Noah's Blog

A couple of years ago, I decided to buy a new keyboard. One of the podcasts I used to watch was dl.tv. It has since been off the air for a number of years now, but I remember Patrick Norton talking about Unicomp.

I ended up buying a Unicomp UltraClassic. It was one of the better things I bought for my computer. There isn't really a good way to describe to someone why they should buy a more clicky, mechanical keyboard. I can assure you, however, that after you try one, you will certainly understand the appeal.

I recently decided to bring my Unicomp to work since I realized that I was doing most of my typing there instead of at home anymore. The only thing is that now I feel like I need a new mechanical keyboard at home. I certainly don't need one, but it sure is tempting. I'm still thinking about it, but for now, I'm back on a standard rubber dome keyboard at home.

After a long hiatus from Minecraft, I decided to attempt to "reboot" my server so to speak. One of my good friends, Ian, sent me a tweet:

@noahw i've been playing a lot of minecraft cause unemployment and let me tell you, i have such ideas if/when server goes back up— Gristle McThornBody (@ebobenson) January 28, 2015

Which sparked my interest to get our old server back up and running. I was sad to see that CraftBukkit (Which is the backbone of Minecraft I used to add some additional features to our server) had been sent a DMCA takedown request

It seems lucky that another project called Spigot not only took the place of Bukkit, but is supposedly a little bit faster. My hope is that in using Spigot and the latest version of Java 7 (rather than 8), our server can continue to run and stay stable, which was something I was having a hard time accomplishing using vanilla Minecraft server and Java 8.

In today's world, starting a blog should be easier than it ever has before.  One has countless platforms in which to choose, all with more features than any web developer of the early aughts could have ever dreamed of.  So why did I find it so incredibly difficult?  Ignoring the fact that one must have creativity and motivation to continue a blog, I had a hard time just trying to get a blog setup that even looked nice.  Why is it so hard: the software is too much.

One can argue that Microsoft word is a well-developed and mature word processing solution capable of so many different things.  So why, then, would somebody ever choose to use Notepad (a product also developed by Microsoft) when Word is arguably so much better?  It's the same reason why people prefer physical buttons to advanced touchscreens in cars: sometimes simpler is better.

I had an incredibly hard time trying to find blogging software that was simply enough for my to easily integrate into my current site design and was simple enough to customize or add features if I wanted to.  I am one person. I don't need multiple content editors, a review process, add-ons, modules, galleries, etc.  I wanted something to share content, that is all!  So what you see here is a custom blogging solution I've written in VB.NET.  It is a simple application that allows me to post my content and organize it on my website in a simple, date-ordered list.

I plan to document this software and share it on my site as open-source code as soon as I have the time to do so.  I will be posting a short series on the software as I add new features and get things documented.  Stay tuned!