then I had an idea. I could, temporarily at least, host a page on
AWS. Their t2.micro instances are free for 12 months. At the end of
that time, I could decide what to do. If I was using such a minimal
instance, I probably didn't want a big web server, database system
etc. I don't need those. I have a small website with only pretty
minimal data on it. I could create a static site, and host it using
[[https://picolisp.com][Picolisp]] as a web server. This would allow me a pretty slimline system
that I could expand to do more dynamic content if I wanted to in
future, but also the static site would mean that if I changed where I
wanted to host it in future, I would just copy the data files onto the
new host. Simple.
/Edit: I was offered hosting by my friend at [[https://opensourcerers.uk/][Open Sourcerers]] so this
site is now hosted there. I'm not using Picolisp any more as I didn't
feel it was fair for me to pester him to set up a specific server just
for me. Otherwise the setup is the same./
What static site generator then? Most people would probably go for
something that uses Markdown, and I did seriously consider that. The
solutions are very good, and very well supported. I, however, had been
using Emacs [[https://orgmode.org][Org-Mode]] for almost 15 years for many things, including
authoring documents. So I found [[https://emacs.love/weblorg][Weblorg]] which seemed to tick all my
boxes. /I could have just used org-html-export-to-html but I wanted
something a bit slicker really./
So, there we have my current setup, I have a repository, which I will
shortly push to github, once I have a few more pages fleshed out, and
maybe some minor customisation done on the site, it exports with
Weblorg, and gets hosted on AWS with a picolisp webserver. Could I
have had a site up and running much quicker than this? Of course. I
chose this path though, because it was /relatively/ quick, compared to
trying to write myself a site from scratch, but at the same time,
maintains some of the interest that keeps me invested in projects. I
feel, for me, this is a better solution than an easier one.
I also decided to not use nistur.com as a domain for my CV related
stuff. Instead I'm going to be keeping my 'professional' things on
here, [[http://philippgeyer.co.uk][PhilippGeyer.co.uk]]. I will at some point also revive nistur.com
and use that for less related personal projects. I am not trying to
distance myself from that by switching domains, but rather just trying
to keep things a bit more organised. I also won't make this
particularly tight laced. As should be obvious by this post, I find
more informal writing a lot easier, so I'll keep this laid back
approach.
/Edit: I have just set up [[https://nistur.co.uk][nistur.co.uk]] for some more random computing
musings and personal projects./
That's probably it for now.
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