The Latest — Steve Block

The Latest

Mucking with Vim
This is basic stuff but I am trying to get my Vim setup working right so that I
get proper line wraps and other usability/viewport niceness when typing
markdown files in Vim. I think I got it by adding the following commands to my
Vim syntax/configuration file for Markdown files (mkd.vim):
```
set wrap
set linebreak tw=80
```
I also forced Vim to notice that screen supports 256 colors:
```
set t_Co=256
```
Now when I type a markdown file it hard wraps by word at 80 characters, which
makes the whole thing easier to work with. Additionally, I can actually use
color schemes that aren’t the default. It’s amazing.

Yes, soft wraps are “good” but when it comes to plain text they don’t always
work the way we would really prefer.

— Steve
2011-11-02
Merlin on Complaining
I think there’s a lot of people who would say “you’re never allowed to complain about something unless you have a solution,” and I disagree. I think if you have a really good complaint about something it’s not always your job to have to fix it too. And furthermore, the people who do go out and fix things hate it more than anything else in the world when people think they understand how to fix things.

— Merlin Mann

Siracusa’s Corollary^[1]

The ability to understand what’s wrong with something has very little direct correlation with the ability to do a better thing.

— John Siracusa^[2]
1. Hypercritical Episode #43, The Scorpion and the Frog, Minute 11. Published November 18, 2011.↩︎
2. John sent me more background on this concept from this Ars Technica post from 2009. It’s a good read.↩︎
2011-11-01
On Writing
The Problem

I used to write in word processors and use formatting, but I found that most of the time all I really want is words. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to make your meaning clear with only text and a few simple pieces of markup. We learned to do this many, many years ago with early email systems that only allowed text, and we learned to do it well. When I first started to work with the web, I worked in text as well, though I “coded” my HTML by hand.

Now, though, we want WYSIWYG text editors, complex blogging platforms, and similar things to do all the heavy lifting for us. The problem is, as I have discovered, is that eventually the maintenance of those complex editors and platforms greatly reduces the pleasures of just creating and sharing great content.

I admit that my own content may not meet the standards of truly great content, but the general feeling is still there. Although posting to WordPress is relatively easy, and it does handle image uploading and related tasks for me fairly well, I shudder every time I am forced to dig into the software at all:
- Why are my image uploads in the same folder as my themes?
- Why are these folders contained in subfolders of the software platform itself?
- Why are all the names weird and complicated? Why wp-content, wp-plugins, or wp-config?
- Why does it seem like critical security updates are released every month or so, requiring frankly painful upgrades?
I really respect what the creators of WordPress have managed to do, both in creating software that works (most of the time) and that is immensely popular, but I’m in the market for something simpler. Something that cares more about the content, images and words, than about plugins, whiz-bangery, and complication.

Something that won’t fall flat on its face if a bunch of people come knocking. Or that won’t result in my web site being compromised because morons wrote one of the PHP scripts that was included with a theme.

The Way Forward

I need to find or create something new, simple, based in text and mostly static rendering. Something without uneccesary complication. Since I don’t know exactly the best way to accomplish that, research is necessary.

Ideas include writing something of my own, in PHP, or a Python or Ruby framework. Other options include relatively simple scripts calling a few processors.

Either way I think I’ll do the majority of my writing in Markdown or one of its derivatives and avoid raw HTML for simple things as much as possible.

Take this example from my own WordPress site for a reason why:
```
<p><a href="http://steveblock.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Morning-Facade.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3741" title="Morning Facade" src="http://steveblock.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Morning-Facade-600x450.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="450" /></a></p>

<p>I took this picture while standing in front of a building.</p>
```
In Markdown, on a site that wasn’t badly designed, I could write that as:
```
[![Morning Facade][2]][1]

I took this picture while standing in front of a building.

[1]: /images/2011/10/Morning-Facade.jpg
[2]: /images/2011/10/Morning-Facade-600x450.jpg (Morning Facade)
```
Definitely not perfect, but at least it is clear, and the image links can happily live out of the main flow of the document. I don’t want to read tags, I want to read documents.

And with some careful CSS (I don’t do a lot of fancy things with my images but WordPress doesn’t care) avoid any of the other annoying style-isms. And that’s all I’m really looking for. Imagine this document with all the <p> and <hr /> tags intact. Terrible.

— Steve
2011-10-27
TAGTOBER 2011

Twice now a group of friends and I have organized a small photo challenge and contest called TAGTOBER, an offshoot of the casual photo sharing site TAGISU run by myself and good friend Andy Buck. The first contest was during October 2007. The second was during October 2009.

The goal was to take one good photograph every day during the month of October, though there was no penalty for missing a day, other than missed votes. The only real rules were that the photo had to be yours, and it had to be taken, processed, and uploaded to the site on the day in question. We standardized on Central Time for the day cutoffs.

Now that another two years have passed and October is coming up fast, I feel like I should challenge myself again with another TAGTOBER. However, I know that I’m well past the point on the calendar where I’d be able to gather enough interest to run a contest. People need time to prepare for something like this.

So, I won’t try to run a contest this year. But I will try to carry on the tradition. Starting Saturday I’m challenging myself to do it again.

Stay tuned.

2011-09-30