Octopress is a blogging framework for hackers!

This is yet another post from an Octopress starter in praise of the platform. For me, it is an ode to the minimalism and simplicity of this tool that I feel compelled to proclaim the happiness I derive from it.¹

Simplicity and Minimalism

This is a ‘hello, world!’ post and I really wanted it to be about Octopress. Why, you ask? Let me give you a few other times when using a technological tool has filled me up with so much love.

• Switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox.
• Switching from Windows to Linux.
• Switching from Ubuntu to ArchLinux.
• Switching from foobar to Vim.
• Switching from foobar to Git.

Each of those transitions, at least for me, were transitions from complexity and opaqueness into simplicity and minimalism, and, therefore, the ensuing transparency. Now, I am aware that these moves may seem to be in the absolute opposite direction to may people. To them, I can only say that I am, perhaps, a biased blub programmer.

Feels like home!

In the past I’ve used blogger, a google site, and a weebly site but nothing ever felt like home (perhaps only ASCII feels like home to me!).² It was always the Windows-y (GUI?) feeling where I kept fighting against the tools which kept taking away from the happiness in doing.

But, what do I feel right now as I write this? I feel calm like I have found my zone where I can use a tool-chain (my markup language, my editor, my operating system, …) each element of which I have curated after trial and experience and which makes me productive. I am writing a markdown file in (G)Vim and watching this build up in Chromium. After I am done, I will push this out using git to be published via github pages. It is all pure text and a version controlled copy sits on my Archbox where I can use my favorite gnu utilities to tinker with it. What can I say? It feels like home!

Foolproof and futureproof

I’m a fool and the future is harsh. But what do I care?

Let Octopress and / or Jekyll disappear tomorrow. Let people make newer, crazier, and fancier tools. I can rest assured that markdown and pure HTML will always be good enough to serve my publishing needs. And I can be sure that someone will keep writing good software on top of these primitives. At least, I can be sure that I can write it for myself if and when the need arises. If github shuts down tomorrow, I will take my pages wherever I can afford to publish them eventually.

I need not worry about Google’s sudden evil intentions. I need not lock my data in closed formats. I need not worry about processors not getting faster to serve fattening websites. I may be proved wrong by the future – one often is – but for now I’m confident and happy. And this is why I wanted to write this post and say ‘thank you!’

How to get one for yourself

There are many good tutorials out there. Therefore, I am not going to do one myself. Primarily, because I am still learning myself. But the following links may help. Godspeed!

The meta discussion:

• Alblue’s list of advantages of Octopress
• Alblue’s list of disadvantages of Octopress
• Another interesting take on Octopress
• Perhaps eventually we’ll all move to Jekyll

Tutorials:

• The official documentation
• A full walkthrough from webdesign-tuts+