Hello World...

… I guess.

Seems like it’s finally time, after several failed attempts, for me to start writing a blog. It will not be a regular thing, but I hope I will find enough time to publish at least two moderately sized posts a month. This is supposed to be the first one, so let me get on with it.

Story behind this blog

It all started few months ago when I decided that is finally time to start writing blog. Well, I have not actually decided to write any blog posts at that time, but rather an blog application.

You may freely question logic behind it and ask “Why, o why, would anyone write yet another blog application?” or “Really? Does the world need one more blog application?” and this blog post should answer some of those questions.

No, world does not need another blog application

Well, at least, not by me and definitely not right now. I have just decided to experiment a bit more with Ruby without utilizing Rails in order to get a better insight to what is happening behind the scene. Since blog is one of the easiest things I could think of, and I wanted one, that is what I have started with.

This application is (It’s a continuous process where I add things when I think of them) being built on Sinatra framework. It uses some neat stuff like:

• Haml for markup
• Scss which is an alternate Sass syntax for styling
• Compass stylesheet authoring framework
• MongoDB as database
• CoffeeScript for scripting

Posts are written in Markdown and stored in DB as such so that they can be rendered as HTML in your respected browser using Kramdown. I am also thinking about providing a PDF version of each post at some later point since Kramdown can convert Markdown to Latex as well.

Some of these things I am really familiar with (Compass, Sass, Haml) and use them every day. For others, this is an excellent opportunity to experiment and learn more about them.

This small and simple blog application, no matter how lame, is open source and can be found at Github. It is published without a license (or README for that matter) and you can do whatever you want with it or any part of it.

If you are an experienced Ruby coder (Ninja, Rock Star, Guru, Queen of England, or any other mega-title you have been given or prefer to be called by), check it out because any and all advice on code is greatly appreciated.

If you are not, never mind, drop me a note in issues and I will try to find some time to respond.

What will I write here

Well, mostly boring stuff I find exciting. I think that would be coding in various languages, server side technology, ranting about politics and other things I find annoying, perhaps, bit about entrepreneurship in small country of Bosnia and Herzegovina and some other things that will cross over my mind. I’ll see about it when I get to it.

Plans for the future

I should probably do a lot of css styling for elements yet to come. I am planning twitter integration for next version. And finally, because I want to write, at least, bilingual posts (English and Bosnian) I should think more about a proper way to design I18n database structure with MongoDB.

Note

Design for this version of the blog was mostly blatantly stolen and greatly inspired by @Sirupsen’s blog http://sirupsen.com/. Check it out, it’s awesome!

I forgot to mentioned him when I initially published this post, although I did intend it. I know it was not necessary, but credit should go where credit is due.

Have a fantastic day!
Armin Pašalić