Right now I’m essentially babysitting just about the worst product my company has ever released. And, in all reality, it’s not a horrible idea. The idea behind the product is really pretty fantastic. In fact, the idea sells the product more so than the product sells itself. That’s really where the trouble comes in. The product is riddled with poor design choices and terrible implementations. It’s proof that no matter how good an idea is, good ideas on their own are not enough to drive the success of a product. The product has to be well designed, well supported, and well thought out. This product I’m working with? It’s none of those things. It’s scampering from one poor choice to the next in a cascade of blatant cash-grabs that billion dollar businesses want to purchase but we’re stuck supporting.

I’m full of piss and vinegar today. I’m ready to bust some heads and kick some ass. The summer of truly living life has finally gone full swing. My employer needs to back the hell off of me a bit, but other than that I won’t complain too much. I won’t jinx myself to say that things are going “well”, but they certainly aren’t as dismal as they’ve appeared to be in the past.

Foreward: No one was spared, not even the children. Word after word of cruel truth, sputtered forth in ironic tone, not attempting to be humorous but might earn a chortle or two. I bring you, “The Devil’s (Infosec) Dictionary”.

Anonymous /əˈnänəməs/
(1.) Noun Group of “hacktivists” puppeted by CIA.

Antisec /ˈantēsək/
(1.) Noun Digital Anarchists, modern internet mafia. Similar to Democratic Party. Funded at least partially by the CIA, but normally chased by FBI.

One of the most useful little tools for information parsing that I’ve used has to be awk. Specifically, awk will allow you to pipe text through it and use the printf() function to format text as you require it to be formatted. It also has a basic scripting language that lends further functionality, making it an ubiquitous tool in the POSIX arsenal. Need to format a list of US States for a Maruku table? Not a problem. Copy / Paste it into a text file and pipe it through this:

Jekyll is an excellent “simple, blog aware, static site generator”. It allows you to use special shorthand syntax like Textile, Maruku, or other markup syntaxes to quickly and easily generate static blog content. The resources available on the internet for using Jekyll to blog are downright plentiful, and the tool itself is incredibly flexible.

The first thing you’ll have to do is grab a Jekyll layout from a current Jekyll blog. They’re all over the place, and nearly every one I’ve seen has been excellent. Choose what looks good to you. The markup supported is so easy that you can manually edit each layout easily to make it suit your own requirements. You’ll also find a plethora of information on how to include Disqus and other features you may require for your blog. Make it as complex or simple as you please. The nice thing is that you’re less likely to experience server-side scripting problems, since the platform generates static HTML. No SQL or PHP locking down required. Just generate your content and you’re good to go.

I’ve completely fallen in love with Jekyll as a blogging platform. I might create a few more websites or write my own Jekyll template, depending on free time and my mood in the next two weeks. If I’m able to find employment that gives me a moment’s peace, I’ll definitely forge forward with the awesomeness that is a Jekyll tutorial, because I think everyone should get to know this stuff. It’s fun, flexible, and worth investing a little time to research. I’ll drop a link to it in another post some time today.