Got an emacs eliza working

I feel real proud when I get my computer working with me, in a way that saves time and feels unique to my needs/style/what-have-you. When there is a program that is personal and helpful, I call it an Eliza.

Tonight, I wrote an eliza for this here log! I wanted to be able to write new logs quickly and put them online without a lot of fuss. I also want this whole thing to be written by hand in a language I like.

So the logs are written in pollen, in a special coolguy markup this evolves as the site does. I then have a bit of lisp written in emacs, my text editor, that will create a new log for me whenever I type the command coolguy/log. All it does is make a new file in the right place, update my list of log pages, and then throws a starter snippet into this file.

Then, I have another command called publish log that, when invoked, will render the whole log from text files to websites, push them to my git repository for coolguy.website, which then triggers an update of the actual site. It is sounding like a lot as I type it, but the actual line of things happening is so much simpler than I’ve ever had it.

The mechanics of the code don’t matter much (and I kinda hate the blogs that are just about the mechanics of how the blog was written. boring as!) I am writing tonight to say that I am happy, to feel my code helping me do something non-codey. It is as it should be, but I didn’t always know how to do it.