Initial Thoughts

Site updates

I feel like I’ve had the same old landing page for Deiussum.com for far too long. I’ve been wanting to do something different with it. I was hosting it on Azure in a ASP.Net web app, and have thought for a while that I could really just make it a static site. It hasn’t really changed in years. I haven’t even really used the site for much beyond having a base landing page for www.deiussum.com, while I spun up other subdomains with the web apps I actually use.

So now I have the domain pointed to a new host, with just a simple Nginx service for the main site. I’ve started down the path of setting up a Pangolin proxy for a number of the other apps I host, which are generally just things I use myself. I shut down the Azure web app that was hosting my main site as I don’t really need it anymore. Azure has some fun stuff, but for a simple site like this, it just felt like overkill to me. The cost wasn’t huge, but I knew I could also find a cheaper way to host it.

New Blog

The thought of turning the main site into more of a blog has been on my mind for a while. I’ve tried to do a bit of blogging here and there in the past, but it usually doesn’t last. This might not either. People may be looking at this post years from now only to find it is still the most recent post. I’ve got a few ideas of things I can write about. It’s all mostly for myself as it can be fun to go back and get a look at your past thoughts. Maybe the handfull of people that accidentally wander onto this site will find something useful or interesting, though.

With that in mind, I wanted to make it as simple as possible to post new content, but I also didn’t really want to spin up a database or a new web app. I briefly considered writing my own simple Node.js app that just took in some Markdown files. That idea didn’t last long. I figured there had to be something similar out there already. A bit of searching shows that there are quite a few different tools that would probably fit what I’m looking for.

I’m going to start out with Hugo. It seems simple. Create a new Markdown page, type up some thoughts, build it into static pages, then deploy those static pages to the website. What could be easier. I may even setup a Github agent so it’s a simple as pushing my updates to GitHub and my server pulls it down and publishes the pages for me. For now, I’ll start simple, though. I want to play with it a bit and see how Hugo handles things like tags, theming, etc. Not sure I like how I’ve got it themed currently, but that can change as I get time and motivation to play with it.

So far as topics, it could be anything. I’ve been a software developer for decades, so there may be some tech discovery. I love to experiment with things, so I may share some of those experiences here. I also have way too many hobbies.

Social Media

Before I get this posted, I’ll figure out how to put a couple social media links in the header. I know Hugo has a way to do it, but I haven’t looked at how yet. I don’t really use social media much anymore, but have accounts on a number of them. Facebook and Twitter are mostly dead to me. I still find the idea of Mastadon and Bluesky interesting, but not enough to actually post anything to them. It’s probably been a while since I’ve even looked at any of them, though.

For now, I think this is plenty long for my first real blog post on the new site. Hopefully there will be others coming up soon. I’ve got ideas. I just will need to decide if I have the motivation.