A few days ago I have decided to use Jekyll to generate my new blog, and start blogging seriously. I mean, create some serious content worth sharing.

In the past I haven’t really felt committed into any blogging platform, mainly because of three things

  • Usually the blogging platform has some sort of “lock-in” feature, which basically means they usually “accidentally” lack an excellent “export” functionality. This makes me very uneasy, since I felt I am creating stuff for other platforms, but not for myself. And I do like to keep stuff to myself if possible.
  • WordPress, Google Blogger and stuff like these with a WYSIWYG editor are really over-complex for me. I know they have a very sophisticated content editor, but I really don’t like them. Jekyll uses simple markdown files to organise “posts”, which is really a natural and smart way to do so.
  • I don’t like using web editor. I do prefer editing stuff in my own Mac as much as possible. With Jekyll, now I could just put all my “posts” into my Dropbox and take it anywhere as I go. And I could work on my post anytime and publish them later. To write in markdown in your own computer with your own favourite markdown, this is really a enjoyable thing is to do by itself.

Why that’s pretty much the reason why I chose Jekyll.

I did take a look at Octopress, but the Brandon Mathis expresses some of his thoughts in Octopress.com, which you could check out at here. Basically he talked about what’s wrong with Octopress and what he intended to do with it, which is to work on Octopress 3.0.

So I decide to wait for Octopress 3.0’s actual release before diving into it. As a result, I’d like to keep things simple and stupid for now on Jekyll. After all, Octopress is built on Jekyll anyway.


###And the deeper question.

Why do I start blogging seriously?

Well, to put it frank, honest, and plain.

The most important reason is I felt I am out of job now. And I find it extremely hard to prove to others that I could do stuff(so they are willing to hire me). And I am really not good at writing resume. By starting a blog, I’d like to talk about all kinds of stuff here, proving that I could “get shit done” elegantly and responsibly, and also start attracting some like-minded people along the way.

Well some may say I could start my own start-up now, but I do like to settle down my tomorrow’s breakfast first, before moving on. So for now I will just keep some side projects for fun.

The second reason is I think I enjoy expressing and the third is I would like to give back to community.

But the second and third reasons are kind of trivial for now, at least for a soon-will-graduate student like me, and at least for now. Finding the prefect job with the prefect people match is now my first priority.

So do expect more posts coming soon, actually very soon.