#scriptogram

I up and changed blogging platforms again. This blog is now on tumblr. One side effect of pointing my benlog.net domain away from scriptogr.am and over to tumblr is that inbound links to the existing posts are now effectively broken.

Fortunately the consequences aren’t as grave as that might sound. This blog hasn’t been around all that long, this is only the 10th post, and there were not lots of links here, except via social media.

I loved using scriptogr.am, which allowed me to update my blog by composing simple, markdown formatted text files and saving them into a dropbox folder, locally on my computer. But a few things were frustrating me:

The “lightweight” site was loading very slowly

The scriptogr.am folks don’t communicate very much about their development plans and progress

I didn’t like the available themes (design templates), and I did not want to spend tons of time tweaking code to get a design I was happier with.

I found myself wishing I could use tumblr’s functionality for interacting with and re-publishing existing web content.

I missed the tumblr blogging community and wanted access to that audience.

And the fact is, I can continue writing for the web without the encumbrance of browser-based web interfaces. I’m writing this post in one of my favorite markdown text editors, which recently added a publishing feature allowing me to send posts directly from the desktop editor to tumblr. I’m also experimenting with stackedit, which was the tool I used to pretty quickly import my existing blog posts to this new tumblr.

Hungry Blues has been a major part of my life since 2004. Blogging there changed my life and set me on the course that I am still on.

But I rarely blog there—or anywhere—anymore. Maybe I got busier. Maybe I’ve been more tired. Maybe I’ve been blocked. Maybe I let the instant gratification of “real-time” social media take the place of this other kind of thinking and writing.

Whatever the reason, starting again and starting simpler seems about right. I manage most of the rest of my computing and writing life with text files, Markdown and Dropbox. Finding scriptogr.am, which allows me use those same essentials to blog, inspired me to start up again. I’m not sure what the future holds here. I might end up back at hungryblues.net. But I think I like it over here for now.

Background

I'm an amateur digital photographer. I've been doing this since about the summer of 2009. I photograph for personal reasons. Often my photos are of interesting nature-focused subjects. However, I'm also known to take a large number of photos at family events. I enjoy taking photos of sports, typically soccer or martial arts that my daughters participate in.

MobileMe

Given this, I was immediately impressed with Apple's MobileMe galleries and the ease with which I could share my photos with friends and family. I had the ability to create a unique username and password for each gallery. My friends and family had a visually pleasing means of browsing the photos and downloading them individually or in bulk.

The galleries were the only part of MobileMe that I really used. When Apple announced they were shutting down MobileMe and specifically the galleries, I started looking for alternatives.

On top of the photo galleries, I need basic blogging capabilities to talk about the latest photo or series of photos. I'm not an avid or regular blogger, so my blogging needs are simple. Quite frankly, I haven't found anything nearly as easy to use and flexible as MobileMe.

Some Alternatives

I've tried SmugMug, Zenfolio, and Picasa Web. I've tried creating my own photo galleries using RapidWeaver and web hosting. I've also tried WordPress with Photocrati and web hosting. While all of these solutions appeal to different people, they are far too complex for my needs. They either offer a bunch of capabilities I don't need (such as photo selling), or they have cumbersome configuration and management implementations.

For the services that come close to meeting my sharing needs (Zenfolio and SmugMug), there is an associated cost. I'm not opposed to paying for a service. I already pay for Dropbox storage which has a much broader usage value beyond photos, so I can't justify paying for a photo-specific service. I bought Photocrati, but that also requires paying for hosting service for WordPress.

Flickr

I've stared to upload photos to my Flickr account, which had remained mostly unused since I joined in 2009. The update provides a visually appealing view of my photos. Unfortunately, the sharing options are still too restrictive for my needs. I want to create sets with specific username/passwords and I'd like to enable/disable downloading original photos on a per set basis.

Dropbox

I've been using Dropbox for sharing photos with friends and family. Creating a link is easy and doesn't require me to add everyone's email to a "gallery", nor do they have to create accounts. The photo gallery look and feel is minimalistic, but it works. Friends and family can see the photos and download individual photos at their leisure.

Scriptogr.am

I've even experimented using Scriptogr.am and Dropbox together. Scriptogr.am offers a basic Markdown-based blogging capability and stores my posts on Dropbox. Since I'm already using Dropbox for some photo sharing, it seemed to make sense.

Unfortunately, Scriptogr.am hasn't had any updates in quite some time. It looks like development has stalled. So I don't want to invest too much of my time getting set up with a service that might not be around very long.

Current Solution

As usual, I stopped blogging, as you can probably tell, but once again I'm going to pick it back up again. But with a few differences:

A lot of my posts before were simply videos or images and links to cool stuff. That stuff is more Twitter-worthy and therefore doesn't really belong on a blog. So, I've decided that stuff is going to go on my Twitter and I'm going to start posting longer, proper blog posts. That probably means fewer posts, but better content (hopefully)!

Also; I've switched themes and decided to start writing posts in Markdown using the very nice Mou app for Mac and then use Tumblr's Email publishing features to post easily, because quite honestly, Tumblr's web interface is horrible.

Scriptogram: A highly-visual blogging platform for writing nerds