a liveblog

.gitignore

.gitignore
.venv/
venv/
index.html

2015-08-01.rst

Saturday 2015-08-01

About the blog (this is a test)

This blog was created in preparation for my trip to Europe in about 3 weeks. I wanted to see how difficult it would be to make a blog that could be updated on the go, version controlled with git, and would not require me to log into a laptop or server to make changes.

I ended up using PageUp (link in the footer), along with Github Gists (also linked in the footer) to make a mostly useful platform. New changes are pushed to Github, my personal server pulls those changes every 10 minutes, and this page is rebuilt pretty painlessly.

Best of all: with a git client on my phone I can make updates anywhere that has a signal and I don't need to bust my laptop out. I wrote this post while I was on the toilet!

It wasn't as easy as using an established platform like Twitter, but just like with everything I try to make, I put something together I would want to use and interact with. If a friend started a liveblog for a specific event I would follow it over their Twitter feed any day. Plus I don't have to deal with the character limit of Twitter.

2015-08-02.rst

Sunday 2015-08-02

All of my travel is booked, plane tickets are bought, and vacation time gotten.

The only thing left to do now is to write the talk. Easy-peasy.

2015-08-23.rst

Sunday 2015-08-23

All Packed

So I'm all packed up and ready to go.

Left: Chargers, electronics, entertainment, toiletries, water bottle, wallet, etc.

Center: The bag, the Write the Docs shirt I'll be wearing.

Right: Clothing. Gameboy SP at the top.

Not the perfect bag of things to bring to Europe, but certainly solid and most of it practical. I'm packing an extra bag for all of the trinkets I'll bring back.

Let me know if you want anything (if you know how to contact me we're close enough for you to ask.)

2015-08-24_2015-08-25.rst

Monday 2015-08-24 & Tuesday 2015-08-24

PDX -> AMS

The flight was uneventful. It was the longest one I've ever been on, which is always a rough milestone to overcome, but actually one of the better flights I've taken. TIL Delta's service does not suck.

I usually sleep the entire way to <insert location here>, but I managed to stay productive (coding, reading, writing) for the majority of flight. I must say, it was nice to have my own personal screen to catch up on Last Week Tonight. I've wanted to watch that show for ages...

[Lazy bliss not pictured]

So good.

Day 0: Part 1

So I wrote down some thoughts about Amsterdam thus far:

• People keep using fake made up words. What's up with that?
• The roads are tiny but people keep driving on them. It looks like chaos but I haven't seen an accident yet. I'm kinda impressed. People aren't even yelling at each other about almost getting hit.
• The toilet paper squares are actually rectangles. It might just be the toilet paper at the place I am staying. Either way, I can't deal with this aspect ratio change. I might not be able to poop in Amsterdam.
• COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE COFFEE
• The trains are so quiet. I didn't want to get off...
• BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES BIKES

Here's some pictures I took:

The view from the location I am staying at.

A panorama from the park outside of where I am staying.

Some goats I found.

Aaaaaaaand naptime.

Day 0: Part 2

I finished today by going to the Red Light District. There were a lot of half naked ladies in windows. They kept winking at me. I'm pretty sure they liked me; it's not like they definitely have a monetary incentive to get my attention or anything.

I ended up finding a bar and enjoying a Belgian White Beer. It tasted surprisingly good

So this is what it feels like to drink in a bar... neat.

2015-08-26.rst

Wednesday 2015-08-26

The Rijks Museum

I'm not sure which street I took this panorama on, but I think it looks awesome. It captures the Amsterdam canal street pretty well.

Today I went to the Rijks Museum and had a bit of a culture overload.

Everybody got selfies with Van Gough, so I got a selfie The Milkmaid. I realize in retrospect that it doesn't work as well.

In other news, this is my face when I realized the bathroom stalls go from floor to ceiling.

Yes, this photo was taken in the bathroom stall.

And this is a classy restaurant I found with classy lamps.

They were closed, otherwise I would have gone in.

Some Travel Tips

Although I have not completed my trip, I have some tips to share with you about travel.

• Always bring a 'Go Bag' when you go out for the day. Fill it with snacks and necessities and leave plenty of room for memorabilia you get while out and about.
• Try something new before defaulting to your comfort zone. This is true for food as well as experiences.
• Always being plenty of snacks and water. You will regret it if you don't.
• Be patient. You invested a lot to get here, make it count.
• At a museum, take a picture of the plackard after taking a picture of the piece so you don't forget what it's called.
• Don't be afraid to sit in a café and just read for a bit. Sometimes that's as culturally diversifying as a day in a museum or city tour.

2015-08-27.rst

Thursday 2015-08-27

Today I visited the Van Gough museum. I tried to get in using my mom's Amsterdam Museum Pass, but it didn't fly there like it did at the Rijks.

It was pretty fun, but the entire experience felt very artificial and plastic. The paintings were great to see in person, but everything around the pieces felt a little tacky. My opinion will likely change about it, but I did not enjoy the Van Gough museum nearly as much as I enjoyed the Rijks Museum, despite my love for Van Gough and his works.

I spent the rest of the day walking around and cashed in early. Jetlag + lots of walking = ready for bed by 3pm.

2015-08-28.rst

Friday 2015-08-28

My Butt Hurts...

Today I went on an awesome bike ride all the way to Haarlem (15km west of Amsterdam). I didn't actually do anything there; I just went, picked up snacks, and headed back. I'm 99% sure I missed out on an awesome Haarlem exclusive cultural experience, but if was really more about the journey (I originally set out to bike to the coast and Haarlem was my compromise to that).

I found a very neat park near the Western edge of Amsterdam; I ended up spending an hour or so there having a picnic.

This was a cool abandoned building I found. I like abandoned buildings.

I also found this awesome trash can for people riding bikes. It's genius.

PONIES

After the bike ride I was very tired. I slept a lot. And yet not enough...

Small (and Large) Appreciations

Here is a list of some of the traits of Amsterdam (and what I have experienced of the Netherlands at large) which I appreciate.

• They have signs that tell you you're going the wrong direction.
• You can bike to another city and be on bike paths the whole time!
• Bikes are easy to use and aren't shoe-horned in as a second class mode of transportation.
• The trains are so quiet. Why can't America have quiet trains?

This list will probably grow as I remember things. All in all I like the city and the country. You should visit if you haven't already.

2015-08-29.rst

Saturday 2015-08-29

I Strongly Dislike Travel

I would say I hate travel, but that level of hyperbole is literally the worst thing on the planet...

My strong dislike for travel comes mostly from my personal inability to trust the systems that will get me to where I am going. If I have a flight in one week and I have to take a bus or train to the airport, I will spend the entire week running through my head "When is my flight? Umm days, yeesh hours, and ack minutes. How am I getting there? The oh God bus leaving at some time, somewhere bound. Once you get there you will go through security which will take between 5 minutes and 2 hours. Budget your time appropriately. Any of these systems can fail and based on experience they have" over and over and over. The stress is compounded when people don't always speak your language and you forgot to eat a proper meal the morning of.

That is why I am 3 hours early to my flight from Amsterdam to Prague. I regret nothing.

Currency is Weird

It is going to take me forever to remember 25 here monies is about 1 home monies. Everything is gonna feel really expensive I bet...

I Made it to Prague

I made it to Prague just fine. They have a cool train system.

Way cooler than the underground train systems I'm used to...

2015-08-30.rst

Sunday 2015-08-30

Prague Day 1

I went on a wonderful city tour of Prague provided by Write The Docs. We crossed some bridges, saw some castles, and experienced many wonderful parts of the city.

Here's me in front of a church eating some gelato.

After the tour I was very hungry and tagged along with some folks from my tour group on a journey to get food. We went to a restaurant that brought us beer on a model train.

This is the train that brought us beer.

Here are some picture I took of the buildings in the city. I like the architecture a lot.

They are so cool. I haven't found the words to describe why, but the asthetics please me.

After the tour and food there was a Write the Docs Conference Reception (aka meet & greet) where I got to hang out with many of the attendees of the conference. There was food and fabulous people.

I did not have a hard time falling asleep that night.

2015-08-31.rst

Monday 2015-08-31

Write the Docs: Day 1

I spent most of today enjoying the Write the Docs talks and (air conditioned) venue. I took some notes.

• The keynote about the imposter syndrome was very relatable. The coping mechanism of framing goals in "I want to do..." instead of "I want to be..." seems like it could be effective. I liked the quote "Make better mistakes tomorrow".
• The second talk about naming things was very good and got me to think about the structure of documentation metadata (using labels vs taxonomy vs thesaurus, etc). This will be useful someday I'm sure.
• The third talk about 🎨 and the use of emoji was 👌. I never considered using them before, but I will going forward.
• The fourth talk mentioned using Selenium to test docs, that just makes sense. It's so obvious I wish it was easier.
• The API Docs talk mentioned that you should give your user the data they will be working with as a top level priority instead of an after thought. This will definitely be a priority for me. I already try to give plenty of examples (since I speak example natively), but I'll be more Conscience of it.
• The Design Docs with Disability in Mind was interesting. The big takeaway for me was keeping the elderly in mind.
• The meta talk about crafting a presentation was delivered very well and mentioned adding contrast slide decks... I should have listened to this advice...
• The second to the last talk of the day covered the plethora of rules we place on documentation. Having just recently helped established some style guides for the OSL docs I think we did a good job of giving some leeway to the writers. The extreme example of 'Limited rules docs' (e.g., the Python Documentation) does not really work well for the reader in my experience.
• The final talk by some MDN writers equated docs to a garden. The metaphor worked surprisingly well.

For a full list of the talks and their descriptions, visit the event's schedule.

Day 1 was pretty 👍. We ended the night with 🍻 at a venue called The Pub. Many conversations and laughs were had. I like this crowd.

2015-09-01.rst

Tuesday 2015-08-31

Write the Docs: Day 2

Just like yesterday, I spent most of today enjoying some wonderful talks as well as stressing out -- I mean totally not stressing out -- about my own talk.

The Write the Docs Staff saying thanks.

• The first talk of the day was titled "Judas Priest Ate My Scrum Master", which has almost nothing to do with Judas Priest or eating or scrum masters; instead it talked about things that are well known issues and a lot of laws (Brooks' Law, Lehmann's Laws, Pareto Principle, Conway's Law, etc) that nobody talks about that much but can be super helpful to consider when working in an industry.
• The second talk covered different types of user interfaces and what to consider when writing error messages, troubleshooting pages, product tours. It was something I hadn't considered having primarily written command line tools with pretty limited and well established interface guidelines.
• Then I gave a talk. It was a talk. I'll post a video of it once those get put up online and you can decide if it was good or bad.
• The talk after mine was a nice history lesson and wanted the audience to reflect on what documentations can learn from documentation practices of the past. The TLDR on that one is that it used to suck to write technical docs even more than it sucks now.
• Then there were a bunch of lightning talks. One talk from a twitter employee (there's a fun name for them I'm sure) mentioned that gathering metrics are is important because without metrics everything you do is just guess and check.
• The next talk "MacGyvering your docs" brought up the fact that the best documentation toolchain will (should?) only help existing developers. A better toolchain won't attract new devs. That was something I think a lot of projects can lose sight of.
• The talk after that covered a team of scientists studying clouds (water clouds not internet clouds) using computer simulations. They wrote and documented a piece of software and they ended up publishing their program's documentation in a scientific journal. It's already been sited and everything. I hadn't even considered that as a possibility (publishing docs as a scientific paper).
• The next two talks were pretty short (15 minute) talks about putting the data where the users need it and an introduction to screen-casting. The first was good for documenting things like an API and the second was good if I ever need to make a screen-cast. I doubt that will happen, but you never know!
• The last talk "All roads might not lead to docs" held too main takeaways for me: The quote The Purpose of this document is ________ and the mailchimp voice & tone guide, which is a very good document I suggest you read it (the title is pretty self explanatory I think).

For a full list of talks given at the conference, check out the event's schedule.

The after party ended up happening at two venues since we got pre-maturely kicked out of the first one; we made the best of it and I got to talk to Anna Jaruga (the cloud research scientist) as well as a Mozilla Development Network writer, both very interesting people.

2015-09-02.rst

Wednesday 2015-09-02.rst

A Personal Day in Prague: (Almost) Just Pictures*

I went on a hike, found a great view at the top of a hill.

'Eli'

* I swear it's not because I'm lazy and don't want to write. The pictures just capture it better.

2015-09-03.rst

Thursday 2015-09-03

Travel Travel Travel

Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel. travel. Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel.

Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel. travel. Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel. travel. Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel. travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel.

Travel travel travel travel travel travel. Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel. Travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel.

Sleep.

README.rst

Liveblog

This gist contains the source code for a simple liveblog. The 'live' version can be seen at http://elijahcaine.me/liveblog.

The page is generated using PageUp along with a cronjob that runs every 10 minutes. The script run by the cronjob pulls updates from the gist and builds an updated html page. It's actually very simple and easy to manage.

As an added bonus, if you have git setup on your phone it can be painlessly on-the-go (provided you have a pretty good grasp on the RST syntax quirks).

Setup

Install the requirements
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
run pageup
$ pageup
Add the ``update_liveblog`` script to your cronjobs
$ crontab -e

Add the following code to your cronjobs

*/10 * * * * sh /path/to/liveblog/repo/update_liveblog.sh

This will run the update script every 10 minutes.

background.png

content.rst

Euro-trip Well-After-The-Fact Blog

My little liveblog / travelblog thing, covering everything leading up to and including my trip to Amsterdam and Prague to speak at Write the Docs - Europe.

Please excuse the spelling errors, English is only my first language.

Oldest posts are at the bottom, newer posts are at the top.

* Well-After-The-Fact = It was originally a liveblog, then a live(ish) blog, then I took two weeks off to write the last three days worth of posts -- basically I'm just glad I was able to stick with it to the end, even if it was a bit delayed getting finished.

Note

Posts for this liveblog have ceased. Keep an eye out for my next trip when I will try my hand at live-blogging again :)

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requirements.txt

docutils==0.12
Jinja2==2.7.3
MarkupSafe==0.23
pageup==1.0
requests==2.7.0

style.css

/*
    This is an example css file for pageup*, a ReStructuredText based static
    page generator. Enjoy!

    * https://github.com/elijahcaine/pageup
*/

body {
    background-image: url("background.png");
    background-repeat: repeat-x repeat-y;
}

#main {
    width: 95%;
    max-width: 700px;
    font-family: monospace;
    font-size: 1.35em;
    margin: 0 auto;
    color: black;
    padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 5px;
    background: white;
}

.note {
    width: 100%;
    text-align: center;
    background: #99DDFF;
    margin: 0 auto;
}

.note .admonition-title {
    font-size: 1.5em;
    font-weight: bold;
}

template.jinja

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

        <title>{{ title }}</title>

        <link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='style.css'>

    </head>
    <body>
        <div id=main>

            {{ content }}

            <h5>Built using <a href="https://github.com/ElijahCaine/pageup">PageUp</a> and <a href="https://gist.github.com/ElijahCaine/352cb120743af2dde7c8">a Github gist</a>.</h5>

        </div>

    </body>
</html>

update_liveblog.sh

#!/bin/bash

LIVEBLOG_PATH=/var/www/main/liveblog

# Source the virtualenv which has pageup installed
source $LIVEBLOG_PATH/.venv/bin/activate

# cd to the directory with the source files
cd $LIVEBLOG_PATH/

# pull the most recent updates
# gh a remote set to the https:// url for this gist
git pull gh master

# build the most recent content
pageup build

# probably not necessary
deactivate