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Have a personal web site

writing.markchristian.org

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Re: Have a personal web site

#411

Post by FerretFred »

kalid wrote: post #358
FerretFred wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also communicating things to yourself. Yeah! And remember to back it up. I had a blog in the early days when it was all new, and bitterly regret not backing it up properly - 5 years of content gone.

Have you checked archive.org for a backup? It's saved me a few times.

No, I wrote the blog software myself and all the content was stored in a MySQL database on my rented host. I thought I'd backed it up, but hadn't. It's the usual story of "it isn't a backup until you've tested it".

Re: Have a personal web site

#412

Post by VLM »

caymanjim wrote: post #151

I don't want a personal web site. I've had a handful of them in the past, and I've thrown together a couple shitty blogs over the years, but there are three big reasons why I don't anymore: I'm not that interesting; I don't have anything to show off; and inevitably it'll either become a chore or go out of date. Like everyone, I harbor fantasies about how interesting I am, and if I run into you at the pub, I'll talk y…

Decades ago I never really understood how to use VI editor or how ATM AAL5 worked or how SSH authorized keys worked until I wrote it down and tried to teach a coworker. Ditto Kerberos, SSL, AFS, LDAP, BGP route priority list, DNS glue records, lisp lambda functions ...

For topics I'm an expert at, or at least an old timer, I'm well aware I'm worse at teaching those topics than someone who more recently learned and I wouldn't even bother trying to document or teach that stuff.

Find your edge, push a bit beyond it, chmod a+r your notebook, more or less.

Re: Have a personal web site

#413

Post by mapcars »

Sujan wrote: post #126
mapcars wrote: post #102

>“You were a complete ghost online.”, they said Okay, so what? Is it a blogger or promoter position? Otherwise, why should you have any visible online presence? The whole thing is about one guy who decided to make a personal website and how he made it, that's fine. But why call it "You should have a personal website" without any reasoning/examples for others? I don't get it.

Read the article the whole article. The author was the interviewer, and the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview. The reasoning why he thinks one should have a personal website follows in the paragraphs "Practice" and "Learning".

>the comment came from a candidate that wanted to research his interviewer as preparation for the interview

That's weird as well, I would never research the interviewer (as well as I never got to know the interviewer prior the interview) but instead abouth the company, business, technologies and things like that.

About practice and learning you don't have to have a website, there are many ways to keep your memories and skills up to date.

Re: Have a personal web site

#414

Post by olwq »

sascha_sl wrote: post #406
pKaqzd wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not from the US, but the Wikipedia article makes me think that some people over there have lost their minds and have too much time on their hands. I recommend studying organizations like the NKWD and Stasi, if completely generic phrases are being eliminated from the allowed speech just because a small group of persons have also used them. So if I'm using the phrase "campus craziness", it now means that it's a "do…

It's a common tactic to hijack innocent looking language, use it internally, and then as soon as someone notices and says "hey be careful about people using the milk and frog emoji on twitter" they get suckers like you in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx4BVGPkdzk "It's okay to be white" is literally a 4chan / /pol/ operation.

No one with a real job has the time to keep up with milk, frogs, 4chan or the other things you mention.

Get a job.

Re: Have a personal web site

#415

Post by Theodores »

markchristian wrote: post #334
yoz-y wrote: post #277

A side note: Author mentions but as far as I know (and after searching for it too) this element does not actually exist. Modern browsers fallback to rendering for anything they don't know but it's not exactly semantic web either.

I actually meant to use — just a silly mistake. I've corrected the article since.

Hi Mark

For accessibility your sidebar could be a containing a with the links in that. This can precede the content. The title for the links should be in the so it outlines properly and the heading for the or the doesn't need to be . is best kept just for the article, not anything else.

If the containing the precedes the you can style it to look like a sidebar. Why bother? Well, try it and then see how the page opens with Firefox Reader Mode. You should see the difference, the reader can jump past the header 'landmark' to the article.

If you want to go fully HTML5...

The newsletter signup could be in an rather than a .

Then with the article, it is nice to see use of , I have no evidence but I believe Google likes that. You can also try breaking down the article into sized chunks, with the headings at the top of each . This should compartmentalise each 'section' into a way that search engines might prefer. Amongst the s the for the newsletter can slot in, outlining nicely. Ideally the newsletter also has a heading.

Footnotes. If you change 'name' to 'id' then you will get top scores on validation. Nobody will ever notice or care, but you don't want validation errors do you?

Also check out this:

https://codepen.io/SitePoint/pen/QbMgvY

Really cool footnotes using CSS counters.

Why bother?

Well, you have taken HTML5 so far and not much is needed to go exemplary. In a world where everyone is up to speed on web technologies few get the actual HTML right. You might not know the latest funky web technology but it is always useful to point out how HTML5 could be done using the full vocabulary instead of just mumblings.

Re: Have a personal web site

#416

Post by tonyedgecombe »

z92 wrote: post #239
tigerlily wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we can find it anyway, with google down-prioritising personal blogs. Hmm, I wonder if there's a search engine tailored to this sort of thing? As in search all the blogs for human knowledge and experience.

That engine will be equally spammed by SEO posters. Look how hard google is trying and still failing.

Perhaps we will end up back with hand curated directories.

Re: Have a personal web site

#417

Post by mr_overalls »

malodyets wrote: post #356
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a text file where I’ve copy and pasted paragraphs and comments I’ve found interesting from books and online, and a few of my own thoughts. Each entry is preceded by the date the entry was made, and followed by a reference to the source. Because I’ve used some of the material multiple times I’m vaguely aware of the overall structure, and I use it as a bit of a knowledge-base. As an example I’ll probably pop this…

Once upon a time they called it a commonplace book

Pretty interesting that the roots of Evernote begin in Early Modern Europe.

I've been doing this for years (on paper, no less) without knowing that it had a name.

Edit: Here's an article that gave me some good ideas about different things to do with my book.

https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-...

Re: Have a personal web site

#418

Post by stjohnswarts »

dorgo wrote: post #395
jartelt wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you don't care about showing off then you won't publish anything. People who are actually altruistic won't tell you about their altruism. My point is that I think your thesis is too cynical. Many people start out writing their blogs or answer questions on public forums with the intent of trying to help other people out. The motivation can be of the form "I solved this problem and I am going to write about it bec…

In my opinion, you try to make a distinction where is none. What is the difference between showing off and helping others in the context of technical questions on blogs/forums? Yes, you help others by providing solutions/advice for dificult problems. And you get satisfaction from the fact that you succeded where others stumbled and you let everybody know it by posting it online. You prove your value to a group of peo…

Meh, Ayn Rand is wrong, lots of people do things that they'd rather not be doing for the good of their family/friends/society. I'm not sure why so many people adhere to her antisocial musings. Sure some people only do things that only make them feel good. Altruism exists despite all the Randians attempts to morph it into something else so they can feel better about being greedy/self-centered/self-serving like them.

Re: Have a personal web site

#419

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

mr_overalls wrote: post #417
malodyets wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time they called it a commonplace book

Pretty interesting that the roots of Evernote begin in Early Modern Europe. I've been doing this for years (on paper, no less) without knowing that it had a name. Edit: Here's an article that gave me some good ideas about different things to do with my book. https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-...

I didn’t understand what the parent was trying to say until I read your comment.

Commomplace book - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book

Re: Have a personal web site

#420

Post by EADGBE »

thameera wrote: post #295
leftyted wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But, some people definitely do not care about "showing-off" when they put something up online. If you don't care about showing off then you won't publish anything. People who are actually altruistic won't tell you about their altruism. This isn't cynicism. The hunger for respect, admiration and recognition is not a bad thing. But it is necessary for people to understand what motivates them. And it is necessary for…

> If you don't care about showing off then you won't publish anything I want to agree, but how can we explain near-anonymous StackOverflow profiles who have brilliant answers in them, but no way to identify who the actual person they are?

Most of my Stack Overflow karma has come from edits.

Just like in real life; I'll underwhelm the average sleuth with the amount of badges I have vs. the work I've actually done.

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