Blog of Mathias

Tools

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 13:01:32 +0200

Software are getting all these smart tools that can do all kind of fancy stuff for a small fee.

I generally like the idea behind it but often a tool ends up being something you’ll have to learn. If you have to spend time learning something why not learn the technology behind it all, so you have more freedom?

I realise that knowing the tool behind it all sometimes still demand a lot of handheld work which you can skip with a tool. I just prefer having simple tools automating the repetitive and hard tasks and then leaving the rest open to use.

If you have used an ORM for database calls you know that it’s sometimes super smart and sometimes irritating. You can do basic calls super easy without writing SQL. Often you can also insert SQL directly in some way. I just don’t understand what’s dangerous about SQL. If you collect everything in SQL files you’ll have direct control about precisely what happens where.

I could write for ages about ORMs. I don’t mind them. I have tried using them where it was really convenient and I tried using it where the integration and the breaking changes was not worth it.

Hosting

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 12:51:59 +0200

Hosting is always a question

There are tons of hosting options out there with a ton of different options.

Many companies normally defaults to either Microsoft or Amazon because they believe they need the capabilities or support. I have not been a place that truly needed anything from them. It might also be something about availability, developer experiences and too big to fail.

I think it is a shame that they don’t try other places.

I have been a fan of Digital Ocean for a long time, because it was super simple and I have only used it for small scale sites. They are now transitioning to making more money, which I understand, but that bloats their site, with one click AI installations and all kinds of smart stuff I don’t need.

I still use them but mainly because of familiarity. With the new political landscape I would also like to support more European companies.

I do like how their App Platform let’s me have a super simple CI/CD integration with Github and one click deployment where it figures out most behind the scenes. It’s really smart when it works. But as you know, sometimes you want to do custom stuff and then it’s a tool to learn and then you might as well learn and setup a simple nginx config.

My First Post

Sat, 27 Sep 2025 10:08:52 +0200

Hugo as a tool for making a blog

This is my first test with Hugo. So far the response time is incredibly fast and the documentation is really easy to follow along. I am pleasantly surprised that it uses MarkDown files to post pages. This means I can make a vault and edit my posts in Obsidian, which I have grown quite fund of as a note/idea tool.

Issues

I had some trouble getting it to work as a route mathiasegekvist/blog but I am unsure if that is the way hugo is made or the way Digital Ocean tries to deploy it. I tried a bunch of stuff but it kept making the links for styling and assets wrong. I ended up making it as another deployment in Digital Ocean and then routing to blog.mathiasegekvist.dk instead. That worked perfectly out of the box.