BinaryDigit

Migrating my Hugo Website to Neocities and Deploying with GitHub Actions

Mon, 19 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Neocities
#

I’ve always loved the idea of Neocities and have tinkered with my free site there for a few months but never landed on a long term project. Only recently I learned that you can use the Neocities API and CLI to push a site to your space! It’s awesome and available on the free tier.

Recently I’ve seen more and more people on the supporter plan where you can host unlimited sites, have increased bandwidth, use custom domain names, and support open source and the small web. Today I decided to become a supporter since for $5 a month is a great value and I wanted to migrate my main websites from Netlify to Neocities.

GitHub Actions
#

I’ve learned about GitHub Actions and realized this makes deployment much easier since I don’t have to push my code to GitHub and then push it to Neocities. A small task right now, but why not learn how to automate it, right?

I ran across the every amazing website of Sophie Koonin and how she deployed her site using GitHub Actions. She explains perfectly how to get your Neocities key and add it to GitHub. The one problem I ran into was that Sophie uses 11ty, but I use Hugo on this site. After searching some more, I ran across John Bowdre’s blog post on how to Deploy a Hugo Site to Neocities with GitHub Actions - just what I needed!

My Workflow
#

I had to fiddle with my workflow but the below is what ended up working for me, since I don’t use the exact same setup as others:

name: Deploy to Neocities
on:
push:
branches:
- main
concurrency:
group: deploy-to-neocities
cancel-in-progress: true
jobs:
deploy:
name: Build and deploy Hugo site
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Hugo setup
uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2.6.0
with:
hugo-version: '0.121.1'
extended: true
- name: Checkout
uses: actions/checkout@v4
with:
submodules: recursive
# Build the site with Hugo
- name: Build with Hugo
run: hugo --minify
# Push public dir to Neocities and clean up any orphaned files
- name: Deploy to Neocities
uses: bcomnes/deploy-to-neocities@v1
with:
api_token: ${{ secrets.NEOCITIES_TOKEN }}
cleanup: true
dist_dir: public

I hope this helps you just like the blog posts above helped me get in the right direction! If you’re on Neocities and want to follow me, say hi there or on Mastodon!

Small Web Blogs Compared - Updated

Tue, 13 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Remember when I said below “And don’t be surprised if I write a new update in 6 months when I change my mind to another service. 😅” …. I’m back already updating my post 😂

I’ve found one feature that’s turned me off of Bear blog - There is no way to delete images once you upload them. I realize how much I want to upload images easily since I’m a visual person and really like sharing photos or cool images of things I like. So I’m back on Scribbles to test it since it’s super easy to do off of the things and it’s free for the moment. I’ve also re-enabled tinylitics since it’s a neat service and I do like the simple analytics that bear blog had.

I’m sure I’ll update you all next week with different findings as I use more services 🤣

Original Post:
#

My Week
#

During the week I was reading the 32bit cafe and Mastodon, and made a list of small web platforms that I wanted to try. Ever since I set up WordPress over again, I haven’t been happy with the experience. It’s bloated and slow, I only wrote a couple of posts, and I kept fiddling with themes and plugins instead of writing. I’m naturally a fiddler with code since I love making and changing aethestics of themes and things. The reason I’m looking for simple blogging software is to:

Blog more, even if they are short random thoughts. I found my old Tumblr and WordPress archives and miss reading about those parts of my life.
I don’t really want to update Hugo (running on this site) or 11ty for blogging, it’s too much work for a short post. I want a decent editor interface, with markdown and abiliity to upload photos and link from my personal gallery or some.pics.
I want to be able to enjoy the writing experience with good simple UI
I want to be able to change themes and then edit them as I want to - colors, fonts, links.
I don’t mind spending up to $5-6 a month for a service, as long as I can export it when needed. I want to support the platform and feel that’s about what I’d pay. I had micro.blog which was great, I love the activitypub integration; but sometimes complicated with theming, also confusing when looking up profiles, and things broke more frequently than I wanted.

Down to Three
#

I whittled it down to Scribbles, Pika, and Bear. All services that are specfically made for micro blogging and on the small web.

I really loved the idea of Scribbles, other blog discoverability, and Vincent is wonderful and responsive, it just doesn’t have enough of the above features that I wanted right now. I will keep afloat on updates to that service for sure!

I then signed up for Pika and Bear. I absolutely loved the easy UI of Pika. You sit down, pick a theme color, font, and you’re ready to go. You are able to adjust CSS as well, but I didn’t have much to change.

When I signed up for Bear, immediately I noticed how much I could customize on the free tier. I’m able to not only customize how my blog looks to the reader, but how it look to me in the dashboard CSS! I can add a basic styling to buttons (since by default it’s quite …bare🥁, and change the fonts and size while in the editor. It helps me tremendously. Herman has clear docs and for the pro plan at $5 a month you add a custom domain, image uploading (on the free tier you can only link from another source which is fine but not always ideal), has analytics (not a big deal for me but might be nice to check), run JS scripts, an email subscriber list (which I may or may not use), and ability to add code to the head and footer. You can also see a disovery list of other Bear blogs.

For me, the winner will be Bear. Pika is also still new, so I will also be keeping an eye out for updates from the team at Good Enough. I love what they do and currently signed up for Letterbird and Album Whale.

I look forward to more updates from both Pika and Scribbles! And don’t be surprised if I write a new update in 6 months when I change my mind to another service. 😅

If you have any other small web blog platforms send them my way on Mastodon! Thanks for reading 🥰

App Defaults

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I finally caught up with the infamous Hemispheric Views episode “Duel of the Defaults!”.

I love the humor and comradery of everyone on the show. I even saw Robb Knight create an amazing page dedicated to everyone’s app defaults. So here’s my list across Mac and PC for current day (Feb 2024). 😀

✉️ Mail Client: Mail.app / Fastmail.com

📨 Mail Server: iCloud/Fastmail

📝 Notes: Obsidian

✅ To-Do: Reminders.app

📷 iPhone Photo Shooting: Camera.app

📚 Photo Management: Photos.app

🗓️ Calendar: Calendar.app with Fastmail

🗄️ Cloud file storage: iCloud / Mega

📰 RSS: NetNewsWire w/ Inoreader sync

📇 Contacts: Contacts.app / Fastmail backup

🕸️ Browser: Floorp (Firefox fork)

💬 Chat: iMessage / Discord

🔖 Bookmarks: Floorp/Firefox sync

👓 Read It Later: Omnivore.app

📜 Word Processing: Google Docs

📊 Spreadsheets: Google Sheets

🛝 Presentations: N/A

🛒 Shopping Lists: Reminders.app

🧑‍🍳 Meal Planning: N/A

💰 Budgeting & Personal Finance: N/A

🗞️ News: TV/Reddit/Podcasts

🎶 Music: Spotify / SoundCloud / VirtualDJ

🎧 Podcasts: Pocketcasts

🔐 Password Management: 1Password

Feature Photo by Dmitry Chernyshov on Unsplash

Gitea for the Cafe

Tue, 06 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I saw the news that the co-founder of Github was banned via Hacker News - tweet here. Looks like it was taken care of pretty quickly, and is just a reminder than anyone using a third party service, no matter who you are, can get removed at any time, even if by mistake!

I had my original Instagram account banned with no warning and no explanation. Extremely frustrating. I couldn’t get it back and support was abismal. I was sad about, but also was already on my way off that platform by deleting my images. I’m glad I didn’t rely on that account for Twitch or keeping in touch with many folks.

Since I’m able to spend a little bit more a month on services, I decided to use PikaPods and spin up a Gitea instance. It was very easy, hardly any configuration needed, I was able to set up custom domain name, and it was cheap. The minimum specs that were enough for me to run a server is about $1.90 a month. I decided on this method rather then manually pushing to Codeberg since they don’t offer repo mirroring due to performance issues. I didn’t look up if Gitlab or Sourcehut do mirroring but this is better.

Gitea in the Cafe

If I have the energy and patience I might make a small Gitea or Forgejo instance on my Raspberry Pi since it’s for backup, but this is perfect for now.

The Joy of Old Tech Shows

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I love waking up in the mornings, making a cup of coffee, and seeing what Twitch streams are online. Today I noticed the thumbnail of the OldTimeyComputerShow channel and it featured Leo Laporte, to my joy, along with Patrick Norton, on TechTV. I absolutely loved when we had this channel at home (I was fortunate to grow up in a cable TV house) and it brings me back to my adult youth. This episode was aired in 2001 and was talking about computer firewalls and privacy online. How the times haven’t changed much 😂 I wonder if these episodes are available on the internet archive?

Edit: THEY ARE!

I did find some Revision 3 content so I’ll check out if they have TechTV, my ultimate favorite nerd show. And yes I do follow everyone in their different endeavors who came out of TechTV current day!

Time to lose all my time on the archive downloading episodes :D

Achievement Unlocked! 🎉

Fri, 02 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The goal I’ve had for 20 years is complete! It’s taken everything through every job I’ve had, part time, full time, during unemployment months, using savings, when I lived overseas in the UK, when I lived on my own, when I lived with my parents, when I lived with roommates. Every month for 20 years I paid a student loan payment - even when if it was a small amount.

That burden is now GONE! Yesterday I made my final payment and today it cleared! 🥳😭

Paid in full!

I have a sense of peace that I can’t really describe. True freedom and happiness is being debt free (at least until if I start a home mortage or car loan again! 🤣). I need to enjoy this for as long as possible. It’s given me hope to be more financially prepared for the future and I finally feel put together. I guess it’s never too late achieve a goal huh?

I celebrated yesterday with a fun DJ stream too! I was very grateful for anyone who tuned in to hang out and vibe with me!

B celebrating on Twitch

🥰

Goals for February

Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

For these next upcoming weeks, these are the goals I have in my head:

Personal Site (here)
#

Create a /uses page
Start my Friday series that I used to do on my old micro blog called “Link List Friday” with cool links I’ve found that week
Maybe convert to 11ty if I like how my other site turns out

Professional/Portfolio Site
#

(What do I even call this?)… A career site? Porfolio site?

Keep learning 11ty and add webmentions and/or comments
Start writing up a timeline to make a psueudo resume for myself (but don’t be too detailed), yet still make it fun and “me”
Remind myself that I don’t want to go back to the corporate world. The job I haven’t isn’t so “corporate” but I still want to do cool fun creative things. I have no idea what that means for me.

Offline Things
#

Start to draw again. Paper/marker pencil, or iPad. I’ll try both but I need to use my brain in ways without text.
Take photos, even if they are of boring things in the house. Practice the basics, practice lighting.
Use my walking pad more

Is this alot? I suppose, but writing it down helps :D

Goals for January

Sat, 13 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t believe it’s 2024! These past couple of months have been good so far. My mindset has changed since I feel better in terms of health and knowing where I stand with things to take care of. I feel like I’m in control of my mind, body, and goals.

B having a blast on stream!

Twitch
#

For Twitch, I set up the downstairs space as a “tiny studio” for my DJ mix streams. I’ve already gone live twice and have had a blast! I look forward to just walking downstairs, booting up, and easily starting a stream. It makes a huge difference when you a) aren’t fatigued like before b) you have settings you don’t need to change. The problem I had with doing two different styles of streams in my office were the constant changing of settings and programs. So that’s resolved! I also got some awesome lights for the background. I’ll update more things I’m sure.

Health
#

I’m taking medication to handle my pre-diabetes, and have lost 5 pounds since November. It’s very slow, and with the holidays I got a bit derailed, but I didn’t gain anything back at least. Time to start back up. I might create a subdomain/micro blog to keep track of how I’m feeling that’s not a standard part of this cafe. It’s important for me to keep track of things since I just get back into bad habits way too easily. I don’t have a choice any longer!

Career
#

I’m not quite sure what to do here, but I know I need to start thinking about another job or way to make the same amount of money I’m currently making. I still enjoy some parts of tech, but really don’t like the way many things are going, and don’t want to do what I’ve done before (mainly in the support space). I’m going to focus on fun projects and pay attention to social media like Mastodon, discord, and the better parts of “mainstream” social media. It would be cool to work in the indie web space, or finally get a creative job. …somehow :)

My Aunt's Flan

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Ingredients
#

~1/2 cup sugar to caramelize
1 can condensed milk
1 can evaporated milk
6 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup milk
pinch of salt
add to blender

Steps
#

Heat sugar in small pan on medium-high heat with 1/2 teaspoon of water. Stir occasionally until sugar melts and is a golden color. Remove from heat as it will still be melting.
Pour into an oven safe pyrex dish or baking pan
Bake in a water bath at 350°F until a knife can cut through it cleanly (or what my mom calls “a little wiggle on top” 💓)
When ready to serve, flip into deep service dish or pan
Cool in fridge for a few hours or ideally, overnight

Flan Stock photos by Vecteezy

Twitch Recap 2023

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

One thing I realize this year is that my streaming game hasn’t been strong, which is fine at the moment, but I’d like to improve. I started doing DJ mixes on Twitch in March and was in my element, having so much fun and loving when chat comes in and hypes up the vibes with emotes and words of encouragement. I love entertaining folks and music is the universal language for us all! Music streams are a great break from doing gaming or chatting streams, which I also love, but find tough to do if my energy isn’t in it. Granted streaming in general has been tough this year due to changes in my body and lack of energy, but I’m on a good road to getting back to my old self - my mind, my body, and getting back the energy I want for 2024. I’m in a lovely supportive space with room to grow and want to take advtange of that!

BinaryDigit’s Twitch Streamer Recap 2023

BinaryDigit’s Twitch Viewer Recap 2023

How was your Twitch recap? Reply on your own site referencing this post or send me a message!

Not a Blogger

Sun, 10 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0000

You know what dawned on me today? After many years of short form “blogs”, I don’t want to be a blogger. I miss tumblr style/short form content. I don’t sit down and write long stories or articles. I’ve changed a bit and I think it’s why I struggle with fomo and going back and forth to social media and back to my own platforms trying to blog.

I love working on my website, making pages, and aesthetics. For example I signed back up for Tumblr and am so happy browing and reblogging. On Instagram, I usually consume but don’t really post, unless it’s for streaming or music content. On Mastodon I usually consume, boost, and sometimes post short things. It’s just funny how you realize you change after a while. And I don’t always need a blog, but when I want to write something I can do it here as a note, which is the whole point of a digital garden, and send it out to socials.

This is just a reminder to myself that I can do whatever I want here. That’s the whole point of the indieweb and to have fun again online. 💖

A personal photo gallery

Sun, 26 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I’m so happy to get Chevereto installed on a new domain! They had a great sale on their one time purchase software, so I grabbed a copy. I wanted some more bells and whistles than their free version.

I’m going to use this to upload galleries for travel (to share with friends) or blog posts. I still need to upload more to photos Glass, but those photos are edited and curated.

To this gallery I’ve uploaded some photos from TwitchCon that just passed. Next up is most likely photos when visiting NY around Christmas. And most likely a dog photo album 🥰

My Website Setup

Fri, 17 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Static Site Generators
#

For ages I resisted static site generators. I couldn’t wrap my head around the complexity of them, or why I would need one. But then, I got to know the indie web, aka, the small web. The movement of people going back to focus on their own websites, owning a domain name, and publishing content on your website then out to other services, aka POSSE - Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. I always wanted to keep that motto all these years, but kept jumping around from a social blog to another social blog, to Wordpress, and back. Now I’ve landed on micro.blog, but even want to avoid using that in the future if I can help it. It helps save a few bucks a month as well as learn the intricacies of static site generators.

Tinkering
#

Since micro.blog is built with Hugo, I went back to trying to learn it. I first edited my micro.blog theme with the custom editor, and then decided to give Hugo a try on my own. Lo and behold, it finally “clicked”. I tried a couple of themes, and then landed upton this one, named Blowfish. It’s so awesome! It’s incredibly customizable and helped me learn so many details about Hugo. I then was able to push my git repo to Netlify and have it hosted there for free! I’m super happy that I’m able to finally have a digital garden (cafe) and blog on my own domain, not worried about a major service going down, an acquisition, or paying a ton of money for hosting each month. I hope I can keep it running for a while and never go back to hosting again (unless they offer something that I couldn’t resist). Next up, I’ll try to import old posts.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to my Digital Cafe

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my attempt at a new site with Hugo, finally, on my own domain and hosted via netlify/github! I’ve attempted to do many things here:

Add webmentions, since ideally that would be the way folks respond or comment to my self hosted blog. I really like the fediverse and the small web, so hopefully I’ve installed this correctly. If not I’ll keep trying :D
Added back the CS.SJoy.lol webring, and I’d like to set up the Indieweb web ring (first I need to finish some auth specs)
I’d love how to figure out how to import existing blog posts from my micro.blog, so eventually I can keep everything here. I’m not sure if this is possible, and it’s not a huge deal anyway if I can get everything set up properly. I can restart a blog at any time.

If you enjoy your stay, feel free to subscribe via RSS or follow me on the fediverse! @binarydigit.cafe@binarydigit.cafe

About & Contact

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m B, a Xennial who grew up when the internet was young, just as I was. My family bought our first computer in 1997, and I become fascinated with how computers worked, how the web evolved, and being online a bit too much!

I’m originally from New York and currently living in Michigan. My work background is in tech (I was a systems engineer, part time web dev, and now a manager). I would love to find more diverse folks in gaming, tech, music and all things creative. I love to travel, take photos, game on my PC, PS5 and Switch, stream, tweak code and always learning something new. ✨

I’m doing a digital overhaul for the next few months and would like to make this site a digital garden, or in my case, a digital cafe; a personal space to gather projects, what I’m working on, thoughts, and notes. You can read about my projects or get in touch with me below.

Email
#

hi@binarydigit.cafe

Contact Me
#

Coffee
#

If you like what I do, you can buy me a coffee!

Music Mixes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I love to stream DJ mixes on Twitch, and sometimes record sets offline - follow me below!

RSS Feeds
#

HearThis feed | YouTube feed | MakerTube feed

Audio Mixes
#

I’m uploading audio mixes to HearThis.at to try it out for a bit!

Listen to House VGR EDM byBinaryDigit on hearthis.at

Listen to Trance DubStep Latin Mix byBinaryDigit on hearthis.at

Video Mixes
#

I upload offline sets to YouTube and sync them to MakerTube.

Twitch Chat Commands

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000


!clip	Creates a clip and adds to discord automatically
!nocontext	Add text to quote then - username
!ass, !bonita, !slay	Badwonton TikTok video
!lurk	Thanks for the lurk - I appreciate you!
!hug @username	Chatter has hugged chatter! Thanks for sharing the love! ♥
!handcheck	HAND CHECK! 👐 👀 👐
!pushdoor	This is a PUSH DOOR situation! ✋🚪😤
!epic	Add me on Epic
!thicc	“Thicc thighs save lives. "
!activision	Add me on Activision
!discord	Current discord link
!recipe	Today B is making {food/recipe here}
!spank	OH! chatter slapped chatter’s booty !….do it again binary27Gasm
!slap @username	OH! binary27Gasm chatter slapped chatter with la chancla! Chancla
!steam	Add me on Steam
!hoot	HOOT ( o Y o ) HOOT
!raid	both raid and subraid commands
!binary	Brit sayins “biiiiiiinary”
!dadjoke	random dad joke
!ban	KRS song clip
!vibecheck	..It’s a vibe! 😌 📳 😎
!lub or !love	B saying “lub lub” with gif
!clip	Creates a clip of the last 30 seconds in the livestream and posts to Discord automatically
!hype	HYPE! 🙌🏽 🌟 💙 🎉 HYPE! 🙌🏽 🌟 💙 🎉
!subhype	binary27Rave binary27Love binary27Bootaywiggle SUB HYPE!
!song	Displays current Spotify song that’s playing
!gif {text}	gif displays with text entered
!pronouns	“My name is B or Binary and I use she/they pronouns!
!ded	B is ded. She’s been ded X times.
!donate / !tip / !kofi	If you like my content visit streamelements.com/binarydigit/tip or ko-fi.com/binarydigit to send a coffee! Thank you!
!rage	buzz sound with gif
!clap	applause sound
!binaryjam	Binary doing the catJAM
!bttvhype	BTTV emotes
!catjam	catJAM catJAM catJAM emotes
!lights	“The bars behind me are from Govee, the rest are Philips Hue”
!poggers	Keith saying “pooooooggers”
!socials	B’s social media links
!uwu	Keith saying “UwU”

BinaryDigit

Migrating my Hugo Website to Neocities and Deploying with GitHub Actions

Neocities #

GitHub Actions #

My Workflow #

Small Web Blogs Compared - Updated

Original Post: #

My Week #

Down to Three #

App Defaults

Gitea for the Cafe

The Joy of Old Tech Shows

Achievement Unlocked! 🎉

Goals for February

Personal Site (here) #

Professional/Portfolio Site #

Offline Things #

Goals for January

Twitch #

Health #

Career #

My Aunt's Flan

Ingredients #

Steps #

Twitch Recap 2023

Not a Blogger

A personal photo gallery

My Website Setup

Static Site Generators #

Tinkering #

Welcome to my Digital Cafe

About & Contact

Email #

Contact Me #

Coffee #

Music Mixes

RSS Feeds #

Audio Mixes #

Video Mixes #

Twitch Chat Commands

Neocities
#

GitHub Actions
#

My Workflow
#

Original Post:
#

My Week
#

Down to Three
#

Personal Site (here)
#

Professional/Portfolio Site
#

Offline Things
#

Twitch
#

Health
#

Career
#

Ingredients
#

Steps
#

Static Site Generators
#

Tinkering
#

Email
#

Contact Me
#

Coffee
#

RSS Feeds
#

Audio Mixes
#

Video Mixes
#