Introduction

Welcome to my brand new page, this will hopefully be the least interesting of all the things I write here. So what do I plan to write about?

  • programming: when I’ve got something to say about the open-source software I write, or want to illustrate a technique I used while writing closed-source software.
  • investing: currently I’m researching how to properly invest, seeing as having money stored away in your bank account is a losing proposition these days.

The blog is hosted (for now) on github, and statically generated with nanoc. Take a look at the nanoc branch if you want to see the source instead of the compiled form which is being served.

At first I thought that – not exactly being a rubyist – it would be quite hard to get started, but I managed to set it all up in a day. The most difficult thing was probably to get pygments to work for code highlighting and choosing an appropriate style, I chose to emulate github.

EDIT: I switched from the pygments filter to pygments.rb, which sped up my compilations by more than 100x, go figure. My workflow is way smoother now, and I only have to include pygments.rb in my Gemfile and change one line in the Rules file.

There are plenty of tutorials on how to get started, but here’s a nudge: (might have to be adapted slightly if you’re not on OSX)

# get the latest and greatest ruby
$ brew install ruby

# make sure the local ruby and gem paths are added to $PAH, make sure
# `which gem` gives the local gem executable
# instead of the system default
$ edit ~/.zshrc # or ~/.bashrc ...

$ gem install bundler

# clone this repo or your own or start from scratch
# the repo has a gemfile with most of the things you
# need to get started
$ git clone ...

# if you want code highlighting, install pygments
# (alternatively you can use the built-in CodeRay)
$ sudo easy_install Pygments

$ cd aktau.github.com

# make sure bundler exports its executables to /usr/local/bin
$ export BUNDLE_BIN="/usr/local/bin"
$ bundle install

# compile with nanoc
$ nanoc # (or bundle exec nanoc, if you want to be specific about versions)

# if you want to have guard watch your folders and automatically
# recompile while you're editing, which is really handy, just
# do this once:
$ bundle exec guard init nanoc

#start watching:
$ bundle exec guard

# run nanoc's internal webserver to preview what you just did
$ nanoc view &
$ open localhost:3000

# alternatively use nginx instead of nanoc view
$ brew install nginx
$ ln -s /Users/Me/github/aktau/aktau.github.com/output /usr/local/var/www
$ open localhost:8080

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