3 Articles from January 2016 | Ben Babcock’s Blog

Getting back in the game

Sunday, January 31, 2016 10:33 AM -05:00

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but if I did, one of them would be to blog more often. I fell out of the habit last year because I was so focused on finishing my new blog platform. Now that I'm using it, I really don't have any excuse. Look how many posts I've squeezed into January! February should hopefully be even better.

Aside from the rash of depressing celebrity deaths, this month has been a good start to the year. My move to a VPS went well. My work continues to be fulfilling and interesting. However, I haven't been reading as much as I should be. Last January I read 11 books, and this year I've only read 7. I know, I know, that's more than some people read in a year, and I'm not trying to be all hurr hurr, I reads all the books! But I set an extremely ambitious goal of 160 books this year, and this is not a great start! I don't have a trick or a special talent that lets me read so many books a year—it's just that I spend a lot of my free time reading. And when I…

And we're back!

Wednesday, January 20, 2016 10:41 PM -05:00

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was moving my website—well, all my websites—to a VPS, a Virtual Private Server. I’m pleased to announce that the transition is complete. In about a week, I moved over all my various software installations. Indeed, I even upgraded some shamefully old versions. And, as I mentioned previously, I have replaced my old blog script with a new blog written in Python/Flask.

Why I Moved

This website is nearly twelve years old! That boggles my mind. It all started with some simple HTML on Geocities; I remember when I claimed I never needed to learn something as complicated as PHP. Later when I started paying for shared hosting, I scoffed at the idea I might have “my own server”. Maybe the moral of this story, twelve years in, is that I need to stop setting arbitrary limits.

Anyway, for the past 10 of those 12 years, my websites have been on A Small Orange. When I first signed up with ASO, it was a small and independently-owned webhost. The owner interacted directly with customers on the forum. The tech support was always reliable and super quick.

Alas, change is…

Happy New Year!

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 9:02 PM -05:00

It has been too long since I blogged! This lapse isn’t the result of any one thing so much as a variety of factors. Mostly I’ve been reluctant to blog because of how frustrated I am with my blogging platform—a bespoke PHP script I made years ago. I have been plugging away at various replacements over the past few years, first in PHP, and then in Python.

Finally the replacement is almost ready. I’m writing this post in it, although when I publish this, you’ll be reading it on the old platform still. (I have to make a few more tweaks before I can do the switchover.)

So, look in this space soon for:

My best/worst books of 2015!
I got a new laptop, and it’s awesome!
I’m moving the site to a VPS and will blog about that!

Stay tuned.