I've been working on a new blogging system recently with the intention of powering jamesconroyfinn.com using it. It featured a unique design per page and a giant footer with a 'slick' jQuery scrollable archive. It was a real example of a modern, swanky blog that impresses every visitor lucky enough to browse it's shiny pages.

While working on this ultra-modern blogging engine I had to write a letter and used LaTeX to do so. LaTex is a great way to produce clean, professionally typeset documents and in my opinion the results look fantastic.

Then I thought in more depth about what I wanted from this blogging system I was writing. What did I want to acheive by reinventing the wheel?

• Simple navigation
• A distinctive look that would be recognisable almost immediately
• Something that shows what I'm about
• A way to share my thoughts and discoveries

And this thinking led me to realise that using jQuery and Rails was complete overkill and was only distracting me from achieving what I really wanted to, what all of this was about. Writing about things I'm passionate about and sharing what I know about tools and technology I've used in the past.

So here we are. Pretending Textile...

I'm using jekyll, markdown in my posts, pygments for syntax highlighting, and Google Fonts among other things to make my site look like it was build using LaTex.

What it looks like

Code blocks:

class Tex
  # always looks clean
  def self.clean?
    true
  end
end

Lorem Ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Blockquotes:

Someone who said something