Started an Astro Blog

Why Astro?#

Don’t you get that recurring urge to write something and save what you’re thinking right now?

That urge flared up again, but every service I was already using had little annoyances here and there.

• X / Twitter
  • Elon Musk is a piece of shit
  • It feels like an arena for flame wars, no longer suited for freely tweeting your own thoughts

じゃぱり (@ilapaj) on X

考察班です。けものフレンズとかケムリクサとかが好き。最近はまちカドまぞくにはまってます。

x.com

• Jekyll
  • Being able to write in Markdown and basically get a static site out of the box is fantastic
  • I don’t know much Ruby, so I can’t do any fine-grained customization
  • Feels a bit dated as a static site generator

じゃぱり書庫 - ilapajの個人ブログです。

じゃぱり書庫 - ilapajの個人ブログです。

ilapaj.com

• note (the Japanese blogging platform)
  • It’s nice that writing is casual and easy to get eyes on
  • Zero customization options
  • Having what I write live under a corporation’s control rubs me the wrong way

じゃぱり｜note

note.com

• Video
  • Fun to make, but a massive amount of work
  • Not suited for jotting down passing thoughts

ilapaj

www.youtube.com

• Obsidian
  • Hands down the best personal note-taking tool that uses Markdown
  • Since I never write with the intention of showing it to anyone, my organization gets way too messy

Obsidian - Sharpen your thinking

The free and flexible app for your private thoughts.

obsidian.md

And so, I ended up deciding to give Astro a try. With this:

• You can write in Markdown
  • Easy to write, and simple to port stuff over from Jekyll or Obsidian
  • Even if I move platforms again down the road, there are few proprietary quirks, so I can just take it anywhere
• You can build on React
  • I use TypeScript and React all the time, so customization is easy
• You can write casually
  • What I write stays under my own control, and since it is technically being published on the internet, it motivates me to keep things properly organized

…so I figured it’d be a great fit.

That said, the biggest reason was simply falling in love with this theme at first sight:

Yukina | Astro

An astro blog template inspired by fuwari and hexo-theme-shokaX.

astro.build

Gorgeous…!

This blog is built on top of this theme, with fine details customized here and there.

Moving Forward#

So anyway, I plan to casually dump various thoughts and ramblings onto this site. Thanks for having me, and hope you’ll stick around!

Notes Below#

Hello, world! This is my first post with Astro.

じゃぱり書庫

ilapajの個人ブログです。

yukina.pages.dev

原神を再開した | じゃぱり書庫

原神を久々に再開した感想です。 ilapajの個人ブログです。

yukina.pages.dev

GitHub - gladevise/remark-link-card

Contribute to gladevise/remark-link-card development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Useful Tips#

Pressing Option+Command+V lets you quickly paste an image from your clipboard.

Adding the following to your snippets makes it easy to insert frontmatter:

1
{
2
  "frontmatter": {
3
    "prefix": "frontmatter",
4
    "body": [
5
      "---",
6
      "title: $1",
7
      "description: $2",
8
      "published: $3",
9
      "tags: [$4]",
10
      "category: $5",
11
      "draft: false",
12
      "---",
13
      "",
14
      "# $1",
15
      "",
16
      "$2",
17
      ""
18
    ],
19
    "description": "frontmatter"
20
  }
21
}