Tuesday, 11th June, 2024

It must be that time of year again as I’m thinking about a new blogging platform…not for this site, I still like this one and don’t feel any need to change it. It’s for my amateur radio blog. Mostly trigger by the fact I’ve not written anything on it in ages and I’ve got lots of things I want to write, but I just never do it.

Usually when that happens I decide the problem is that it’s running on a bad choice of blog platform. Particuarly of note is if it’s Wordpress and my neverousness of running a database and so on, vs. just having plain text. There’s really no reason why I need a database, and it’s always the ease of images and using the app on my phone that draws me towards it.

So now I’m thinking that I should move it to a static site generator…but which one…plus I’m looking at easy options like blot.im, or bearblog.dev, etc. They’re nice and have lots of advantages and generally have a good philosphy. However, I then think spending money on hosting is unecessary and I’m still not entirely in control. Blot and bearblog are both the same price a year. Reading the bearblog docs but I do think a simple static site with github build chain is what I should start doing.

I also think about using 11ty as the javascript parts can do interesting things and I think up lots of interesting things but would I ever do them? There’s also Quarto that I moved my main site to. It’s a static generator but has lots of bells and whistles, but again, do I need all that?

Setup my allstarlink node with SIP this morning (it’s all just asterisk anyway), and now I’m thinking of IP phones in the house and the kids would enjoy calling each other. They’re often cheap on ebay so maybe I’ll get a couple and have a play. Technically, I could have a handheld radio and use it to call phones on the network. Even the extent of a repeater in any country in the world that’s connected to the Allstarlink network. Of course, people will point out we have this…in our mobile phones…but not as fun, plus there’s no monthly subscription!

There’s also Pika, which it seems I found in December last year.