Hindsight + Taking a new Approach

I have had this blog online for a bit over a year, and comparing the experience to my expectations before starting, I can say that some questions have been answered, some lessons have been learned, and some hopes were not realised.

First, to pat myself on the shoulder a little bit, the greatest successes. they are, each in a different way, the first post on this blog, and the last post before this one. The first one because it has helped me argue the point for distribution effectively, and the last one before this because, by getting posted on Hacker News, and bringing about 1500 visitors to this blog, it helped me realize the size of the audience out there. Experiments that produced interesting results. Oddly, neither of these posts are what I set out to post in this space. This is not to say that the other posts have not been enjoyable.

On with the self-criticism. For one thing, the content that I have produced is too little, and too disjointed. I chalk this up to my bizarre mix of perfectionism and eclecticism. Especially the perfectionism blocks me from posting, and this is not a good thing. While my list of ideas on what to write here has grown to number 557 items, my posts are much, much fewer, numbering just 16. Also, the blog tends to mix geeky applied topics with highly abstract thoughts. And, as a result, this blog has not fostered an audience that can carry discussions. Which is perfectly reasonable given the lack of any form of consistency in posting rate or topic.

So I am going to be making some changes to the material I post here. The goal is to have a steady stream of articles with a rough consistency regarding their topic. The geeky stuff will move to a new location, and I will possibly make (yet) another blog for research-related issues. I will cross-link or cross-post the articles between blogs if necessary. This space will remain for the introspective discussions and attempts at philosophy.

Secondly, out with perfectionism. The high threshold of quality I have set for posting here must be demolished. By posting less, I learn less, I practice less, I think less, I hear less from you, which at the end of the day means I produce worse content even if I devote significant time.

To sum up, I will set out to write short-ish frequent posts, consisting mostly of thoughts and observations that have been in my mind for a while. A sort of brain-dump if you will. What the result of trying this will be, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Using Dropbox as a Host for Static Websites.

I have been a huge fan of dropbox for a while. What they have acheived is nothing short of amazing. I recently had an epiphany that may make the implications of their synchronization paradigm even more interesting.

What if I could use dropbox as a host for a static website?

Dropbox has a feature that allows you to make some files public simply by dropping them on your 'public' folder. It turns out, that placing interlinked html files works just fine. Case in point:

http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/117449/page1.html

I presume images, etc. would work just fine as well.

What makes this observation interesting is that combined with the synchronization infrastructure of Dropbox, this means that you can keep your static website right in your desktop, edit it with your favourite editor (WYSIWYG if you have to), and have it instantly available online. It may not be the best idea for everything, but for a number of basic uses, it might just be a massive step forward. One of the most difficult steps for beginers to muster, is the need for FTP. Dropbox-as-a-host completely sidesteps that and lets new users easily build their websites.

Of course, once a nice little hack is found, the next thought is to consider what can be improved and streamlined:

Can we incorporate dynamic elements to this scheme?
Can the ugly URL be replaced with something better?

I gave myself very little time to write this post, opting to write it now rather than postpone, so these and many other potential questions, my dear readers, I leave as excercises for you.