Is Good Enough...Good Enough?

10 Apr 2023 | ~3 minute read

I'm going down a platform rabbit hole (again!) and I don't know what to do...

A few days ago I wrote about how I'd spun up a self-hosted Microblog in favour of using the Micro.blog service. Since then -- just a few days later, might I add -- I decided to flip back to Micro.blog.

Micro.blog does 90% of what I want it to do, and to be honest, even getting to that point is bloody difficult when you consider things like ActivityPub support, Webmentions, cross-posting, ease of creating posts etc.

I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with WordPress. So I went back to Micro.blog. Yes, the service is confusing, but it's very good. All in all, Micro.blog is good enough and I'm happy.

But is good enough, good enough?

I'm happy with my decision around my Microblog, but researching all the options available to me sent me down a familiar rabbit hole - I started considering whether Jekyll is the best tool for this blog or not?

At this point, I've built a pretty good workflow with Jekyll and overall I'm happy producing my posts with it. There have, however, been a number of times where I've had trouble with my local install of Jekyll. Inevitably something updates on my Mac, the Ruby stack shits the bed and I have to go hunting for a solution.

I usually find a solution, and things start chugging away nicely again, but it would be nice if I didn't have to do that from time to time. Jekyll isn't perfect, but once again, it's good enough.

Then came Jack...

So I'm already in this frame of mind where I'm considering other options for my blog. It's just a thing I do at this point; the constant hunt for perfection-- my blogging utopia -- is like a perpetual motion engine in my brain. It wont bloody stop.

Anyway, I came across this post by Jack Baty (for those that don't know, Jack is just as bad as me for changing blogging platforms 🙃). In this post he talks about a switch from WordPress to Blot. He says:

Blot is like an SSG but without all the dependencies and fuss. Put some Markdown (or HTML or Text) files in a Dropbox folder and boom, a nice blog appears.

Needless to say this piqued my interest. Here I am with a good enough tool in Jekyll, where the only real problems I have are when Ruby has a brain fart. Could Blot be the solution, or is good enough...good enough?

I'm already familiar with Blot, as I'm an avid reader of Nicolas Magand's most excellent blog, The Jolly Teapot. He's been using it with great success for quite some time.

Blot would allow me to write in plain text, just like I do now, then dump it into a folder and forget about it. Blot would do the rest and I wouldn't have to worry about Ruby having a meltdown the next time my Mac updates.

I dunno, maybe there's something to this?...or maybe, just maybe, good enough is, you know...good enough.

What do you think?

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