This blog now powered by org-mode

I've used Jekyll for quite some time to power my blog. I would commit markdown files to a git repository and then the magic sauce of Jekyll and Github Pages would turn this into beautiful HTML pages and publish it. It worked fine but as I have switched to Emacs as my primary editor, which features something called org-mode, that among other things feature a syntax that I find way better and more intuitive than markdown, I decided to switch over my blogging to this format.

org-mode is a markup language, just like markdown, but it's been around for a wee bit longer. I use quite a lot of markdown in various places and its popularity means its widely accepted. I naturally prefer it over something like Word documents. However, it has limitations, it is inconsistent and not very intuitive. The arguments have been made before and I won't repeat it all here, instead if you are interested in org-mode vs *, Karl Voit sums it up best.

It should also be noted that org-mode does so much more. My calendar, todo list and various notes are all in org-mode and it provides various useful tools to work with it. It's often listed as a unique selling point for Emacs. If you are technology oriented, likes to tinker and setup tools your way, care about your time (efficiency), then org-mode might be for you.

Anyway, I'm not trying to sell org-mode, just saying I'm now using it to power this blog. I use org-static-blog to actually render the org files into HTML. Not super happy with it but it works for now (I can switch to something else that also is based on org, like org-publish, without having to rewrite all my posts). In the end, what this switch to org-mode might mean is that the threshold for me to write something is lowered just a tiny bit and that might just result in a slightly increased post publishing cadence.