let’s try this again

Like a good geek, I love to try out new things. This site has always been the place that I can use as my playground to learn a new process or a technology.

For a while, I was running a custom rails app, now at social.dnorton.org. It pulls my friendfeed stream and displays it using some simple Javascript. It uses the standard rails CRUD functionality to add running race data (though you can see I haven’t used it in a while.) It even has an ext-js page to create and store random quotes.

Then, I switched to Tumblr, now at tumblr.dnorton.org for the simplicity and convenience. Tumblr has an incredibly simple workflow and an amazing community. But over the last few months, I’ve found myself using it less and less in favor of Google+ which has evolved into my ideal tool for sharing information.

I noticed a trend developing with some of my favorite bloggers like Matt Gemmell and Marco Arment. They are beginning to move away from dynamic blogs – the usual Wordpress/Mysql combination – in favor of “baked” blogs that actually compile text files into HTML. I decided after reading these articles, that I would make the leap as well.

• Matt Gemmell: Blogging with Octopress
• Marco Arment’s Second Crack
• Rudy Jachan: Moved from Wordpress to Jekyll Part 1
• Brent Simmons: A plea for baked weblogs

what about all my existing posts?

I’m not migrating my Tumblr posts. I’m leaving them on Tumblr. Everything here is all new. Please drop me a comment and let me know what you think.