Everything Static

If you’re reading this, you’re on my new blog. I’m now using GatsbyJS. It’s fast.

The gist

The basic idea is that a bunch of complicated JavaScript software generates flat, fast, modern web pages. You should be able to tell from the speed of navigating the posts.

Not that any site that’s as bare-text as mine should be slow, but it should be even faster. Compare it to the old site though, you may notice a difference.

If you want to know more…

I’ve used the Gatsby starter blog as a basis for a new site. Using bash I’ve converted all the markdown I had over at write.as into posts here. It took a bit of doing but it seems to all be working now, and I’ve hosted it all (for free) on Netlify.

It’s a slightly weird way of working, in that it requires pushing to Github, which Netlify monitors. When it senses a change, it builds the flat files using Gatsby.

It’s not weird to use static pages. They’re fast. My ancient film database works this way. (I wrote it in 2006 and it’s still running! A benefit of simplicity.)

No, what’s weird for me is that the code for the site as well as the static content (in the form of Markdown files) all reside within that repo. When you update the master git branch, it deploys the site automatically.

The local development process is also very cool, in that you can just run gatsby develop on a local machine, and it will show you changes to the site instantaneously.

I think there’s also some features for pushing to a test branch, but I think that’s enough technological procrastination for one night.

Not much to write home about

Tomorrow, it’s back to the writing grind. Last week I was somewhat elated with the progress I was making on small sections. This week I’ve got the dread, over the amount of structural work that needs to be done. But so it goes, I suppose.

_{And the title of this post, as well as an earlier one, are an Elliott Smith reference}

I'm Bryan Kam. I'm thinking about complexity and selfhood. Please sign up to my newsletter, follow me on Mastodon, or see more here.