So here we are, I’m starting a blog. I’ve just set up a server and bought a domain. Why Qoba.lt? The name, of course, is derived from the chemical element:

I like this name, and that’s pretty much everything there is to say about it. Its color is nice as well (#22427c, according to Wikipedia): you probably noticed that I used it for background, and it does not look bad.

Anyway. Let’s use this first article as a brief introduction about what is running behind, and what will run on this blog.

1 Yet another blog… about computer science

Computer science, information technology should be the main topics covered in this blog. You may expect some (more or less) technical posts, some tutorials or some post-install notes reflecting my experiments, and hopefully some interesting snippets of code. I may also write about my own reflexions or experiences in this domain. Ultimately I might post about things, stuff or events non relative to computing. This blog is mine, after all.

2 Practical info

Standard disclaimer: opinions expressed on this blog are the ones of their respective authors, they do not engage their past or present (or future…) employers, or anyone else. Constructive remarks, reactions, feedback of any kind or simply corrections are always welcome. Feel free to email the author of the post (click on their name) and/or myself (see footer).

Unless otherwise specified, the content of this blog is released into public domain (at least under the nearly equivalent CC0 license). Pictures not credited are supposed to be my work (but I’m human and prone to error, so in case of doubt, contact me). Public domain means that you can reuse any part, without restriction. So if you find anything of interest, please help yourself! You may credit me (that would be nice) or show me what you’ve done with stuff I published, but this is not required.

The embedded fonts are Junction (body) and Raleway (blog title), both under free license (but not in public domain) and coming from The League of Moveable Type, and Fira Mono (monospace), under free license as well, from Carrois Type Design.

3 Powered by fugitive, with hacks

Fugitive, besides being the name of a known Git wrapper plugin for Vim editor, is a blog engine running on top of Git hooks. It was made by Pablo Rauzy for his own blog. This software is the lightest blog engine I found, requiring no dependencies other than Git. It can easily be interfaced with pandoc to write articles in Markdown format, but I decided to push further pandoc integration, and I ended up with a fork of the CMS that I called pangitive. More details should follow in a dedicated article. If you’re interested in it, it is available (and documented) on GitHub.

4 Who is behind?

I’m Qeole. I recently completed my Ph. D. in computer science, and now I work as a R&D engineer. I’m interested in open-source software, free culture, IT security, fast networking, open access to research, web development, privacy issues, and many other things—many of which have nothing to do here. I do not necessarily intend to be the only one speaking on this blog, and I’ll try to talk people into posting some articles from time to time. External contributions are welcome as well, just contact me.

I’m not a native English speaker, so there might be mistakes or weird sentences in this article or in email conversations. Please do not be indulgent about that and do not hesitate to correct me, I want to improve my skills. Not English then: actually I’m French, and even though I decided to start this blog in English, there may some French content at one point. Whether it will be just some posts in this blog, or whether I’ll fork it to translate articles into French, I’ve not decided yet. For now, let’s just write a few articles!