I’ve gone down this path a few times before, but never succeeded, mainly because I liked the user interface of WordPress, and the tools like MacJournal or the Android and now iOS apps. I was also new with Markdown, and it just felt strange. Now that I use Markdown in production work for other things, and there are great tools out there like iA Writer and Writing Kit, it is a lot easier for me to wrap my head around.

My current setup is to have markwalling.org hosted by a WordPress instance. I am using it as essentially a link roll: if I find cool stuff, I hit the “Press This” bookmarklet and share it. I also have it tied to IfThisThenThat and dumping in my Flickr posts, video posts on Vimeo or YouTube, public links on my Pinboard, and so on. This used to be hosted at Tumblr, but I wanted some data ownership. (Their TOS says they can delete your blog as a punitive action, which makes sense, but they don’t provide an easy way to export your data.)

So now we have this atrocity: Some Meaningless Things.

Some Meaningless Things is an Octopress powered static blog for long form writings. I’m using Writing Kit on my iPhone and iPad for idea collection and first drafts. On my desktop, I use iA Writer for editing. (think Textmate but exclusively for writing. Nothing but a text box and a cursor, until you’re done and then you can do spell check.)

In the spirit of Second Crack’s Dropbox integration, I wired Hazel into my system. If a post filename starts with the word “Publish”, it kicks off the publishing rake task, which copies the file into source/_posts/ for me. (Renaming the file like that is really easy with Writing Kit and easy enough to do with Finder.) The rest of the file name is turned into the post slug, and the title is read from the first level header found in the file. The current date is used to set up the date stamps for the filename and the published date. Categories aren’t set yet, mainly because I haven’t figured out an easy way to include that metadata without bending over backwards.

Once Octopress has generated the site, it is uploaded to my production Linode. IfThisThenThat then picks up the new RSS entry, and cross posts it to markwalling.org.

Since I’m pretty sure I only have one reader (hi Mom), this was probably way to in depth, but that’s how I roll. I may add another path that adds link posts, like Marco.org or Daring Fireball (not that I have any delusions of being as successful as them).

from Some Meaningless Things http://some.meaninglessthings.org/blog/2012/02/05/-static-blogging-round-18-million/

How to do it? Keep it small, keep it time-limited, keep it action-oriented.

The show notes link back to an older post by Merlin called Looking back at our fresh starts & modest changes which is good reading.

I obviously didn’t make these resolutions “on time”, but who cares, these are ones I want to keep.

Highly Likely to Succeed

Software

This one is easy, and maybe even a copout. I want to try out Ruby. I know bits and pieces of it, but I want to learn it more. The only way I’ve found to do that is to start using it as much as possible, so that’s what I’m going to do: using Ruby almost exclusively for utility coding.

True story, this is how I learned Python, and with it Django.

So this is highly likely, since I already started on it. I found a framework called Cinch, which is a Ruby IRC bot framework. I’m putting together the mother of all meeting management bots, with a web interface to back it. Debian’s MeetBot is a model of part of it, and the vote script for irssi I’ve seen people use is the other part. oh, and since I’m an accidental “expert” on Robert’s Rules, I’ll throw some of that procedure in too.

Personal Health

So I’m fat. If you’ve seen pictures of me, or know me in person, you know what I mean. I got my self a Fitbit for Christmas. (You can follow my progress here, where the Fitbit software makes pretty Flash graphs. (yuck, excessive use of Flash). (Hmm, I said I needed to write more Ruby, and Fitbit has an API…)

My goal is to consistently lose about 1-1.5 pounds a week, taking about a year to get back to a healthy weight. With banquet season coming up for the next month, and travel after that, I don’t know how well I’ll pull that off early in the year, but so far I’ve lost about 10 pounds and a notch in my belt. That’s achievement towards a goal.

I also acquired a treadmill, and have spent time on it working. It is an interesting experience, but walking 3 miles and not realizing it is cool.

Less Likely to Succeed

Blogging/Writing

The least likely of my resolutions to succeed. I’m going to start easy this year: one per month. And I don’t mean one link posted to markwalling.org, I mean one post here, something with content. Something like this…

Electronics

Ever since my twittering dehumidifier, I haven’t used the Arduino for anything productive. I really should. I even have permission from my wife to make the washing machine tweet! What am I waiting for?

from Some Meaningless Things http://some.meaninglessthings.org/blog/2012/02/04/new-years-resolutions/

Behold: the chicken wing cupcake | All Over Albany.

Just saying…

Gingrich’s ‘grandiose’ ideas – (1) – CNNMoney.

In the past, only 0.2 percent of sales came from full price items and Penney’s 590 unique promotions a year were confusing and failed to draw shoppers, he said.Some 72 percent of Penney revenue came last year from items discounted at least 50 percent.

via JCPenney to Adopt Streamlined Pricing Plan | Fox Business.

Microwaves Ruin Everything – YouTube.