Regular blog here, 'microblog' there
Many of my traditional blog post live on this site, but a great majority of my social-style posts can be found on my much-busier microbloging site at updates.passthejoe.net. It's busier because my BlogPoster "microblogging" script generates short, Twitter-style posts from the Linux or Windows (or anywhere you can run Ruby with too many Gems) command line, uploads them to the web server and send them out on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds.
I used to post to this blog via scripts and Unix/Linux utilities (curl and Unison) that helped me mirror the files locally and on the server. Since this site recently moved hosts, none of that is set up. I'm just using SFTP and SSH to write posts and manage the site.
Disqus comments are not live just yet because I'm not sure about what I'm going to do for the domain on this site. I'll probably restore the old domain at first just to have some continuity, but for now I like using the "free" domain from this site's new host, NearlyFreeSpeech.net.
At some level, ends and means in computer programming dictate that whatever language gets you there is the right one.
If you want to work on a certain project, and that project's code happens to be written in PHP, that is something to think about.
Do you want to attract collaborators? From among the languages you like, pick a popular one.
If you're just starting out, anything will do. I do quite a bit of my code as Bash scripts because it gets the job done and I understand it. I'm dabbling in Perl because people I collaborate with and respect also use it. I'm keeping an eye on Python and Javascript because they are both growing rapidly.
Once you've been coding awhile, if you know enough to really do anything in one language, picking up another one shouldn't be too hard. The programming principles you've learned in one language will help carry you through with another.
In fact, anything you know about making a program work in Language A will help you figure out what you need to know in Language B.
If you don't know anything: Don't get hung up on which language you should learn. Instead, if what you want to do has anything to do with the World Wide Web, start learning all you can about HTML and CSS. Don't skip over them and go straight to Python and Javascript. Knowing how markup and styles makes things look on the Web is incredibly important, and this is knowledge that will repay your effort many times over.
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There are 865 entries in this blog.
There are 294 images in the filesystem, 187 of which appear in actual posts.
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I am using Highlight.js for syntax highlighting.
Social updates
As I say at the top of this site, my social-style entries are posted to a separate Ode blog instance at updates.passthejoe.net. The Ruby script I use to do this is pretty ugly, but I released it on Github anyway. I started working on a version that is much more class-based (as in object-oriented), but that project stalled out a bit. I'm considering bringing this concept to Android, or doing it in Java with a JavaFX GUI, or doing it in Node.js for JavaScript practice.
Archive
The archive is not up to date due to the 2020 hosting migration. I plan to work on it.
Hello, world — this is my website
No databases were harmed in the making of this blog
You're seeing this blog, powered by Ode, through the magic of the Perl programming language and the Common Gateway Interface. Also involved: the Apache web server and Linux operating system.
Ode does not use a database to store content. Instead, every entry exists on the web server as a "flat" text file.
Comments are managed via Disqus, integrated through the work of Ode project leader Rob Reed.
Counter and categories: Thanks to Rob Reed for his help on the Counter addin, which provides the post-count and category features seen above. The show/hide feature is coded with inline JavaScript.
E-mail: stevenhrosenberg@gmail.com.
Who am I
and why am I here?
My name is Steven Rosenberg. Journalist. Programmer. Husband. Father. Fixer of the broken.
License
CC BY-NC-SA
Frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair by Steven Rosenberg is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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My sites
- RSS of this blog
- Microblog of short posts
- Steven Rosenberg (WordPress)
- Click
- Come on Feel the Nuys
- Steven Rosenberg on Twitter
Ode sites
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