Photo Gallery!

I added a photo gallery using this cool Gallery Generator, a Jekyll plugin that generates galleries from directories of images. I had been looking for a good way to embed photo galleries to a static site for a long time but didn’t succeed until I found this plugin. I really like the minimalist style of this plugin which fits my site (I am not an advocate for minimalism in life, but I like a lean and clean website : )).

It took me a while to get dependencies of the plugin due to ruby version issue. And the previous jekyll serve and jekyll build commands didn’t work anymore after installing and upgrading the dependencies. Instead, I used the following commands:

bundle exec jekyll serve
bundle exec jekyll build

Do I sound more like an engineer now? I should, right? It is Bay Area! I have learned so much about the static site and many other things in the past year at Netlify. Still learning…I should summarize the previous year in another post. I am not an engineer by training and it takes me a long time to learn how to build and deploy a static website. Now Netlify makes it much easier! I can’t speak for you, but for me, it is such a great feeling to tweak the design of the website, constantly concentrate on making the website as clean and efficient as possible, and most important, you own the code! The open source community makes it even more fun. You can borrow others’ work and blend it into your project. It is like playing Lego. We share all the pieces everyone in the community has been creating. We enrich and empower each other.

I will spend some time to sort out the photos I have in the next couple weeks. My laptop crashed suddenly in Feb 2018. Nearly all of my photos were lost except a small portion saved in Dropbox. There were tons of memories that I wanted to keep and an equal amount that I wanted to let go. You don’t move on, you move with, with all the experiences that create you and become part of you. Those are the reasons that you are who you are today.

I don’t use most of the social media, no Facebook, no Instagram. I have a Twitter account but rarely check.

I use WeChat (Not because I like it, but it is very popular among Chinese and my family and friends in China are using it. In a government controlled country, people can only use government censored tools.), SMS and email to keep in touch with family and friends. Use LinkedIn for professional network. I prefer to share thoughts about profession and life in a more centralized, structured and deep way that helps me to organize my mind.

For a bookworm, writing is not a choice, it is necessary for better-thinking or……for living. Blogging has many advantages. It helps to refine your writing skills, deepen your thoughts, sort out your mind and share your knowledge. It is better to write on a more regular basis and proofread the writing constantly. It is challenging, even more so when you write in a non-native language. But the payback is also clearly on the table: you develop a different self, an enriched one. I just love the process! We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us. Language is one of those tools that has a big impact on us.

I have been enjoying my journey so far and am happy about who I am now. Thank you for all who made a mark in my life : )