Photo by Rafael Cordones
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where –
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't matter which way you go.
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
And so it begins, with this post, a new iteration of my personal blog.
What can to expect in this new iteration? The photoblog aspect will remain, as before, an important part since photography is one of my favorite hobbies. Nevertheless, this time I will spice it all up with some technical posts on my Java (the ecosystem) interests, experiences and projects I contribute to. I believe that technology alone doesn't take you very far, i.e. technology is always developed and used in a context (people, organization, market, ...) and one should not forget that. Therefore, expect the articles in this post to have a bit more than "just" technical stuff.
How often? You should not expect more than one post a month. In any case, I will announce new posts on Twitter, so you can definitely follow me on Twitter to get notified.
New domain?! Yes! One of the things which took me a while to decide, was whether to stick with the previous domain casadelhuerto.com or again (pronounced alá Forrest Gump) find a new domain name.
That domain comes from the name of a place called Casa del Huerto (house with a garden) that my family has in the south of Spain. A place I try to visit and enjoy at least once a year. About a week ago, I happened to come across Dabblet, a great project from Lea Verou and it suddenly striked me that there's no better name for a personal blog than my own name! I quickly checked the availabilty of cordones.me and BINGO! I had it. Thanks Lea!
Feedback? Yes... and much appreciated! And brutal (constructive) feedback encouraged... it's one of the best ways to improve... fast!
The Making-of
Some implementation notes of this new version of the blog:
Blog engine: definitely WordPress! Why? Because even if, as a Java (ecosystem) developer I was really, really tempted to go the Play Framework route or even taste some of that AngularJS super-heroic JavaScript elixir... to my knowledge, nothing beats WordPress sheer ecosystem size of plugins, short-codes, ... you name it!
Yes! I agree that the authoring experience on WordPress is a PITA but the publishing experience (SEO plugins, RSS feed generation, ...) is top-noch.
These are the main plugins I am using (so far) in this website:
- Crayon Syntax Highlighter: for source code syntax highlighting (website).
- Disqus Comment System: for the comments on posts (website).
- Ultimate Maintenance Mode: to display a background image and an overlayed window with a message while the site is down (plugin website).
Typography: looking for a close cousin of Helvetica, I ended up finding the Lato Font via Google Web Fonts. Created by Łukasz Dziedzic.
Icon sets: Social Media Icons by Paul Robert Lloyd and Pavel Ciorici's WPZOOM Social Networking Icon Set.
Photos: unless explicitly stated otherwise, all photos in this blog are created by me. The squared ones with the border around are done with my iPhone with the Hipstamatic app. While the technical quality of the pictures one can take with a smartphone is far from that of DSLR cameras, there is nothing like a smartphone (which we always carry around) to capture moments in time. In a certain way, using Hipstamatic is for me to pay homage to one of the masters: Jacques-Henri Lartigue.