What I used to make this blog
WordPress + Elementor
WordPress is a CMS, a practical platform for creating a dynamic website without the need for in-depth technical knowledge. It is easy to use, even for beginners, and there are plenty of templates and features available to customize a site to suit your needs. Among these plugins is Elementor Page Builder, which allows you to customize a website with relative ease. With it, you can create pages visually, without having to write too much code. It contains a few predefined templates that save you time, which is what I used, tweaking them here and there because, for this site, I wanted to focus on the content and not have to work too much on the container.
Notion
I used Notion to put together the “draft” of this site on a daily basis for several reasons:
It is much faster to reorganize a section of the site or sections within sections, or even move a page from one category to another, with a simple click of the mouse in Notion than in any CMS. I could have easily made the Notion version of the site accessible from the web, but I have my pride—I've been making websites for almost 25 years, so it had to look good. A big advantage is that you can work from your phone or any of your computers, and it updates in real time wherever you use it. So this blog was written from all over the place: my home, the emergency room, the RER C train, my bed during chemo, the cafeteria, etc.
Here's a quick introduction to Notion (generated by its built-in AI) that doesn't really do it justice, but trust me, it's awesome!
Notion is an all-in-one productivity platform that offers a multitude of features to help you organize your work and personal life. With Notion, you can create databases, tables, note pages and even websites. It is easy to work as a team on Notion. In addition, Notion is very customizable, so you can adapt it to your specific needs. In short, Notion is a very versatile tool to organize your personal and professional life.
Notion WP Sync
This is a WordPress plugin that allows you to connect Notion directly to your WordPress site and import all the work done in Notion directly. WP Sync takes Notion pages and creates corresponding posts in WordPress, updates them when they change, etc. It also creates WP categories and WP tags based on what you have prepared in Notion. And it's in FRENCH, sir. Unfortunately, I've only used the free version, as the paid version is quite expensive and aimed at professional websites and is therefore beyond my means. Very good plugin.
Linux Mint
I have been installing and trying Linux since 1999. And although it allowed me to configure two servers, I couldn't bring myself to adopt it as my daily OS. It still itched me quite a bit, so I kept coming back to try out different distributions every two or three years. In 2022, I decided to take the plunge, fed up with the other two: Apple and its MacOS, which really thinks its customers are stupid, and Microsoft and its Windows, which is following the same path, with bugs and viruses thrown in for good measure. I am DELIGHTED and now work almost exclusively on Linux Mint, which is the distribution that has made the most effort to make its OS understandable and accessible. For me and any Windows user, their Cinnamon desktop is super easy to learn. I've installed it on four computers and now only work with it. Goodbye Windows, and see you when hell freezes over, MacOS 😉
Don't listen to the barking of Apple & Win fanboys who have forgotten the days, weeks, and months they spent understanding and mastering Windows or MacOS and who think that a third OS is only there to offer them something for free and that you can skip the information and learning stages, since you're already a Win or Mac expert. By not informing themselves, they always choose the wrong distribution (yes, Linux comes in many variants), usually Ubuntu, which is unattractive and not very user-friendly, or something exotic like Kali Linux, which requires in-depth knowledge of the OS. By not bothering to read the little information they are given during and after installation, they are bound to be disappointed. The worst are the guys who tried Linux in 2005 and think nothing has changed since then.
So if you're just getting informed (what, there's another OS?), Linux Mint offers exemplary stability, exemplary data policy, no viruses (at least for now), an update system, backup, upgrades, security, robustness, and simplicity. You'll have to get up early to mess it up. Or be really stupid, whichever. Note: since then, I've also tried Big Linux (well, you have time when you're sick), and it's a very good distribution too. So now I have both, and I choose depending on my mood.
Sidekick Browser
This thing is just awesome. But what is it? It's just a browser, but so much better than 95% of what's out there that I didn't hesitate to pay $8 a month to get all its features. Based on Chromium (like Chrome), it accepts all Chrome extensions, runs two or three times faster, blocks ads natively, and does not send anything to Google. It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Since then, I've seen that Opera is going down the same path with Opera One, so we'll see.
Various AI (Notion, Deepl, Chat GPT, Perplexity)
So let me reassure you right away: I am indeed the author of these lines. AI is still very basic, but it is also very fast. In this blog, I've used it for some definitions in tooltips and a few summary presentations of medical specialties, diseases, films, and software, but they are always in italics and generally marked when they are integrated into the text. They are also often reworked a bit. Having used several of them, I would say that they are very good at remixing existing material, rewriting, and producing translations that are much more advanced than those of Google Translate, which are a bit preformatted, but for now, in terms of pure creativity, they are useless. In other words, fantasies of Terminator- or Matrix-style takeovers are not really on the agenda at the moment. Unless we introduce them to films and books on the subject, but that would just be a rehash of things imagined by humans. Paradoxical, isn't it?
Unsplash
Most of the banners come from this royalty-free photo site that Notion is natively connected to (which means you can get them directly in Notion without having to open a second tab for Unsplash).
