{"id":15589,"date":"2022-11-27T13:33:59","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T20:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=15589"},"modified":"2022-11-27T13:33:59","modified_gmt":"2022-11-27T20:33:59","slug":"markdown-a-pi-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/?p=15589","title":{"rendered":"Markdown & a Pi update"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because I know you care…<\/p>\n

Previous updates<\/strong>: December 2021: <\/a>An Introduction To Dashboards;\u00a0October 2021<\/a>: Pi Update;\u00a0August 2021: What\u2019s Your Pi Doing?<\/a><\/p>\n

So what’s up with markdown?<\/h2>\n

Way back in December 2014 (Markdown<\/a>) I came across this simple markup language called Markdown. Since I wrote in text editors\u00a0 anyway (Word makes me crazy!) it seemed like a good way to add some simple formatting. Fast forward 8 years or so and I am still using it and use it almost exclusively for note-taking and recording (for posterity) things I am doing. (I’ve got a cheat sheet posted<\/a> for those who are more interested.<\/p>\n

These days all my computer set-up and install notes are in Markdown, my yearly books read<\/a>, and lately, all my ebook and accessibility research have been written in Markdown.<\/p>\n

A few weeks back I had one of those “I wonder if…” thoughts and it transformed my world. You perceive, I had a lot<\/em> of notes and note files going by now and it was getting worse and worse everyday… since I am basically being paid these days to make notes about ebooks and accessibility and I like to give my money’s worth. Frankly it was becoming a big mess of files, folders and disorganized gibberish.<\/p>\n

I wondered if there is a way to render all those markdown notes on a simple website? I’ve done it with my notes on GitHub for Standard eBooks<\/a> but that is a fancy Jekyll installation. And I mean, half the time I am pasting markdown into this WordPress blog and the Jetpack plugin I installed renders it as html so it shouldn’t be that complicated …should it? But a separate WordPress install was just too unwieldy and frankly I have having to log in all the time since WordPress helpfully built in a timer to kick you out after a certain period of time… sigh.<\/p>\n

So that disqualifies my first two choices. So time to do a bit of googlin’<\/p>\n

Enter MkDocs<\/h2>\n

https:\/\/www.mkdocs.org\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 MkDocs is a\u00a0fast<\/strong>,\u00a0simple<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0downright gorgeous<\/strong> static site generator that’s geared towards…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And is it ever. A quick docker install, a bit of reading about how to tweak the interface and voila! A clean, searchable interface that updates every time I hit save.<\/p>\n

This:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Becomes this:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All organized, neat and tidy and most especially searchable. As you can imagine I am slowly making more and more sites and cleaning up a lot of old notes.<\/p>\n

My world has been rocked.<\/p>\n

What’s on the Pi these days?<\/h2>\n

I keep tweaking with things. I did pick up a Pi-400 as a machine to experiment on since I am trying to use the original Pi 4 as a production machine more and more.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Pi-400 is a 4 GB Pi 4 in a keyboard case. For some reason they are actually available where as all the other Pi models are very hard to get.<\/p>\n

The Dashboard Today<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve reorganized a bit but the essentials haven’t changed much. Notable new additions are VS Code Server, MeTube, Home Assistant and Snippet Box.<\/p>\n

VS Code Server<\/h3>\n

VS Code Server is one of the code editors I use to\u00a0 write python. Having it on my Pi as a web-based version is occasionally helpful but it is most useful for editing yaml files and configs for the docker containers so I don’t have to mount the Pi as a drive etc.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

MeTube<\/h3>\n

Is a fast and easy YouTube downloader. Paste in the URL and it downloads the video. Great for archiving favourite shows like Taskmaster.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Home Assistant<\/h3>\n

I bought my first smart bulb. And since I am a cheapo I didn’t buy the expensive Hue that works with Macs, I had to do some hacking to get Siri to recognize it. I will probably do a post later about that whole adventure, but suffice it to say I landed on Home Assistant \u2014 which is a missive open source home automation software package with a huge community. All to control one single bulb.<\/p>\n

But hey it turns on and off everyday all by itself and even turns on earlier if it’s cloudy outside! W00t!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

MkDocs<\/h3>\n

See above \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Snippet Box<\/h3>\n

Snippet box may not be long for the (Pi) world… It’s a great app that allows you to store snippets of code that you use fairly frequently but always forget the specifics of.<\/p>\n

I was using it to store regex’s but I have a feeling I will replace it with a MkDocs site. We will see I guess…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Because I know you care… Previous updates: December 2021: An Introduction To Dashboards;\u00a0October 2021: Pi Update;\u00a0August 2021: What\u2019s Your Pi Doing? So what’s up with markdown? Way back in December 2014 (Markdown) I came across this simple markup language called Markdown. Since I wrote in text editors\u00a0 anyway (Word makes me crazy!) it seemed like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15589"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15600,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15589\/revisions\/15600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macblaze.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}