More about using blogpost

Using blogpost to manage and post to your wordpress blog is not exactly intuitive. There are commands and flags used in the command line that you need to remember; on top of that, you have to learn how to use AsciiDoc and a little HTML. What’s even worse—the documentation from Blogpost official site is not exactly informative. Sure, there are helpful text to be found there, but you have to dig pretty deep and keep an eye out for important information regarding the use of blogpost.

In any case, I have some notes to share here; mostly on the commands in the terminal.

For posting: <quote> $ blogpost create [your-asciidoc-text-file.txt] </quote>

For listing your entries: <quote> $ blogpost list </quote>

For deleting: <quote> $ blogpost delete —post-id=[ID-number] </quote>

For updating with your blog file: <quote> $ blogpost update [blog-text-file.txt] </quote>

For categorising: <quote> $ blogpost cat categories=[categories-seperated-with-commas] [blog-file] </quote>

That’s about the long and short of it.

Using Linux Command line applications

Linux command line applications suffer from a problem. The commands written into the programs are not universal. That means commands from one program to the other conflicts with what you’ve learned. Take for example Audio player X uses ‘n’ to skip a track. That’s not the case for Audio player Y—if you decide to change another music player(Maybe you just need a certain feature in Y).

That’s probably the biggest problem surrounding CLI applications—the programs are just not as intuitive to use. Other than that, not having flash, java… etc doesn’t really drive me away from CLI. Fact is, I’ve learned a lot more about concentration after using command line applications—Just using bash itself taught me quite a bit. There are minimal distraction when you’re typing a document in VI/Emacs when you’re running everything full-screen. You can argue that it can be achieved in X too.

That’s too true, but CLI uses less resource. I can run elinks, Emacs, mpg123, mutt without putting a dent on my ‘pretty old’ P4 1.7GHz with 256 RAM machine. Sure, I can use a light windows manager like fluxbox, wmii; but I’ve gotta used to the command line system.

Why I ditched the GUI

I get weird looks from friends when ever I boot up Arch Linux on my eee pc. The same can be said when I load up Emacs/VI to type something. After all, it’s a console application for text-editing. In the world of Windows/OSX, where word processors like Microsoft office rules, it’s akin to saying that you’re a vegetarian for ethical reasons.

I can clearly remember the first time I installed GNU/Linux on my machine. Back then, I thought that Linux was an OS reserved only for the geeks or programmers. I wasn’t too far from the truth. The path to GNU/Linux is tough and required a certain know-how, using strictly text-based application is worse. There are no cute icons to ease your soul. The only thing graphical is the blinking cursor. Some would call such endeavour masochistic. Why did I ditch the GUI? Doing more with less.

In an effort to focus on writing and nothing else, I started on a search for a text-editor that allows me to turn off all the useless tool bars, menus. I found Q10, a full-screen text-editor for Windows. It was a joy to use.

After dropping my last 500 bucks on a Asus eee pc 900, I proceed to find the Linux version of Q10 for my box only to find out–Q10 has no Linux version. That’s when I decided to find an alternative to Q10. After a search on google, I found Emacs and VI. Both text-based applications where the use of the mouse is considered sacrilegious. An affront to all things GNU.

At first, I bemoan the dead of my mouse in Emacs. After learning the key-strokes in Emacs, I found that I can do things in Emacs with relative ease and came to love the idea that my hands don’t have to leave the keyboard at all. It greatly increase my productivity, not to mention that I’m more focused on the screen than ever, since I don’t have to deal with a certain irritating paperclip asking if I needed any help every 5 minutes.

Today, I can surf the web, read my mail, write, instant message all from the console without the use of a GUI. Is it easier? For certain it’s a big NO. So why use command line applications at all? It’s all for simplicity’s sake. Do you remember the days of WordStar? Nothing but just a word processor, it’s effectively just a box with nothing but WordStar loaded. Just for word processing, a far cry from the word processors of today. Those days are far gone, but in the search for more processing power, we keep updating our software like we need the latest glitzy features, when all we need is a blinking cursor and a keyboard.

That’s good enough a reason for me to ditch the GUI and return to the world of console applications–where simplicity rules.