Thanks for the link. I think I have a different idea of professional than this. Medium as a community gives me the SJW vibe somehow, while the platform may be good. I guess if the target audience would not so much “story writers” but people who want to publish technical articles, howtos, more “dry” and objective stuff without all this we-are-all-awesome-let’s-all-hug vibe.
Interestingly, I looked at your public blog and if I don’t find anything and have to go down the blog/names/themes/colors path which I don’t want to, I might go with GitHub pages as I think the community there may just that kind dry, objective, technical that I am looking for. Is GH P less insane to set up as Wordpress or Blogger.com?
I haven’t set up wordpress or blogger, and I haven’t set up GHP in like two years. But I think it was… not exactly difficult, but frustrating at times. Like, everything almost just worked out of the box, and then making it actually work involved fighting with a bunch of different components that didn’t always give good feedback and couldn’t always be customized quite like I wanted.
Currently I don’t actually have it set up quite like I’d want. I want pagination and an archive and tagging. And I think math rendering on the front page is broken for some posts. But to fix those, I’d have to fix them myself, or at least go searching for fixes that other people have created.
I think the friction involved with editing is also bad for my writing productivity. My most recent post, I mostly drafted on tumblr before copying over to GHP. That may or may not be a problem for you. (It’s not a fair comparison, because I also hold myself to lower standards on tumblr. But I’ve written a few things there that would have been suitable for my main blog, and I enjoyed being able to just write them and edit in real time and then just click ‘post’.)
(Not linking my tumblr because I don’t want it easy to find by people searching for me.)
Having a local dev copy where I could make changes without pushing them to github all the time would improve matters, but I expect that setting it up and keeping versions in sync and so on would be a PITA.
I cannot think of things like a blog name. I just want to write my ideas and share things I know a bit about. And all Wordpress themes I found so far look extremely unprofessional. Overly decorated, not magazine look, few of them are black text on white background like a proper magazine, fixed width so not scaling well for various devices, and generally looking very “personal”. The funny part is, bog standard default HTML without any goddam css does look just about the most professional, because it is the simplest and looks like a paper—HTML was originally meant for the publication of scientific papers and I think browser developers respect this so the default is black text on white, Arial font, and so on.
If—as it seems—you actually care that much about the presentation of your blog/article repository, then either find a minimalistic theme or make it yourself.
You can, of course, go completely old-style: get web space somewhere and write HTML by hand.
I don’t recommend entirely free hosting providers because they tend to come with too many strings, inconveniences, and ads for sexual-financial enhancement, but finding a cheap provider should not present any difficulties.
Price is not really the issue. Rather the issue is that they tend to expect everybody has Visa/Mastercard or PayPal or bitcoin. The same is true for Steam store, Google play store, Playstation store, it is sort of annoying, I just tend to buy gift cards in the electronics shops to fill up my account balance on them. Actually I sense there is a fairly big global gap in the payment provider market. If only a gift card type bitcoin purchase was possible with physical cash in the shops…
Because I use a Maestro card or cash. Visa / Mastercard simply does not fit into my mindset: they are credit cards, and as long as I am gainfully employed, why would I need credit? Credit is for the times when you cannot afford something.
Not having credit cards is a classic commitment device. Getting into a mindset of buying everything on credit then paying it off at the monthly payday is a bit of a slippery slope (no fallacy: there is an actual mechanism of slipping here: basic human desires), only one step away from buying everything on credit and then NOT paying it off due to overspending or other reasons. Only spending money one actually has is a generally good safe habit.
I would change my mind if there would be rewards like frequent flyer miles tied to credit cards but they are not common here.
About the reasons—Maestro is not entirely unknown in the Anglosphere given that most UK bank accounts are also linked to a Maestro card, and UK-based websites are fairly good at accepting it. Ignoring a market of a few hundred million of relatively well-to-do people is something that only perhaps be justified by time i.e. it is on the to-do list of the major US based online vendors, just not done yet.
why would I need credit? Credit is for the times when you cannot afford something.
You’re misunderstanding the point of credit cards. They are not about borrowing from the bank (well, they could be but they should not be). They are all about convenience.
I use credit cards. I never ever had a balance on any of them—I pay them off each month. It is convenient (and pretty much necessary for certain things like renting cars) and I do not borrow anything. I don’t have slippery-slope problems with respect to buying “on credit”. Oh, and at least in the US finding a credit card with decent rewards (typically, 1-2% of your purchases refunded to you) is not hard.
I don’t have slippery-slope problems with respect to buying “on credit”
But bear in mind that some other people might. If DeVliegenderHollander suspects he may be one, then avoiding credit cards could be a very sensible move for him.
There are Visa debit cards. I have one. I have not had problems paying anyone with it.
[EDITED to add two other things:]
I don’t know how readily available Visa debit cards are in Austria; perhaps your bank offers only some different variety of debit card.
In the UK, at least, there are regulations around credit cards that don’t apply to debit cards and that give buyers considerable reason to prefer paying by credit card even if they have no need to borrow. Specifically, if you buy something with a credit card then a piece of legislation called the Consumer Credit Act makes your credit card company liable (as well as the seller) if the seller fails to meet the terms of their contract with you. So, e.g., if you buy something with a credit card and then they just don’t deliver, or they go out of business, you can get your money back from the card company. So there’s a big advantage to using a credit card for substantial purchases. Again, this may be different in Austria.
The funny part is, bog standard default HTML without any goddam css does look just about the most professional, because it is the simplest and looks like a paper
It looks the most something, but I don’t think it’s professional. Professional things have careful typesetting, and limited line lengths, and inline math that doesn’t completely jar with the rest of the document. I think that a long document written in pure HTML might give off a vibe of “I know what I’m talking about”, but I also wouldn’t expect people to actually read it.
(Also my default font isn’t Arial. It’s some kind of serif.)
Thanks for the link. I think I have a different idea of professional than this. Medium as a community gives me the SJW vibe somehow, while the platform may be good. I guess if the target audience would not so much “story writers” but people who want to publish technical articles, howtos, more “dry” and objective stuff without all this we-are-all-awesome-let’s-all-hug vibe.
Interestingly, I looked at your public blog and if I don’t find anything and have to go down the blog/names/themes/colors path which I don’t want to, I might go with GitHub pages as I think the community there may just that kind dry, objective, technical that I am looking for. Is GH P less insane to set up as Wordpress or Blogger.com?
I haven’t set up wordpress or blogger, and I haven’t set up GHP in like two years. But I think it was… not exactly difficult, but frustrating at times. Like, everything almost just worked out of the box, and then making it actually work involved fighting with a bunch of different components that didn’t always give good feedback and couldn’t always be customized quite like I wanted.
Currently I don’t actually have it set up quite like I’d want. I want pagination and an archive and tagging. And I think math rendering on the front page is broken for some posts. But to fix those, I’d have to fix them myself, or at least go searching for fixes that other people have created.
I think the friction involved with editing is also bad for my writing productivity. My most recent post, I mostly drafted on tumblr before copying over to GHP. That may or may not be a problem for you. (It’s not a fair comparison, because I also hold myself to lower standards on tumblr. But I’ve written a few things there that would have been suitable for my main blog, and I enjoyed being able to just write them and edit in real time and then just click ‘post’.)
(Not linking my tumblr because I don’t want it easy to find by people searching for me.)
Having a local dev copy where I could make changes without pushing them to github all the time would improve matters, but I expect that setting it up and keeping versions in sync and so on would be a PITA.
If you actually want “professional”, you can just store your articles on arXiv or SSRN.
Okay. In-between? :) Think of something like Bryan Caplan on Econlog.
What is the problem with getting a WordPress or a Blogger account, picking a pre-built theme that you like, and… done?
I cannot think of things like a blog name. I just want to write my ideas and share things I know a bit about. And all Wordpress themes I found so far look extremely unprofessional. Overly decorated, not magazine look, few of them are black text on white background like a proper magazine, fixed width so not scaling well for various devices, and generally looking very “personal”. The funny part is, bog standard default HTML without any goddam css does look just about the most professional, because it is the simplest and looks like a paper—HTML was originally meant for the publication of scientific papers and I think browser developers respect this so the default is black text on white, Arial font, and so on.
If—as it seems—you actually care that much about the presentation of your blog/article repository, then either find a minimalistic theme or make it yourself.
You can, of course, go completely old-style: get web space somewhere and write HTML by hand.
This sounds like a valid approach actually. I like the oldschoolness of writing HTML. Any recommendations of free hosting providers?
I don’t recommend entirely free hosting providers because they tend to come with too many strings, inconveniences, and ads for sexual-financial enhancement, but finding a cheap provider should not present any difficulties.
Price is not really the issue. Rather the issue is that they tend to expect everybody has Visa/Mastercard or PayPal or bitcoin. The same is true for Steam store, Google play store, Playstation store, it is sort of annoying, I just tend to buy gift cards in the electronics shops to fill up my account balance on them. Actually I sense there is a fairly big global gap in the payment provider market. If only a gift card type bitcoin purchase was possible with physical cash in the shops…
Yes, and there are reasons why it exists.
But given that you are gainfully employed in Austria, I don’t see why do you have payment issues.
Because I use a Maestro card or cash. Visa / Mastercard simply does not fit into my mindset: they are credit cards, and as long as I am gainfully employed, why would I need credit? Credit is for the times when you cannot afford something.
Not having credit cards is a classic commitment device. Getting into a mindset of buying everything on credit then paying it off at the monthly payday is a bit of a slippery slope (no fallacy: there is an actual mechanism of slipping here: basic human desires), only one step away from buying everything on credit and then NOT paying it off due to overspending or other reasons. Only spending money one actually has is a generally good safe habit.
I would change my mind if there would be rewards like frequent flyer miles tied to credit cards but they are not common here.
About the reasons—Maestro is not entirely unknown in the Anglosphere given that most UK bank accounts are also linked to a Maestro card, and UK-based websites are fairly good at accepting it. Ignoring a market of a few hundred million of relatively well-to-do people is something that only perhaps be justified by time i.e. it is on the to-do list of the major US based online vendors, just not done yet.
You’re misunderstanding the point of credit cards. They are not about borrowing from the bank (well, they could be but they should not be). They are all about convenience.
I use credit cards. I never ever had a balance on any of them—I pay them off each month. It is convenient (and pretty much necessary for certain things like renting cars) and I do not borrow anything. I don’t have slippery-slope problems with respect to buying “on credit”. Oh, and at least in the US finding a credit card with decent rewards (typically, 1-2% of your purchases refunded to you) is not hard.
But bear in mind that some other people might. If DeVliegenderHollander suspects he may be one, then avoiding credit cards could be a very sensible move for him.
A fair point, but it still seems to me that thinking of credit cards primarily as means of borrowing money is misguided.
There are Visa debit cards. I have one. I have not had problems paying anyone with it.
[EDITED to add two other things:]
I don’t know how readily available Visa debit cards are in Austria; perhaps your bank offers only some different variety of debit card.
In the UK, at least, there are regulations around credit cards that don’t apply to debit cards and that give buyers considerable reason to prefer paying by credit card even if they have no need to borrow. Specifically, if you buy something with a credit card then a piece of legislation called the Consumer Credit Act makes your credit card company liable (as well as the seller) if the seller fails to meet the terms of their contract with you. So, e.g., if you buy something with a credit card and then they just don’t deliver, or they go out of business, you can get your money back from the card company. So there’s a big advantage to using a credit card for substantial purchases. Again, this may be different in Austria.
It looks the most something, but I don’t think it’s professional. Professional things have careful typesetting, and limited line lengths, and inline math that doesn’t completely jar with the rest of the document. I think that a long document written in pure HTML might give off a vibe of “I know what I’m talking about”, but I also wouldn’t expect people to actually read it.
(Also my default font isn’t Arial. It’s some kind of serif.)