Posts tagged: SITE

When I was starting this site and designing the software that powers it I decided that I didn’t want to use raw HTML for writing posts. After 10 years of authoring HTML I still find it visually obtrusive, and somewhat distracting when trying to focus on writing. I considered both Textile and RST but ultimately settled on Markdown. The implementation I use is Michel Fortin’s PHP Markdown, which has worked flawlessly.

I find that, as advertised, Markdown is great for writing text (and hypertext). The source is very readable – which makes the writing process a lot easier, especially for longer posts – and I almost never need to write straight HTML.

There’s a fine line between collecting and just not knowing when to throw stuff out. Sometime in the last few years I switched from the latter to the former – in the realm of vintage computer hardware, anyway. Because the OCD aspects of collecting kind of freak me out, I don’t get too organized about it. I like portable stuff; I like Apple stuff; I like stuff that’s cleverly designed. I like stuff I’ve actually used; I like getting stuff really cheap on eBay.

Starting today, every Monday (or when I happen to remember to do it) I’ll survey my vast empire of websites and find something interesting, amusing, or useful (in my estimation) to post here.

Up today: link.toolbot.com, my link-shortening service. It makes what are probably the longest links of any link-shortening service out there. However, it has two features that I haven’t seen elsewhere which I think are kind of neat. I continue to use it myself because of them. They are:

Now that OSCON is over I’m going to be taking off for a bit of vacation, so there won’t be much action here for the next ten days or so. Subscribe to the RSS feed if you haven’t already, and I’ll see you when I return.