I learned BlazeBlogger from aqua and used it for a while. It is very simple and neat — no crap like databases or server-side scripts but just generating static HTML files.

Recently fishy recommended Octopress to me, a static site generator that has everything a hacker would enjoy, such as git integration and code highlighting. So, here I am.

Latex support

To load MathJax, append the following tag to source/_includes/custom/head.html.

<script type="text/javascript"
        src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML">
</script>

You may also need to switch the Markdown engine. In _config.yml, change markdown from rdiscount to kramdown. Remember to run gem install kramdown if it is not installed.

For inline equations, simply enclose Latex source within $$…$$. Happy $\LaTeX$-ing!

For block equations, also enclose Latex within $$…$$. However, leave each $$ in a separate line, and insert blank lines before and after the block.

Internal post linking

To refer to one of your own blog posts, an ugly way is to use an absolute URL. To avoid that, try this post_url tag plugin. For example,

[link to this post]({% post_url 2012-01-05-hello-world %})

gives the link to this post.

Jekyll’s post_url seems not happy with Octopress. Download this post_url.rb instead and put it in the plugins directory.