Hello, my name is Ryan Nickel

A personal blog focused on (primarily) software.

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell: A Promising Start That Got Lost in the Digital Abyss

So, I recently dove into Neal Stephenson’s “Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell,” expecting an epic adventure. Well, let me tell you, it didn’t quite deliver. Clocking in at a whopping 900 pages, you’d think there’d be enough room for some serious action. But nope, not much happens for the most part. I mean, we get bombarded with pages upon pages of philosophical musings, theological ramblings, and political banter. Some of it relates to the story, but a lot of it feels like it’s just there to fill up space. It’s like Stephenson took a philosophy/theology textbook and tried to disguise it as a novel.

Setting up my own @ryannickel.com domain for Mastadon

If you’re using Mastodon or other decentralized social networks, you might be looking for ways to improve your discoverability. One technique that’s gained popularity is using the webfinger protocol to create a discoverable profile for your domain.

Updating to use H-Entry for each article

As I delve deeper into the IndieWeb, I first took on the low hanging fruit of adding the h-card format to the footer.

On Removing Bootstrap Dependency

As part of my ongoing blog update, I’m working on removing my dependency on Bootstrap.

Adding H-Card To This Site, and Scope Creep

I was recently inspired by @tbeseda@indieweb.social to add some h-card formatting to my site.

Creating Homebrew Package For StaticSiteGenerator Distribution

In a previous post playing with GitHub Actions I thought it might be interseting to figure out how to distribute the binary via Homebrew.

On Adding GZip Compression To StaticSiteGenerator

In an attempt to be a Good Web Citizen, I thought I’d try to add some GZip compression to the responses served up by the StaticSiteGenerator.

On Adding GitHub Actions To My StaticSiteGenerator

A number of years ago I started toying with Go. At the same time I was building this website you’re reading right now. I wanted to join these two desires, so I thought I’d take advantage of the, new to me, static site hosting of github for my personal website.

On Open Source Trolls

We all use open source projects to complete our daily jobs. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. However it seems as though there are many who take the hard work of others for granted. They’ve come to expect enterprise level support and stability from projects that are given away for free from generous people.

On Getting AWS Solutions Architect Certified

Having accomplished my personal challenge of completing an olympic triathlon (while simultaneously rediscovering my love of cycling), I decided to tackle a professional challenge.