Latest Posts
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I’ve used a few different services for my blogs over the years. I had a tech blog back in early high school that I made with Weebly, then when I created the blog I have now about half a year ago, I just created html files that I would upload to my site. Needless to say, this got a bit tedious having to copy an html file, rewrite certain parts, then upload it, so I moved my blog over to WordSmith. This was working out well for a while! I really liked WordSmith. But then I decided to redesign my website, as I was tired of the old 90s aesthetic, and I was bored due to the fact that I am on winter break. So while redesigning the site, I decided to try Jekyll for the heck of it.
At first, things were a bit odd. I didn’t quite know how to port my current site over. But after combing through the documentation, I finally got the gist of it. I created the layout files for the site (which make changing things across all of the pages SO much easier), and all of the different pages. Then I worked on figuring out the actual blogging part of it. This was pretty easy as well. I just created a new layout file for blog posts, and ported over all of my old posts from WordSmith. This part was a bit harder, since the importer tool that worked with my site wouldn’t run, so I did it all manually. This wasn’t too hard since it was just a matter of copying the content over and pointing the post’s html file to the post layout. Then, I wrote my first post on it. It was pretty easy to use! I feel it strikes a good balance of ease and fun, since I can host the blog on my own actual site, and not have to deal with the hassle I dealt with before. I was even able to make some changes that made things better after reading the awesome article Kev Quirk wrote about making a Jekyll site with his simple.css framework (which is what I use for the style of the site) like adding more to my footer, or adding Jekyll’s sitemap plugin for better compatibility with search engines. I think I can easily say that I’ve found a blogging platform that I am happy with!
This is post 16 of #100daystooffload
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Recently, Facebook changed WhatsApp's privacy policy to essentially say "give us your data, or you can't use WhatsApp anymore." And of course, that led a good number of users to delete their accounts
and uninstall the app. And I don't blame them. I could get into a whole rant about how I don't like Facebook collecting data, especially from a messaging service which prides itself on being secure and
using encryption for their messaging, but I won't get into that here. While it does suck, a new service has started to blow up: Signal. For those who aren't familiar with Signal, it is an open source, encrypted, privacy
and security focused messaging platform. It works a lot like any other messaging platform does, and even uses the same encryption standard as WhatsApp (Signal created the standard, WhatsApp used it.)
This makes Signal almost a no-brainer as an alternative for those looking for a new encrypted messaging platform.
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There are a lot of thing's I've always wanted to do, but I always kind of forgot about them since I never had much time, or because I just got lazy and decided to push them off until I just forgot about them. But after the dumpster fire that was 2020, and a bunch of staying at home doing nothing, I decided to start the new year off by doing some of the things I've been wanting to do for a while, and trying to stick with them as best as I could.
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Ever since I got my first smart-device, I've almost always had some sort of Google app for news. I used Google Now for a while on my iPod and later on my phone once I got my first actual smartphone. I liked how it showed personalized and relevant information, as well as news that was related to my interests. And if I didn't like what popped up on there, I could just swipe it away, and less stuff like that would show up on the feed. Then they changed it to Google Discover or Google Feed or whatever the hell they're calling it nowadays, and things changed. It was harder to personalize what you saw, there were separate feeds for news and other stuff (weather, events, etc.) and I just didn't like it as much. Then, Google News came around and I started using it. It still wasn't as easier to personalize, and it didn't show the other stuff, but I still liked it! But then I turned on some privacy features in my Google account, and the news didn't feel as personalized as it once did, since it wasn't collecting as much data. Both services also started ignoring the sites I said I didn't want news from anymore. These were usually sites that felt like they had a bunch of click-bait titles and stuff like that. But no matter how many times I hit the button for ignoring those sites, they would still pop up.
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Just like most people on the internet, I've relied a lot on Google for stuff like email, storage, calendar, etc. This had a lot to do with the fact that I've used Android for almost all of my life, (with the exception of some touch-screened feature phones in early middle school,) but also because Google is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) forces on the internet. They do everything, and they do it all really well for the most part. So when I started to look into ways to make my digital life a bit more private, getting rid of Google services seemed to be the biggest obstacle. First off, my school used Gmail, Google's office suite, and Google Classroom, so I had to use those. But once I graduated, I stopped using the school account. But that left my personal account. I used just about every service they offered, so it wouldn't be easy to just leave it all behind. In fact, I still use Google services like Google Photos, Google Drive (until I set up a Nextcloud server) and Google Pay. But the services I didn't need, or the services that I could find good and easy alternatives for started to get replaced one by one. Google search was replaced by DuckDuckGo, and later Whoogle, Chrome was replaced by Firefox, and I just moved from Google Docs to just using OnlyOffice on my laptop. But the first big thing I decided to switch from is Gmail. This would be a bit hard since I had to change the email for a bunch of accounts, and make sure I wasn't missing emails from Gmail, but I figured I could just forward stuff until I got everything important changed over. Coincidentially, as I was thinking about how to swtich over, I was introduced to Protonmail through Mr. Robot. I saw Elliot use it in an episode in season 3, and I was intrigued. A couple weeks later, I had created an account and started moving stuff over.
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I've always been a fan of the idea of a "new internet." I remember the first time I even heard of such a concept was while watching Silicon Valley. When Richard first talked of the idea of creating a new, decentralized internet that left out all of the garbage that plagues today's internet, I was immediately intrigued. Since then, I've looked into different initiatives to create a new privacy-focused and decentralized internet, and the journey has changed the way I use the internet for the better.
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I've been excited about the idea of a smartphone running Linux ever since I found out it was a thing. After seeing platforms like Ubuntu Touch and Sailfish OS, I was intrigued by the thought of a smartphone running something other than iOS, Android or Windows Phone (you know, back when that existed.) Now, about 5 or 6 years later, I finally got to try one! Back in August, I decided to drop some of the money I earned from detasseling to get the PinePhone, and I got it in the mail in September. I was excited to see if it could replace my Pixel 3a as my main phone, even though I could tell it couldn't since it was a development device. And of course, it didn't. But after a few months, I'm surprised at how much closer it's gotten to being a usable device! However, without much of a surprise, its still not there. But with a few workarounds, I've been able to use it as more of an extension device!
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I've been writing on my blog for a while, and while one of the reasons I haven't written on it as much as I would like to is the fact that I maintained my own website. this meant creating a whole new HTML file to write a blog post, and even just copying the post into a template and uploading it was more tedious than I would have liked. But now, I've decided to officially move my blog to the Fediverse with Wordsmith! So far, its been really easy to set up, and writing this post is a lot easier! I also like that it still gives you control over the site's CSS code so I can still give it the classic "Space Jam" style I love! I think this will make it so much easier to just sit down and write in my free time.
Saladhax