The unencrypted web is on the way out. We made the switch here at BigDino to all-HTTPS a few weeks ago, but doing so brought with it a problem: how can we keep using Varnish cache with HTTPS traffic? The answer turned out to be by adding another layer into the web stack—and now we're using HAProxy.…
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After a year of semi-regular blogging with Octopress, though, I was just kind of...bored with it. Blogging with vim and banging out a static site and pushing it via rsync was cool, but ultimately it just wasn't as convenient as I'd wanted it to be.…
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I don't know what normal people do on days off from work, but I do things that are too esoteric even to write about for Ars Technica because...because I think there's something wrong with me. So, last Friday I spent a few hours setting up a vanity URL shortening service and custom image uploading service for Twitter, so I can, I don't know, be cooler than everyone else. It was surprisingly fun! First, though, the annoying caveat: Twitter already shortens every link with its t.co service, and you can't opt out. The reasons they give are mostly marginal and downplay the fact that aggregate clic…
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I've gotten along fine with Octopress for the Bigdino blog for a couple of years now; I enjoy the speed of a blog made entirely of static files, and I enjoy Octopress's responsive design (courtesy of its Jekyll underpinnings). But there are two constants in the world of blogging: "Sorry I haven't updated in so long" posts, and "I've change my blogging platform!" posts. This is both the former and the latter. Sorry I haven't updated in so long. I've changed my blogging platform. This is Ghost. Adding images is hella sweet, too! Discuss this post on the BigDinosaur forum…
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This is an old post. It may contain broken links and outdated information. In the previous post, I walked through setting up Discourse, a Ruby-based web forum. I'm in the process of shifting this blog's comment system from Disqus, which I've never been wholly comfortable with, over to using Discourse instead. There is being done via a plug-in for Octopress currently under development by one of the posters over at the main Discourse development forum. Why ditch Disqus? There are several reasons, but the biggest is the privacy concerns. Disqus tracks users' movement across Disqus-enabled web s…
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