I decided that managing Wordpress on my web host was not interesting any longer. I wanted to host my simple blog in git, to compose using vim, and to not have to manage a database or the insecurities of a web application. Not to mention that the RSS feed was slightly broken and the pages were not standards compliant.

Consequently, I redesigned this site using Jekyll, a Ruby-based “blog-aware” publishing tool that is the backend behind GitHub pages. Instead of dynamically generating content, it transforms all the content to static HTML files. It uses Markdown for its markup language, so composing directly in cumbersome HTML continues to not be necessary. I now have both a suite of unit tests that are run prior to deployment, as well as a QA site to test changes before going production with them.

The unfortunate side effect was that your feed reader probably went a little crazy and marked-as-new a bunch of old posts. Apologies for this: it wasn’t worth keeping the same timestamps. Also, there was a late-breaking bug in the RSS feed (but the recommended Atom feed was fine).

The source for this blog is available on GitHub. Let me know if anything is broken.¹

Walking in the Charlotte Airport inspired me to do some research into the economics of moving walkways. I’m currently sitting (in a wooden rocking chair!) in front of one, which clearly illustrates a common thought: why do people stand on moving walkways?

Often being positioned in areas designed to get you from one place to another (say, transportation hubs), I think it should be obvious that moving walkways do not exist to present an opportunity of leisure and rest, but to propel us faster toward our ultimate destination.

The paper “An Armchair View of Escalators and Moving Walkways” (pdf link) by Roger W. Garrison presents a neoclassical microeconomic analysis of exactly the trade-offs involved in deciding to stand or walk, and is an enjoyable, short read.

I’ll spoil the ending by giving this quote:

The only downside to exposing students to this armchair view of escalators and moving walkways is that they may never again be able to pass through an airport without thinking of indifference-curve analysis.

(Perhaps I will now attempt to collect empirical data on moving walkway usage).