2020-01-01 - Introduction
(original .ipynb)
I wanted to try writing blog posts using a homebrew blogging platform. I really quite like using Jupyter Notebook, so I wrote a static site generator which produces a simple blog from a folder of .ipynb files. It's written in Python, uses the nbformat lib for handling the notebooks and jinja2 for page templating (yes, I know about nbconvert).
I noticed that while I reading a couple of technical books, I would often only recall the general idea of what I had just read and had no good way to collect these and reflect on them. So this is a good excuse to scratch two itches at once.
Below is a quick demo of what code snippets look like:
# the neat thing about using jupyter notebooks is that I can easily
# embed code snippets and display their output
def greet(name):
print(f"hello, {name}!")
greet("hacky blog platform")
hello, hacky blog platform!
Look we can even do pictures:
It would be nice if there was a Jupyter kernel that let you create diagrams using ditaa, but for now it's enough to be able compose blog posts using code and markdown.