Recently re-inspired to start to blog, I decided to open – same as Jay Faulkner – with a meta post about why, what to expect, and how I (will) do it.

Why I Want to Blog

If I start to learn a new topic, I feel like a total beginner. But the more I learn about something, the more I can draw from related topics to generate a more complete understanding of how it works. We all go through this. But at which point is it okay to talk about it as if you were knowledgable about the topic? I would say, do it earlier than you think, be honest about your state of understanding, and do not be afraid to be wrong (as long as it does not kill anyone). Writing is understanding.

When you write – or speak – about a topic several things happen. You are forced to form complete sentences and express the idea as clear as you can. While you do, you might discover that you are still missing pieces or that your current understanding is wrong is some way. Another thing you might notice is, that you are unsure, if it is correct. Again, do not be afraid to be wrong but take the opportunity to learn more. Maybe there is another way to look at the concept that might be easier to explain. Writing about topic or concept can be helpful to someone reading it as well as writing about the learning experiences itself. My hope is to write about topics where I am on the way up from the valley of despair (Dunning–Kruger effect) or make the valley not as deep. I currently only write into my personal notes – mainly for documentation and findability. But it is too easy to just jot down bullet points and not actually understanding what you have written. I hope blogging deepens my understanding of things and also helps others understand the topic a little bit better.

Inspiration

I read some other tech blogs like Florian Haas, Michael Stapelberg, and Kristian Köhntopp. I hugely respect all of them and enjoy their different content. I also enjoy the content liveoverflow produces on YouTube.

What to Expect

There is not set path for what you will find here in the future but I have some rough ideas what topics to cover. Subject to change but stuff I currently thing about:

  • debugging issues and learning experiences
  • git, gnupg, gaming on Linux, i3, restic and systemd, scripts, vim, zsh
  • Obsidian: documentation, note taking
  • maybe opinions: remote work
  • eventually: slides to talks

How I Blog

Most importantly – since this is something new to me – irregular and opportunistic. If I find something interesting enough, you will find it here.

On the technical side: The repo syphdias.github.io contains this page’s contents as markdown files and configuration files. GitHub Actions are being used to use hugo with the theme PaperMod to generate a static page on the branch gh-pages. It is then hosted by GitHub Pages.

There is a RSS/Atom feed you can use and I might enable comments if I am in the mood.

If you find mistakes in any of my posts, feel free to contribute a pull request.