cnandreu

Playing Sea of Stars on My Mac with GameHub

Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I wanted to play Sea of Stars on my Mac and hit the usual wall: there’s no native Mac version. It ships on Windows, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox, and there’s even an iPhone and iPad build on the App Store, but nothing for the Mac desktop. In the past that would have been the end of it, and I’d have gone off to boot up another machine.

This time I tried GameHub instead, and it just worked.

What GameHub is

GameHub is a free (currently public beta) Mac app that runs Windows games on macOS. Under the hood it leans on a Wine-style translation layer, so the Windows game thinks it’s talking to Windows while everything gets translated to what your Mac actually speaks. You don’t have to know any of that to use it. You install the app, sign into Steam from inside it, and launch your game like you would anywhere else.

There are some nice touches around it too: per-game compatibility profiles, a Metal HUD so you can watch your frame rate, and multi-account Steam support with cloud saves.

How Sea of Stars ran

Better than I expected. I set it to 1080p, and it held a steady 60fps the whole way through with no fiddling. No stutters, no missing textures, no crash-on-launch dance. If you handed me the Mac without telling me what was going on, I wouldn’t have guessed the game had no business running on it.

The other thing that made this painless was Steam cloud saves. I played the Steam version, so my save file followed me everywhere. I could put the Mac down, pick up my Steam Deck, later poke at it from GameHub on Android or my Windows PC, and always land right where I left off. Switching devices mid-playthrough is the kind of thing that sounds minor until you actually rely on it.

Where it fits (and where it doesn’t)

I want to be clear about the scope here. I didn’t throw something like Cyberpunk 2077 at it, because for heavy games I have a gaming PC and consoles and I’d rather use them. That’s the right tool for that job.

Where GameHub shines is the quick session: visual novels, older titles, cozy RPGs, indie games (anything that doesn’t need a ton of horsepower). When the itch to play something is small and the game is Windows-only, spinning up GameHub beats digging out another device.

Worth a try

If there’s a game you’ve been wanting to play and it skipped the Mac, give GameHub a shot before you write it off. It’s free to try, setup took me a few minutes, and worst case the game doesn’t run well and you’ve lost nothing. For me it turned a “guess I can’t” into an evening with Sea of Stars, and that’s a pretty good trade.

Hello, world

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every good homelab eventually grows a blog. This is mine, a place for long-form notes on the media stack I run, the small tools I build around it, and whatever I’m learning along the way.

Why bother

Most of what I figure out lives in scattered scripts, commit messages, and my own memory. Writing it down forces the ideas to hold together, and occasionally it helps someone else running into the same wall. That’s the whole pitch.

How it’s built

The site is intentionally boring in the best way: static files served from the edge, with no server to babysit:

Astro: content-first, ships zero JavaScript by default, and renders Markdown into fast static HTML.
Cloudflare Workers + Static Assets: the built site is served straight from Cloudflare’s edge on the free plan.
Self-hosted Forgejo + CI: writing a post is a git push; CI runs the quality gate and deploys with wrangler.
Catppuccin: Latte in the light, Mocha in the dark, following your system preference (with a toggle if you disagree).

Publishing really is just this:

just new "My next post"   # scaffold the folder + frontmatter
# ...write...
git push                  # CI builds and deploys to cnandreu.com

What’s next

More posts, mostly. If you want to follow along, grab the RSS feed. If you want to argue with me, that’s what X is for.

Thanks for reading.

Improving Quality with Story Points

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 00:00:00 GMT

What are story points

Story points are unit-less numbers based on the relative time and effort to complete a software development task. These numbers are typically not linear; for example, you pick between numbers in the Fibonacci sequence (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, …). These numbers are only meaningful to a specific team. They cannot be used to compare teams.

Let’s imagine we’re building a web application for reading and sending emails. A team of developers would split the task of developing said application into distinct high-level chunks, typically called Stories. One of those pieces could be “Ability to compose new emails”. Let’s also assume that this particular team has not changed and previously worked on a similar feature for a bulletin board application, labeled “Ability to compose new threads”. They could estimate it would take the same amount of time and effort again (i.e. “5”). Alternatively, they can estimate a bit less (i.e. “3”) if they take into account code reuse and previous experience, or a bit more because their estimate for the similar feature was too low (i.e. “8”).

The team would work on several of these development tasks and come up with their velocity (i.e. “30”), meaning the number of story points they can complete in a period of time (e.g. every two work-weeks). The ideal case is that eventually this process will give the team a way of estimating how much work they can take on for said period of time. Everyone gets a chance to vote on a number for a particular work item without looking at others’ votes. They also have the opportunity to try to convince their peers that their number is the right choice.

What’s wrong

It turns out that software engineers are notoriously bad at estimating. Agile methodologies bring development teams this idea of story points in order to mitigate that, but in my experience there’s room for improvement.

We can try to find some answers by looking at the cognitive branch of psychology. It studies how people think, including decision making and problem solving. Specifically, there’s a list of cognitive biases to which we are all generally vulnerable.

One of these tendencies to think in a certain way is Rosy Retrospection, which is remembering the past better than it actually was. For example, psychologists interviewed three groups going on different vacations before, during, and after their journeys. Most followed the pattern of initial anticipation, followed by mild disappointment. Generally, most subjects some time later reviewed the events more favorably than they actually experienced them.

Just like that one, there are many others that deal with how we perceive and think about the past. Consistency Bias is incorrectly remembering one’s past attitudes and behavior as resembling present attitudes and behavior. Hindsight Bias is the inclination to see events that have already occurred as being more predictable than they were before they took place. There’s also Egocentric Bias, which is recalling the past in a self-serving manner. For example, remembering one’s code as higher quality than it actually was.

There are also issues linked to working with groups. An example is the Next-in-Line Effect, which means that a person in a group has diminished recall for the words of others who spoke immediately before or after this person. There’s also the Bandwagon Effect, which is the tendency to do (or believe) things because many other people do (or believe) the same.

A popular paper by cognitive psychologist George A. Miller cites that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. This is one of the bases for David Allen’s Getting Things Done time management method to improve productivity. The idea is that you can’t keep many things in your mind at the same time, and you should be writing them down somewhere for future processing.

My takeaway from all of this is that a team will likely remember past events incorrectly, assuming these events were more obvious and predictable than they were. Trying to mitigate this with group discussions will likely introduce another set of biases, such as remembering a subset of what was said and agreeing with the majority. Meanwhile, everyone’s mind is only able to keep track of a small subset of considerations, even assuming the best-case scenario where the whole team is focusing all their mental bandwidth on a single activity.

The goal

The best-case scenario so far is high consistency: fairly good estimates for about the same quality of work. My goal is to factor in a way of getting higher quality while preserving reasonably consistent estimates over time.

Possible solution: story point tax

Let’s list all the items that could impact the amount of time and effort it takes to finish a particular piece of work. Some examples:

Stability of the build or continuous integration system.
Existing unit test coverage.
Expense of writing tests.
Support-related issues.
Time to merge into the release branch.
Known vs unknown problem domain.
Third-party dependencies.
Legal work.
Documentation work.
Context switching.
etc.

The idea is to assign some points, or fractions of a point, to all of these issues. Some are task-specific (i.e. legal work) while others can apply to every task (i.e. build health).

For example, imagine a team is inheriting legacy code with low test coverage and lengthy or hard-to-run tests. Everyone on that development team will likely see a negative impact on their time and effort. It means the system could break more easily or require a lot of manual, time-consuming testing to finish their work item correctly, thus lowering productivity. At some point, when test coverage improves, the “tax” or expense to productivity is lowered for that particular item.

Having this list beforehand prevents relying on the team’s mental bandwidth to account for all of these issues. As the team strives to lower this “tax”, the overall quality of the product should increase from every perspective: planners, developers, and stakeholders. Also, having more data would likely translate to a positive impact on estimate accuracy.

The past-related biases are somewhat mitigated in the sense that the team would keep said list frequently up to date. A quick example would be a not-so-frequent yet painful task that is partially forgotten and then later badly remembered because a list like the one above was not kept. One specific example would be the expense of tackling a new problem domain at the start of a release: “It wasn’t that hard to learn all that new terminology”.

Having all team members individually and anonymously collaborate on the items that should be on the list and the “tax” amounts will likely help deal with the group-based biases. Because the initial list is not generated in an open discussion, it’s less likely most people will flock towards what the most vocal members of the team think should be there.

Conclusion

Try to supplement story points with a list of things (taxes) that negatively impact performance. Let the whole team initially collaborate individually and anonymously on said list, and keep it frequently up to date. Supplement it with group discussions. Use it to help drive quality. For example: “More stories could get done if we had better test coverage, so let’s improve test coverage. Did test coverage improve? Yes, lower its tax value.”

Goodbye AppFog, Hello DigitalOcean

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I decided I wanted a bit more control over my blog, and my own custom domain (cnandreu.com). Soon after, I remembered a benchmark post comparing DigitalOcean and Linode I saw a few months back. The article concluded DigitalOcean provided great bang for the buck, so I decided to try it. I’ll go a bit into the logistics of setting up a WordPress blog there.

Specs

DigitalOcean is a Virtual Private Server (VPS) provider. It basically provides the hardware to host your own virtual machine. Their cheapest plan:

$5/month
1 Core
20GB SSD Storage
512 MB Memory
1TB Transfer
99.99% Uptime

2 months free

I found a coupon code online for a $10 credit (i.e. 2 months free). When you sign up, click to add a credit card and then apply the following code: OMGSSD10.

Pick a Droplet

Amazon EC2 calls them Instances; DigitalOcean calls them Droplets. It’s just a virtual machine running on their hardware.

I installed 32-bit Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. I picked that one because I’m already familiar with the operating system. There was no need to go with the 64-bit version because my plan only gives me half a gigabyte of RAM. It also seemed like a good idea to go with an LTS (Long Term Support) release for a server. Some of the articles I link below target 12.04 as well.

Initial setup

DigitalOcean’s initial server setup guide describes some initial configuration: how to log into the droplet via SSH, change the root password, create a new user, give the new user sudo privileges, and optionally configure SSH.

Fail2Ban

They also have an article that explains how to set up Fail2Ban. This is useful because it will help prevent attackers from brute forcing your password.

nginx, PHP, and MySQL

nginx (pronounced “engine x”) is an open source web server and reverse proxy server for HTTP, SMTP, POP3, and IMAP protocols, with a strong focus on high concurrency, performance, and low memory usage. PHP is a popular programming language for web applications. MySQL is a popular relational database manager.

Their LEMP stack guide explains how to set up those technologies. Together they form the software stack that will run WordPress.

WordPress

Now that you have an HTTP server (nginx), a programming language (PHP), and a database (MySQL), you can follow the WordPress on nginx guide.

Sequel Pro or phpMyAdmin

If you want to see the data inside your MySQL database, I recommend Sequel Pro. Mac only (sorry, Windows and Linux users). Non-Mac users may want to read the phpMyAdmin on LEMP guide; it explains how to set up the web-based MySQL database viewer called phpMyAdmin.

My Favorite Mac Apps

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 00:00:00 GMT

There are many great tools out there for Macs. In this post I’ll go over some I use often. I highly recommend you try them if you haven’t already.

Package Manager: Homebrew

Homebrew is a package manager for Mac, similar to apt-get and yum on Linux boxes. The installation instructions amount to running a command from their main site. To install applications simply type brew install [app_name]. To update packages run brew update and brew upgrade. If you run into issues, brew doctor may point you in the right direction by showing common issues found on your system.

Shell: Fish

Fish Shell is basically a bash replacement with out-of-the-box colors, autosuggestions, man page integration, among other features.

Spotlight Replacement: Alfred

Alfred is Spotlight on steroids. I recommend going into System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Spotlight and unchecking Show Spotlight Searchfield - Command + Space. Then open Alfred, go into Preferences (Command + ,), General tab, and pick Command + Space for Alfred’s hotkey.

Besides searching for applications, you can search for files by typing a single quote before the file name. For example 'move.mov. Pressing the Right Arrow key will show more options like Reveal in Finder and Open With….

By default Option + Command + C will show you things that have been on your clipboard. You can change settings for this feature in Alfred’s Preferences under the Clipboard feature.

Music: Spotify

Spotify has an amazing music library. I no longer miss the days of searching high and low for an album I wanted to listen to, or going to YouTube to get my music fix. There’s a free version with ads, but this is a service worth paying for.

Notes: Evernote

Evernote is a note-taking application that has clients for iOS and Android devices. I always use it to store notes when I travel (flights, hotels, places to see, etc.) and just general notes.

Backup: Dropbox

Dropbox will give you up to 16GB of free space after inviting your friends. Since my music, videos, emails, and code live in the cloud, there’s not a lot to back up. Dropbox is great for storing pictures taken from your mobile phone (they have an app for Android and iOS) and random files.

Finder Replacement: XtraFinder

XtraFinder is basically what Finder should be. My favorite features are tabs, folders on top (instead of mixing files and folders), and the ability to cut and paste files and folders.

Password Manager: 1Password

1Password password-protects my passwords and private notes. It’s not free, but there are free alternatives like Dashlane.

Source Control: Git

Git is an amazing version control system. You can learn the basics in about 15 minutes.

Code Hosting: Bitbucket

Bitbucket is a great place to store your code in the cloud. Unlike GitHub, they give you unlimited private repositories for free.

Git Graphical User Interface: SourceTree

SourceTree is really useful when you need a better, nay, graphical view of the history and changes in a git repository. A good non-free alternative is Git Tower.

Markdown Editor: Mou

Mou is the best Markdown editor I’ve ever used. I highly recommend playing around with the themes. If you’re anything like me, you’ll find it more calming to write with a dark background. You can also enable Check spelling as I type in the options to mitigate typos.

Chat Client: Adium

Adium is basically Pidgin with a Mac look and feel. It’s compatible with AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, IRC, and many others. If you’re only looking for an IRC client I recommend Colloquy instead.

TV: Netflix

Netflix needs no introduction. It does for TV shows and movies what Spotify does for music. If you don’t mind ads, check out Hulu. If you have Amazon Prime you also have access to their streaming video service, Amazon Instant Video. You can also buy videos from the Google Play Store and the Apple iTunes Store.

Twitter Client: Tweetbot

Tweetbot is by far the best Twitter client for desktops, but it’s not free. TweetDeck is a good free alternative.

Text Editor: Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text 2 is a very extensible text editor. The first thing I always install is Sublime Package Control. Here are some packages worth checking out: LiveReload, SublimeCodeIntel, SublimeLinter (my settings), and TrailingSpaces. You can enable vi mode and get vi goodness in your editor.

Mail Client: Sparrow

Sparrow is a lightweight desktop email client. It’s always a keyboard shortcut away, option+/ in my case. A cheaper alternative is AirMail. There’s a cool little application called Fluid that lets you treat web applications like desktop applications, for those that like their email client’s web interface but still want it outside a browser context.

Image Editor: Photoshop

Photoshop is Adobe’s answer to editing pictures, and it’s expensive. GIMP is a good free alternative.

CloudApp sits in your menu bar and waits for you to take screenshots. When it detects a screenshot has been taken, it uploads it to the cloud and stores it on one of their Amazon S3 servers. The URL to the image is automatically added to your clipboard.

VPN: Cloak

Almost every time I travel I download Cloak. It’s a VPN application for Mac and iOS devices. It automatically encrypts your traffic when connected to an unsecured WiFi network.

Uninstaller: AppCleaner

AppCleaner won’t just remove the .app sitting in your Applications folder; it will go into /Library and ~/Library and remove any files left over.

FTP Client: FileZilla

FileZilla is a free FTP client that works almost everywhere. Alternatively, Cyberduck provides a more Mac-like UI, if you don’t mind being nagged for a donation every once in a while.

Diff Tool: Kaleidoscope

Kaleidoscope is a very Mac-like diff tool, but it’s not free. KDiff3 is a good free alternative, if you don’t mind the UI.

Office: Microsoft Office

Microsoft Office for Mac comes with Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. A less expensive alternative is iWork. Keynote is way better than PowerPoint anyway. There’s also LibreOffice, which some people may call a free alternative.

Charts: OmniGraffle

OmniGraffle is the best application I’ve ever used for creating charts and diagrams. Moqups is a good web-based application for creating some types of diagrams. Another web-based alternative is Google Drawings.

Browser: Chrome

Chrome Canary is Google’s bleeding-edge browser. Paul Irish wrote about Chrome Canary for developers; from the article: If you do front-end web development and already use Chrome as your development browser, I encourage you to use Chrome Canary.

To Do: Reminders

If you have Mountain Lion installed (OS X 10.8) you already have Reminders.

Games: Steam

Steam provides an application and a great place to buy games online. They usually have big discounts around the holidays. If you need the extra disk space, you can just delete games from disk and re-download them later from Steam’s servers. As of the time of writing there’s a Humble Indie Bundle. It’s a pay what you want system for buying indie games. If you pay at least 1 USD, they’ll send a Steam key.

Torrents: Transmission

Transmission, for downloading all those Linux .iso files.

Unarchiver: The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver will work with common formats such as Zip, RAR, 7-zip, Tar, Gzip, Bzip2, and many others.

Video Player: VLC

VLC will play almost every video format you throw at it.

MySQL Client: Sequel Pro

Sequel Pro is a beautiful UI for working with MySQL databases. It’s a refreshing experience coming from phpMyAdmin.

Virtualization: VirtualBox

VirtualBox is the application you want to use if you need to set up a virtual machine. There are sites like BitNami that provide already-configured virtual machines with common open source software.

Getting Started with Ruby on Rails

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Recently my brother got an internship at Treasure Data, a Silicon Valley startup that uses Ruby on Rails (RoR). I decided to write about a few resources to help him get started.

RubyMine or Sublime Text

The quickest way to get started with Ruby on Rails is to start with a good Integrated Development Environment (IDE). You can download RubyMine from JetBrains. It’s from the creators of the popular Java IDE called IntelliJ IDEA.

Check out RubyMine’s features. I’ll highlight a few of my favorites:

Type-ahead code suggestions (helps you learn the language)
Built-in debugger
Code refactoring and analysis capabilities
Version control integration (Git, SVN, Hg)

It’s not free, but there’s a 30-day trial.

Alternatively, download Sublime Text 2 and watch this screencast for ideas regarding usage and plugins.

Learn Ruby

RubyMonk is a fun site that helps you learn Ruby by completing various challenges. I highly recommend having some understanding of the language before diving into a big framework like Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails Book

The Ruby on Rails Tutorial by Michael Hartl is simply amazing. It teaches you how to build a micro-blogging application like Twitter, Test Driven Development (TDD) with RSpec, Git, Github, Twitter Bootstrap, Heroku, and many other useful tools, services, and concepts. There’s also a screencast available.

Video Tutorials

RailsCasts.com contains many amazing video tutorials on a myriad of different topics, from APIs to security and testing. All the screencasts are about ~15 minutes long. The author also provides notes with valuable links, plus a text-only version of each video tutorial called an ASCIIcast.

I recommend starting with #310 Getting Started with Rails.

CodeSchool.com has a Ruby Path with various courses, from the very basics of Ruby to more advanced best practices for developing good Rails applications.

Other

NetTuts+ has a lot of useful articles on both Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

StackOverflow is a great place to ask questions. Make sure you provide a lot of information about your issue and what you’ve tried so far.

Color Terminal on Mac

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I often get asked how to make the Terminal pretty. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but hopefully this post will help you along.

.bashrc

First I recommend you create a file called .bashrc in your home directory if it doesn’t exist.

touch ~/.bashrc

In order to get OSX to pick it up you need to add the following to .bash_profile:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    source ~/.bashrc
fi

It’s basically saying: if .bashrc exists in the home directory, load its contents.

Style the Prompt

Open the newly created .bashrc and add the following:

function prompt {

    local WHITE="\[\033[1;37m\]"
    local GREEN="\[\033[0;32m\]"
    local CYAN="\[\033[0;36m\]"
    local GRAY="\[\033[0;37m\]"
    local BLUE="\[\033[0;34m\]"
    local LIGHT_RED="\[\033[1;31m\]"

    export PS1="${GRAY}\u${GREEN}@${CYAN}\W${GRAY} \$(__git_ps1 '(%s)')${GRAY}$ "
}
prompt

Inside the prompt function a few colors have been defined (e.g. WHITE, GREEN). You can use these colors to style the typical user@host ~ message that shows up before any command is typed. For example:

export PS1="${GRAY}\u${GREEN}→${GRAY}"

Will output your username in a gray font (${GRAY}\u), a green arrow (${GREEN}→), and everything after the green arrow will be gray (${GRAY}).

The bash prompt variable reference lists them all (i.e. \u for username).

Git

The __git_ps1 '(%s)' command can be used to display the current git branch you’re on. For example, typing that into the Terminal while inside a folder that contains a .git folder will display something like (master) or (branch_name).

You need to include these lines at the top of your .bashrc to get the git prompt and git auto-completion:

source /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash
source /usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/git-prompt.sh

Those files may be in another folder on your machine. I installed git with Homebrew, a package manager for OSX.

If you don’t have git but want it installed, try installing it via Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"
brew install git

I took the first line from Homebrew’s home page.

It’s a good idea to version control your configuration file. Try adding your .bashrc to a gist.

More Color

Paste the following into your .bashrc for even more color:

export LS_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
export CLICOLOR='Yes'
export LSCOLORS='Bxgxfxfxcxdxdxhbadbxbx'

alias ls="ls -G"

The -G flag will enable colorized output. Type man ls for more details.

Fish Shell

Tue, 04 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Fish advertises itself as a smart and user-friendly command line shell for OS X, Linux, and the rest of the family. If you’re using bash, I highly recommend reading this post and trying fish.

Features

Colors out of the box
Syntax highlighting as you type: valid commands show up blue, invalid commands red
Autosuggestions based on your history
Man page completions: hit tab after a command (or a partial flag like [command] -[tab]) and fish suggests options straight from the man pages, with descriptions
More in the official tutorial

Install

Visit their website at fishshell.com and look under Go Fish. Since I already had Homebrew, I simply ran the following command:

brew install fish

Setup

Open Terminal.app
Preferences (Command + ,)
Startup tab
Find the text label Shells open with:
Click on Command
Paste /usr/local/bin/fish

Alternatively you can change it via the command line:

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish

Make sure the file path matches the location of the fish executable on your machine.

fish_config

Fish provides a web interface that enables some extra configuration. Simply type fish_config inside your shell and hit enter.

A browser should open (localhost:8000) with a website that allows you to perform the configuration tweaks discussed below.

Change default colors

The web interface includes a color picker with a handful of pre-made color schemes you can apply to your shell with a click.

Change the prompt

The prompt function is defined here: ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_prompt.fish. There are various pre-defined prompt functions you can pick from, or you can create your own.

My prompt function is inside this gist. It may look a bit strange that commands are written on a second line. However, since my terminal usually takes up more space vertically than horizontally, I prefer it. There’s also a blank line between each command to help improve readability. If you’re inside a git repository folder it should also display the name of the branch you’re on.

Add functions

Functions in fish wrap common shell tasks. For example, I created a new file, ~/.config/fish/functions/gs.fish, with the following:

function gs --description 'alias for git status'
    git status -s $argv
end

Now every time I type gs into the terminal it will run git status -s.

The example above is just a simple alias, but hopefully it illustrates how easy and useful it can be to create functions.

View variables

It’s possible to set environment variables using the following syntax: set -x greeting hello. You can view your variables using the web interface.

View history

The web interface also lets you browse and search your command history.

Start a Blog

Wed, 15 May 2013 00:00:00 GMT

Since everyone is writing blog posts in the tech world, I thought I would give it a shot. This particular post is going to be about setting up your own blog, using the same tools and services I used.

Blogging Platform: Wordpress

I’ve dabbled with setting up Jekyll, a Ruby-based tool that lets you build a static website from Markdown files. Similarly, I tried Poet, which lets you set up a blog generator using Node.js. These tools have a bit of a learning curve and are geared more towards people that want to tinker a lot with their blog.

Since I just wanted something quick, I swallowed my pride and decided to go with Wordpress. Despite PHP’s shortcomings, Wordpress is a solid blogging platform.

Hosting Platform: AppFog

A few years back the obvious solution was to pay 5 USD a month and host your blog on a shared hosting environment. Maybe even a Virtual Private Server (VPS) if you needed the extra horsepower, for lack of a better word. Back in 2012 I wrote a Developer Works article about how Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings are taking over.

Heroku vs EC2

I’ve used Heroku and Amazon EC2 in the past, but this time I decided to steer away from those. Using Heroku’s free tier means dynos (which are more or less their request handlers) shut down after ~30 minutes. That means it takes 20-30 seconds to access the application for the first time. I didn’t go with Amazon because their free trial only lasts a year, and after that it’s ~15 USD/month for their lowest tier instance.

AppFog’s Free Tier

AppFog’s free tier provides the following:

8 instances
100MB of DB storage
5GB of bandwidth
100 requests/sec
2GB of RAM

Which is more than enough for a small blog like mine. Unfortunately they removed linking domains (e.g. cnandreu.com instead of cnandreu.aws.af.cm) from their free offering, as you can tell from my tweet a few days ago.

They claim this was done because of abuse, but as someone suggested on Google Groups, people could’ve provided a credit card for verification before being allowed to link an external URI. It seems like a ploy to get people to start paying, but it’s a steep sell from $0 to 20 USD/month.

Installing Wordpress on AppFog

Installing Wordpress is basically a single click install. See their Jumpstart docs. All you need to do is create an account, create a new application, select Wordpress, select the infrastructure (i.e. AWS US East), pick a sub-domain name, and visit the URL. Done!

Performance Tweaks for Wordpress on AppFog

There’s a good blog post titled “How to make WordPress absolutely blaze on AppFog”. It basically recommends running 5 instances of your blog at 384 MB of RAM a piece if you want to get the best performance possible on the free tier.

Blog Theme: Svbtle

Someone took the time to port the theme from svbtle.com to Wordpress. You can get it from the following GitHub repository: themeskult/wp-svbtle. It’s worth mentioning that you get responsive design for free when you install the theme. Try resizing your browser window.

If you’re using AppFog, you need to install their command line tool, af. Then log in, pull the source code, add the files from the theme, and update the app. These are the commands I used:

af login [email]
# Enter password
af pull [app-name]   # Downloads last pushed source
# Move the files from the template
af update [app-name] # Update the application bits

Comments: Disqus

I absolutely loathe when websites require you to make yet another account you’re never going to remember for silly things like leaving comments. I didn’t want to give my readers that experience, so I opted to use Disqus over the comment system provided by Wordpress. They provide Comments as a Service and support logging in with Facebook, Google, etc. It was quite painless to set up. Just install the following plugin: Disqus Comment System. You can do it from your blog’s admin panel: Plugins > Add New.

CSS Fix

I had to fix the CSS a bit: Appearance > Editor > Stylesheet (style.css). Just add the following to the bottom of that file:

#disqus_thread {
    margin-left: 8%;
    width: 75%;
}

Using IDs for CSS selectors is discouraged, but I didn’t feel like spending too much time on this.

Analytics: Google Analytics

I haven’t tried any analytics alternatives, but Google Analytics has always worked well for me. Just create an account, provide the URL for your website, and get an ID (e.g. UA-XXXXXXXX-X). After a few days of collecting analytics you’ll be able to tell how many people have visited your site, how long they spent on it, where they came from, and other information about them (e.g. browser, operating system).

Wordpress Plugin

I used the Google Analytics Wordpress plugin. Go to your blog’s admin panel: Plugins > Add New. Then add your ID under Settings > Google Analytics.

iOS Application

I installed Analytiks. It was free and it looks very nice. What more could you ask for?

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language. I’ve been using it for everything from quick notes to proper documentation. If you’ve ever posted on StackOverflow or Reddit, or created a README.md file on Github or Bitbucket, you’ve already used Markdown.

There are popular editors for every operating system; here are my recommendations:

Mac: Mou
Windows: MarkdownPad
Linux: ReText
Web: Dillinger

Protip if you’re using Mou: go into Options > General > Check Spelling While Typing. You can also change the theme if you don’t like the default one while you’re there. There are some themes on Github.

If you want to use Markdown in your pages and posts, just install the following Wordpress plugin: Markdown on Save Improved. Go to your blog’s admin panel: Plugins > Add New.

Mobile Blogging: Wordpress iOS App

Wordpress has a free iOS application for blogging on the go. You can use it with self-hosted blogs too. Just provide the URL and the administrator account’s credentials.

I haven’t looked into this. Any recommendations? I’ll probably post about it at some point. I may try Google Adsense and Amazon Affiliates.

Or send a tweet to @cnandreu if the post was helpful.