commit 58750fd22ec2920ea87d1f8daf1b9103efa3e183
parent e85e98e8db8d9214d9cdc4bcb38c8ac1ad5bbbb1
Author: oscarbenedito <oscar@obenedito.org>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2019 20:39:37 +0200
Corrections
Diffstat:
4 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/blog/2019-09-09-getting-a-domain.md b/content/blog/2019-09-09-getting-a-domain.md
@@ -9,6 +9,6 @@ After thinking about getting my own domain name for a while and letting the thou
Although I had known about how to get a domain for a while, I didn't have much experience on which companies were "better" or "worse" (since I only needed a domain but no hosting, I am not sure why a company could give me a more appealing offer, since prices are the same in all websites). I finally decided to go with [Gandi.net](https://www.gandi.net) because a known site uses it, I had heard about it on the [Fediverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse), and it looked like a good and reliable company. The hardest part was figuring out which domain I wanted, once that was decided, buying it took around 5 minutes.
-Since I had never seen a DNS record before, configuring my email provider was a little trickier. My provider gave me some lines to copy and paste into the record, but they needed some modification in order to work, so it took me a little while to figure it out. Next part was setting a landing page for my domain: if someone saw my email address and wanted to check what [obenedito.org](https://obenedito.org) was all about, I didn't want them to get a 404. So I designed a very simple page with my name and a link to my email address and one to my GitLab account. Since I don't have a home server or a VPS, I decided to host my page on GitLab (basically because it's free and I don't need a dynamic website). I once again had some trouble setting up the GitLab custom domain—the lines I was given to add to the record weren't the ones I actually needed to add, so that took a bit to figure out as well.
+Since I had never seen a DNS record before, configuring my email provider was a little trickier. My provider gave me some lines to copy and paste into the record, but they needed some modification in order to work, so it took me a little while to figure it out. The next part was setting a landing page for my domain: if someone saw my email address and wanted to check what [obenedito.org](https://obenedito.org) was all about, I didn't want them to get a 404. So I designed a very simple page with my name and a link to my email address and one to my GitLab account. Since I don't have a home server or a VPS, I decided to host my page on GitLab (basically because it's free and I don't need a dynamic website). I once again had some trouble setting up the GitLab custom domain—the lines I was given to add to the record weren't the ones I actually needed to add, so that took a bit to figure out as well.
-I still have a lot to learn about how DNS records work (for instance the difference between a type A or CNAME entry), but for now it works just fine.
+I still have a lot to learn about how DNS records work (for instance the difference between a type A or CNAME entry), but, for now, it works just fine.
diff --git a/content/blog/2019-09-11-joplin.md b/content/blog/2019-09-11-joplin.md
@@ -6,6 +6,6 @@ lastmod: 2019-09-24
---
Two years ago I had an iPhone and, back then, the native "Notes" app worked pretty well for me. However, when I changed to Android I had some trouble finding a similar app or a different one that would fit my needs. For some time I used Google Keep, but I didn't like how the main view would show you the whole note (instead of having only one line per note, which allows more notes to fit in the screen). I changed to Evernote for some time—which was definitely more suited for me—but there were too many ads about getting premium features and, since I didn't need them, I eventually got tired of it.
-Back then I already knew what Markdown was, since I had used it to build a website, and I realised that an app with Markdown support could be a very good alternative. I looked around and finally found [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/), a free/libre and open source app that supported Markdown as well as synchronization—perfect for my needs, since I like having notes backed up in case I lose access to my phone. I have been using it for half a year and so far it has been a great app. I type my notes with Markdown and once I'm done it renders them beautifully. It also let's me backup a copy with Nextcloud which is good since it doesn't force me to do it through Google Drive/Dropbox and on top of that I can set up end-to-end encryption for my backed-up notes! I haven't paid a lot of attention to what algorithm is used to encrypt since I trust my Nextcloud provider, however I know metadata is not encrypted (I'm guessing to make synchronization faster), but that's fine with me. This also allows me to synchronize my notes with my computer, something that I had never thought would be useful before, but as I use my computer more and more (and my phone less and less), it is becoming very convenient.
+Back then I already knew what Markdown was, since I had used it to build a website, and I realized that an app with Markdown support could be a very good alternative. I looked around and finally found [Joplin](https://joplinapp.org/), a free/libre and open source app that supported Markdown as well as synchronization—perfect for my needs, since I like having notes backed up in case I lose access to my phone. I have been using it for half a year and so far it has been a great app. I type my notes with Markdown and once I'm done it renders them beautifully. It also lets me backup a copy with Nextcloud which is good since it doesn't force me to do it through Google Drive/Dropbox and on top of that I can set up end-to-end encryption for my backed-up notes! I haven't paid a lot of attention to what algorithm is used to encrypt since I trust my Nextcloud provider, however, I know metadata is not encrypted (I'm guessing to make synchronization faster), but that's fine with me. This also allows me to synchronize my notes with my computer, something that I had never thought would be useful before, but as I use my computer more and more (and my phone less and less), it is becoming very convenient.
-Moreover, since I use it on my computer and I can arrange notes with the use of notebooks, it is becoming more of a personal wiki than a note taking app. I have a notebook named "Notes", but the remaining notebooks hold information in a less "casual" way. I suppose everyone uses notes that way, but being able to use Markdown allows me to store lots of information in a more convenient way, specially when dealing with links and fragments of code.
+Moreover, since I use it on my computer and I can arrange notes with the use of notebooks, it is becoming more of a personal wiki than a note-taking app. I have a notebook named "Notes", but the remaining notebooks hold information in a less "casual" way. I suppose everyone uses notes that way, but being able to use Markdown allows me to store lots of information in a more convenient way, especially when dealing with links and fragments of code.
diff --git a/content/blog/2019-09-23-upgrading-providers.md b/content/blog/2019-09-23-upgrading-providers.md
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ categories: technology
tags: ["Decentralization", "Encryption", "Privacy"]
lastmod: 2019-09-24
---
-I have been reading a lot about decentralization and not depending too much in one company in the past six months and I realized how much I relied on Google: my email, all my files, contacts, calendars, pictures... Most of my data was stored on their servers. This was inconvenient for three reasons: (1) if something was to happen to Google or my account, I would loose a lot of data, (2) Google doesn't use end-to-end encryption, which means that they (and anyone with access to their servers) can see all my files, emails, etc. and (3) Google already uses all this data (and other it collects) to better know my personality.
+I have been reading a lot about decentralization and not depending too much in one company in the past six months and I realized how much I relied on Google: my email, all my files, contacts, calendars, pictures... Most of my data was stored on their servers. This was inconvenient for three reasons: (1) if something was to happen to Google or my account, I would lose a lot of data, (2) Google doesn't use end-to-end encryption, which means that they (and anyone with access to their servers) can see all my files, emails, etc. and (3) Google already uses all this data (and other it collects) to better know my personality.
Some people might think that the main three problems I have with Google aren't that important. In fact, I have used Google for many years because that was my opinion for a long time. However, the more I read about the issue, the more I realize they aren't minor problems. I realized that for me it is worth it to pay $12 or $24 a year in exchange for privacy. If you are still doubting, [this post](https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.html) might change your mind.
@@ -38,7 +38,7 @@ Most of my files in the cloud were old and not usually needed, they were just on
As for the few files I actually needed online (the ones I use both at home and at college), I now use a USB stick to have them wherever I go, as well as backing them up every once in a while. No need to have them online, and it is faster to plug in a USB stick than log in to Google Drive and download the files (which was what I was doing on all computers running GNU/Linux).
-There is one type of file I haven't replaced yet: anything that was shared is still on my Drive (even if other services offer it, for now I am fine with using Google).
+There is one type of file I haven't replaced yet: anything that was shared is still on my Drive (even if other services offer it, for now, I am fine with using Google).
#### Calendar and contacts
@@ -62,4 +62,4 @@ When looking for all the new services in order to get end-to-end encryption, I a
## Conclusion
-It took me some time to make all these changes, specially my phone's operative system and my email address—I still use the old one with a lot of people, I am progressively updating it. Some of the services are hard to replace and it takes time to get used to the new providers. However, if you are interested in getting privacy when sending personal emails or saving files online, it is worth the change.
+It took me some time to make all these changes, especially my phone's operative system and my email address—I still use the old one with a lot of people, I am progressively updating it. Some of the services are hard to replace and it takes time to get used to the new providers. However, if you are interested in getting privacy when sending personal emails or saving files online, it is worth the change.
diff --git a/content/blog/2019-10-06-dark-theme.md b/content/blog/2019-10-06-dark-theme.md
@@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ The first contact I had with HTML and CSS was about two years ago, when I create
I started looking for dark colors that I liked and I came up with a nice design, now I needed to combine the two designs with a simple toggle JavaScript function. The way I implemented it, the function switched the default CSS file for the one defining the dark theme. However, if you try to change your theme by changing the stylesheet, you will realize that it takes a split of a second for the page to re-render, especially the first time you toggle the theme since it has to download the whole file before rendering the page. It can sound like a minor problem, but it was notable, so I tried to shorten the time needed to toggle the theme. I used a tool (unCSS) that removes unused CSS from a stylesheet, which made the file so much smaller but, although the download time was reduced, the page still took too long to re-render. Looking around online I concluded that my best option was to make only one file using CSS variables, and just change the value by changing HTML elements' classes with the JavaScript function.
-The problem with using variables with Bulma is that it uses SASS functions that given a color, output a different one (and it can't do that if the input color is a variable) so it doesn't *compile*. I tried to change the affected functions with similar ones supported in CSS, but the result wasn't what I wanted, and it changed a lot of things related to Bulma. After some thought I decided to refrain from using a framework and just create a tailored stylesheet for my website. That would allow me to abandon the unCSS tool—which was pretty inconvenient to use—as well as having a better understanding of my CSS file.
+The problem with using variables with Bulma is that it uses SASS functions that given a color, output a different one (and it can't do that if the input color is a variable) so it doesn't *compile*. I tried to change the affected functions with similar ones supported in CSS, but the result wasn't what I wanted, and it changed a lot of things related to Bulma. After some thought, I decided to refrain from using a framework and just create a tailored stylesheet for my website. That would allow me to abandon the unCSS tool—which was pretty inconvenient to use—as well as having a better understanding of my CSS file.
Looking around for simple themes to base my new stylesheet in, I found a couple that, combined, could result in a similar website than the one I had. I based my theme on the [Hugo Paper](https://github.com/nanxiaobei/hugo-paper/) theme (you can see that the cards look very similar) and I added a header (inspired by the [Hugo Grapes](https://github.com/shankar/hugo-grapes/) theme) and a footer. I changed how some elements appeared (such as the tables), I added some more features that I found interesting and I themed it with the colors I wanted. I also used my old site to inspire the new features (especially the header and footer), so it might resemble a site using Bulma, although it is not.
