As I wrote about yesterday, I have been using my time to build a blog. This effort stems partly from annoyance and partly from a desire for extra learning. The blog is built on a static site generator called 11ty, and I’ve developed it to a point where I am relatively happy with it. However, with all the messing around and developing a replacement for what I already have, at what point do you just say ‘Forget it’ and give up?

There’s been a considerable amount of work that has gone into my new blog. It’s a website filled with static files, but it also has a CMS backend to manage it all. I’ve added webmention and micropub endpoints to make publishing frictionless. It wasn’t an easy task, but it has all been done to replace something that I already have. My makeshift setup pales in comparison to just paying $50 a year and running it on micro.blog.

This gives me a setup that someone else manages, with no hassle, and it’s (relatively) able to do the things I want it to do. With the caveat of a bit of flakiness here and there and some opinionated choices regarding features. Remove all the extra social things, and it becomes a very cost-effective blog hosting solution, with many more features than my static site built with Netlify.

These smacks in the face don’t just happen with blog hosting. There’s a stark realisation sometimes when, after a few days, the reality becomes apparent that the new phone you got does exactly what the old one did. The new productivity app you fiddled with for hours doesn’t mean you get more done. A fancy new pen or notebook achieves the same thing the cheap ones do.

Don’t get me wrong, I have learned a great deal of new skills and used some of it to pass modules in my qualification. However, while messing around with micropub endpoints this morning to try to get my new thing to do exactly what the old thing does well, at some point you just give up.