I think that should be enough for now.
The advice I got online suggested that for a professional blog, which I intend this to be, I should run my own (or pay for individual service), rather than depend on something like Blogspot. Wordpress seems to be the blogging software of choice.
My hosting service gives me full root access so setting it up was just a matter of following instructions. I did have to install MySQL, which fortunately is automated, and I threw in phpmyadmin as well. The rest was digging up some information I’d already learned to do some redirection. Any of the following URLs will work:
- blog.nonken.net
- bmb.nonken.net
- baremetal.nonken.net
- baremetalblog.nonken.net (default)
- www.nonken.net/blog
They all redirect except the last two. Eventually I may play with the appearance but for now this works.
My biggest complaint is the slow response to typing. It looks like every character has to do a round trip, and backspace is particularly bad. What’s worse is that backspace needs to be fast; it’s way too easy to overrun far past where you intended. On any other editor I can use the keyboard’s built-in auto-repeat and take my cues visually.
I hereby invoke the Principle of Least Astonishment. It doesn’t work as I expect and I don’t like it. I can tolerate it for now but it could be a deal-breaker; it might be enough by itself to make me try other blogging software. (It looks like it’s a function of my connection. Unfortunately I share this connection with at least six other people, and it’s the cheapest one I can get. This means that the software depends on you having a fast, reliable connection all the time. Still not good.)
In the meantime the temptation is to start blogging immediately. I have to restrain myself; I’ve spent several hours getting to this point, it’s not going to end up with a full set of insightful postings overnight. Time to relax and find something else to do.
Tags: meta-blogging
Now that I have a faster computer the posting speed isn’t a problem. I’m still annoyed — I shouldn’t need a dual-core 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with 4GB of memory just to write a blog post. An 850MHz Pentium III with 768MB is slow by today’s standards, but should be good enough for text editing!
But it’s now usable for me and I can post comfortably from both my desktop and my MacBook, which isn’t quite as big and fast (2.0GHz Intel Core Duo with 2GB) but has more than enough power for the job.
And I now have an Android phone (my wife got a deal on some G1s from our provider) and installed a WordPress client, so if I want to live with the mediocre keyboard I can post from the phone.
Not that I post all that often.