---
title: "Dusting off the blog"
date: 2024-05-04
---
# Dusting off the blog
_Rasmus Dahlberg, 2024-05-04._

The other week I talked to my friend MC about maybe starting to blog again.  I
know, "starting to blog again" is a bit of a stretch for someone that didn't
post a lot to begin with.  Nevertheless, today I woke up and wanted to see if I
can get this thing going again.  I think it requires lowering the bar for what
needs to go into a blog post.  Somewhere deep inside of me, I still hear the
echo of my old advisor saying "a good thesis is a done thesis".  The same is
probably true for blog posts, and partly why I'm inspired by MC who somehow
[finds the time to write][] consistently about anything and everything.  I will
try to follow suit; not overthinking and just write about _what I want to_.  Who
knows, every now and then I might just post a picture and the recipe of
something really yummy?  I used to like doing that on Instagram, but I no longer
use such social media.

[finds the time to write]: https://hack.org/mc/blog/

Anyway, dusting off the blog started with me migrating my [Hugo][] project (the
website's source) from a private GitHub repository to my self-hosted
[gitolite][] server at `git.rgdd.se`.  In the future, you should be able to
clone it like this:

    $ git clone https://git.rgdd.se/www
    $ git clone https://git.rgdd.se/www-theme

[Hugo]: https://gohugo.io/
[gitolite]: https://gitolite.com/gitolite/index.html

For now it only works with SSH authentication.  I can configure your public key
if you'd like, in which case something like this should work to get the site's
source:

    $ git clone git@git.rgdd.se:www.git
    $ git clone git@git.rgdd.se:www-theme.git

What's quite high up on my TODO list is to configure a web frontend using
[cgit][].  All my public git repositories would then be shown with a user
interface similar to the [Linux kernel][], [Wireguard][], and the many other
projects that all of us like.

Other than having greater control of my git repositories at `git.rgdd.se` (which
is really sweet as I use git for my password manager [pass][] and various
notes), I plan to mirror repositories that I contribute to on other platforms.
This will make it easier to get an overview of the things I'm hacking on, how
nice right?

[pass]: https://www.passwordstore.org/

Back to me dusting off the blog.  What I realized is that I didn't have a clean
separation between my Hugo project and the (somewhat forked) theme I was using.
So, I spent a few hours cleaning this up in two separate repositories now:

  - `www`: where my website's landing page and blog content is.
  - `www-theme`: a fork of [hugo-researcher][] that basically removes unwanted
    CDN trackers, updates fonts and colors, and re-styles the landing page
    avatar.

I find it fascinating how a site's appearance can change by fonts and colors
alone.  It's quite different from the [hugo-researcher screenshot][], isn't it?

[hugo-researcher]: https://github.com/ojroques/hugo-researcher
[hugo-researcher screenshot]: https://github.com/ojroques/hugo-researcher?tab=readme-ov-file#screenshot

If you ever get curious about which font a site is using, I can recommend the
[Fontanello add-on][] by Fred Bergman and Lars Wästfelt.  Lars developed
[Sigsum's brand assets][].  Since then I've paid a little bit more attention to
fonts and colors.

[Fontanello add-on]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fontanello/
[Sigsum's brand assets]: https://git.glasklar.is/sigsum/project/documentation/-/tree/main/assets

That's about it for this time.  It was fun cleaning up the site as `www` and
`www-theme`.  And to _actually dust off the blog_ afterwards, thus breaking the
silence.  Hopefully it doesn't take me another year or two before I write here
again.

[cgit]: https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/
[Linux kernel]: https://git.kernel.org/
[WireGuard]: https://git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-monolithic-historical/