At work today, we were discussing centralizing our operational documentation so that everything was in one place. I stressed the fact that it didn't matter what platform we used, as long as it was applied consistently and everyone used the same system together. In our particular case, this meant using a slightly older technology because the key people involved had lots of experience with it and they would be able to simply continue using it with little change. We didn't need all of the great bells and whistles provided by the newer platforms available.
I realized that I needed to take this same advice to heart and apply it to myself. A while ago, I had switched to static blog generators to create a set of web pages to put on my GitHub Pages site. In theory, this idea meant that I would have much more control over my blog, but it also introduced several extra steps to the process of getting things written down and published to the Internet. And like most people, each extra step dragged down my productivity way out of proportion to what you might think. The old saying is that perfect is the enemy of good, or in my case good enough. While trying to get the perfect layout and look with a static site, I ended up going through several generators and I was not getting any actual writing done. This is just silly. So, here I am again, back at a basic blog engine. This way, I can get actual content out of my rusty old brain and out into the world, where other people can learn from my mistakes, and occassional flashes of brilliance.
