I decided to use Octopress as a static blog generator, because I’ve got tired of Wordpress database mumbo-jumbo. I was seeking for a simple and reliable way to blog, and also I wanted markdown, version control, and LaTeX support, and code highlighting, etc, etc. In Octopress we have many of these nice features out of the box. And you can tweak it further, if you wish. “If you want a thing done well, do it yourself.” - I’ve thought and decided to try Octopress. Version control is maintained by git and pages are static html, i.e. they are not using any database. You can also use any text editor, that you prefer. Octopress also supports markdown syntax, which is clean and simple.

Octopress cheat sheet can be found here. Or even larger here

After installation I wanted to remove additional blog part in the URL’s. How to do that is described here as well, as some good SEO hacks for Octopress.

File uploading is done via rsync. To use rsync I’ve had to install cygwin (Yep, I’m Windows guy) from here and add it to the PATH variable.

UPD 08.08.2014 There is faster way to install rsync in Windows. You should use cwRsync - I have simply unzipped an archive to %RUBY%/bin folder

Unfortunately, rsync uploaded the files, but did not change the file attributes. I’ve found that rsync can set permissions on files. How to do this is described here Modify Rakefile as described below, so that after rsync directories will have permission 755 and files will have permission 644

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rsync_args     = "--chmod=Du=rwx,Dg=rx,Do=rx,Fu=rw,Fg=r,Fo=r"

To add LaTeX support for math equations I used Mathjax. Read more here.

Now I can write cool equations like this $ e^{i \varphi} = \cos{\varphi} + i \sin {\varphi} $

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$ e^{i \varphi} = \cos{\varphi} + i \sin {\varphi} $

or even this

\[ f(x)= a_0 + a_1\sin(x) + a_2\sin(2x) + … \] \[ +b_1\cos(x) + b_2\cos(2x) + … \] \[ f(x)=a_0+\sum_{k=1}^\infty\big( a_k\cos(kx)+b_k\sin(kx) \big) \]

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\[ 
f(x)= a_0 + a_1\sin(x) + a_2\sin(2x) + ...
\]

\[  
+b_1\cos(x) + b_2\cos(2x) + ...
\]  

\[
f(x)=a_0+\sum_{k=1}^\infty\big( a_k\cos(kx)+b_k\sin(kx) \big)
\]