LinkedIn is not the right place for me to find interesting work.

Cold, wind, and wet snow this morning. Cut our walk as short as possible.

Finished Severance season 2 last night. Quite a ride, although I still feel lost. The weather sucks tonight: 🌧 Light rain and snow+36°F. Not a great time walking the dog just now.

I'm not in the mood for any of this, today. I don't feel like maintaining or being responsible for anything: this blog, several computers, servers, a fish tank, two cars, a house, none of it. How long before Trump makes it so that one must demonstrate fealty before receiving …

Dog got me up at 3:20 this morning, ready for her walk. "Fine!", I said. It's 4:18 AM. I've written a bit in my journal, and now I'm typing in a text box on the blog. Part of me thinks this is the perfect start to a new day. Another part of me thinks I'm wasting my life.

• Why bother

Yesterday was sunny and 70°. Today is the first day of spring and it's snowing. I would like to stop changing things all the time, but my brain won't let me. Can you imagine what it would be like to stick around long enough to actually get good at something for once?

• Om on search

Well would you look at that. We're using Kirby again.

• Overthinking everything again
• Kirby revived

I'm now writing everything here locally and deploying it using rsync (via just). This way makes it easier to edit posts using Emacs. If you're reading this, it worked. They're going to need a new acronym for DOGE. DOLTPALS, maybe (Department Of Lining Trump's Pockets And Lost …

It's interesting how much I love using Kirby when I'm posting a lot of images. It's just as interesting how I'd rather have something fully static when I'm not. Just an observation. I'm pro-regulation. Unless of course it's about something I'm personally interested or invested …

• The "I'm Back" digital film roll
• Howm updates
• My first homemade 3D print

My hobbies are: playing with software, blogging, and photography. It's OK that I do some of them more than others, and sometimes do one of them a little too much.

• Saying no

• Inventing scenarios (Dom Corriveau)
• How to Comment on Social Media (Rebecca Solnit)

My dog's schedule is all out of whack. This morning she was up and ready to go at 1:45 AM. I put her off until around 3:00 but gave in and took her for a walk. Now it's 4:45 and I've walked a mile, done some yoga, wrote in my journal, and waffled about where to post this. …

• Dispair is a Goddamn Luxury
• "Ernst" teddy from Leica
• I can't find things

Hey, at least I didn't change blogging platforms today.

• Stepping back from social media
• When I'm trying to stay off the socials

The dog got me up at 2:20 AM and insisted we go for our morning walk right then. It was -1°F. This made it both too early and too cold. It also means it's now 05:42 AM and I've been up for more than three hours already. Did some yoga, read some news (big mistake!). Drinking …

• OMG omg.lol
• Links for January 21, 2025

I can't even, today. What a nitwit that guy is.

• I should paint myself into a corner
• The hours I've spent in and around Emacs

I suppose today is the last day that things will be at their least terrible.

• TikTok
• Bramble
• Links for January 19, 2025

• Emacs churn

• Replacing make with just

What if I just never changed blogging engines again? Man, that would be cool.

• Dave suggests a change in scenery or perspective
• Nick Cave defends the awkward first line of O Wow O Wow
• Why am I not taking pictures?

I must admit, and I know it's only been a couple of weeks, that I'm still happy using Kirby for the blog. And I'm OK with posting everything here. This is a good thing and I hope it lasts. Learning to want less is proving difficult. Some days I'm content with what I have. Other …

• Writing on a tablet
• System status: January, 2025

I wrote a long entry in my journal this morning about how unremarkable I feel. I don't mean that I don't feel good. It means that I am realizing how unremarkable I am and it's been quite jarring. Still processing. Tim Bray:: Having enjoyed the creative output of someone who …

• No more Instagram for me
• Links for January 12, 2025

It's not so much that I want people to stop pointing out bad behavior. It's just that all of social media generates this low-grade hum of negativity that, over time, adversely affects my mental well-being.

• Doom as the Bambu Labs of Emacs

My dog has had a few instances where (we think) she throws her back out. All of a sudden she'll struggle on stairs and will be in obvious discomfort. Last time was about a month ago, and it lasted a few days. We gave her doggy ibuprofen and muscle relaxers. This happened again …

• Lifestack
• Of two minds about Emacs

• Not doing
• I need to reset my consumption

Got my Covid and Flu shots this morning. Planning to lay low for a couple of days, but let's be honest, that's what I always do.

I was just looking through previous posts about using Kirby for this site. There was a flurry of activity about a year ago, during which I moved my editing process from the server to my local machine and back again. I also switched back and forth between Kirby and Hugo. And back …

I'm really messing with things around here this morning. Sorry for any disruption. Still waiting for filament for the Bambu. My order from Amazon was delayed until the 7th, so I placed another order, and that one is so far still scheduled to arrive today.

I feel like I'm being a dick when I tell people that I don't care what's on their phone's home screen. Don't put "BREAKING: " in your headline unless it's actually breaking news and not just something you personally think is important. Watched: The Godfather (1972) ★★★★★ …

I was just notified that my 3D printer is "Out for Delivery". I'm excited, even though I'm not sure what I'm going to make with it, yet.

• Links for January 3, 2025

I feel much better today, after having a headache and achiness for the past couple of days. Maybe I'll actually get something done.

• Backups using Arq rather than rsync
• Links for January 2, 2025

Hello, 2025, I guess? I'd rather not start the year on a sour note, but I am no further along any path than I was a year ago. I still don't know where to put things. I still don't know what to use to manage my photos. I still don't know whether to use one or multiple …

I guess this is a wrap on 2024, then. It's been quite a year, blog-wise. I won't claim it was productive or even creative, but still...quite a year. I see a lot of year-end summary posts, but I can't be bothered to write one. See 2022 and 2023, I guess. Doctor Drafts: Doctor …

• Change to post URLs
• Pete knows how it feels

Aaaaand....we're back to running the site using Kirby. I didn't bring any of the daily journal entries over (since September) because it would have put me off the whole project. I may go back and pick at migrating them later.

• Kirby

Who'd have thought I would dust off the Kirby version of the blog, upgrade to Kirby 4.5.0, and deploy it to the server? I would not have, in case you're wondering.

• Caught up on my contact sheets

• Over on baty.blog for a minute

• Daily Notes

Internet was out for a short time. It was kind of great.

Yesterday was a weird day. A good day, but weird. I started playing with Pika and Bear blogs this morning. I don't know why.

• Film and digital

One reason I avoid taking part in politic discussions with strangers in most contexts is that there's no longer such a thing as a political discussion. It always, always devolves to just yelling at and past each other and I want no part of that. I don't know how to avoid that …

Kirby needs some manual code and folder changes at the start of each month and I don't enjoy that. Too lazy to figure out the right way to fix it, so I keep doing it. Update: no I don't

I'm over-complicating things again. This blog, for one. Thinking about changing the home page to just a normal post...post...post format. After a couple of days with 500.social I'm wondering how useful "general interest" communities are to me. I love the idea, but in practice …

• Home page content changes
• Gravatar is over
• It's a gold standard for a reason

The first small customization I tried in SilverBullet has not worked. I do better when small wins are easy. I get to babysit for Lincoln this afternoon, so I'm just killing time until then.

• Dave responds about politics and communities
• The GR1 has other problems

Arc Browser is better than Safari in many ways, but Safari is quieter, somehow, and most of the time that's what I prefer. I decided to change how jackbaty.com is generated. It's no longer exported from an Org-mode file. It's now a Markdown file and I create the HTML via Pandoc. …

• Politics and communities
• I brought my cameras and barely used them
• 500 Social

SilverBullet feels like a cross between TiddlyWiki and Obsidian with a dash of Emacs. We are heading up to the annual Family reunion in Newaygo today. Everyone normally gets along fine. I hope that continues this year.

I turn 60 years old today. That seems like a lot.

I'm once again thinking about decommissioning the Synology. It's something that will break and I don't want to deal with fixing it. I'm not seeing useful updates to the OS or apps (e.g. Photos) so right now it's just a Plex server. I'm running another Plex server on the 2014 Mac …

• Printed photos
• Emacs vs and or SilverBullet

"...an endless stream of people doing what everyone else is doing." I have no idea what I want to do or be or create or any of it.

The Democrats could nominate a half-awake baboon and that's who I'd vote for. I don't want to do anything that depends on attacting attention on social media. Would you like to know the real reason many of us prioritize using open, plain text formats for our notes? Because we …

• Monday
• SilverBullet

The new iPhone Mirroring feature in Sequoia is pretty cool. Today I'm feeling like I want to get rid of everything and start over.

• Capture

Posted using Tinderbox, Blot, TiddlyWiki, and now Kirby. All today. Cool My sites were down for a while this morning. I'd done some server updates and restarted. Caddy didn't start automatically because for some reason Apache was already started. I don't remember installing …

👉 Who am I responsible to here? - Jack Baty Daily It's so weird. I wake up, walk the dog, make coffee, journal, then sit at the computer and plan to fire up all my old blogs, just because. Then, I spend an hour in the darkroom, come back, and feel like just staying here in …

👉 Roll-167 (Ricoh GR1. HP5) I'm starting to feel like Evernote is worth the subscription price just as a place to toss things for later, just in case.

• What if I didn't have "Posts"

Last week I deleted my old web/static server at Digital Ocean. I just realized that's where my Gitea instance lived. Oops.

Someone tried to kill Trump at a rally yesterday. I may hate the man, but I don't wish him dead. I just want him gone by natural causes...something like, say, votes. Most of what I share publicly is behind-the-scenes work. This would be fine if I ever actually produced scenes …

👉 Post: Roll-166 (Hasselblad 500C/M. HP5) Shooting film is more work than digital...until it's scanned. Then, the only thing there is to do is remove a few dust spots, tweak exposure a touch, and you're done. I prefer this.

• Save your negatives
• So many choices
• Regretting one's camera roll

The whole conversation around Rick Beato's recent video is annoying and stupid and so far, everyone on both sides is wrong.

• Purged the things that want to take over for Emacs

🍿 The Bikeriders (2024) I have an article due in a week, so this morning I thought I'd get at least an outline put together. I paused, then stopped, because I didn't know which app to use for writing it. Eventually I went with Emacs/Org-mode because that's where I'm comfortable, …

• Avoiding the sirens' call

It's clear to me that people who don't fret about how they take notes are those with jobs to do and lives to lead. How can I be one of those, too? 🍿 Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

• SwiftOnSecurity - human nature
• Everything.rss is deprecated

• Manuel is mad at The Browser Company

Today is the last full day of having the in-laws in town. It's been fun, but my introversion is beginning to show. Obsidian is a big dumb waste of my time. Why do I keep letting it in?

My in laws rented a car and are out on their own today, meaning my wife and I are also free from entertaining. We'll probably both spend the day doing as little as possible. That's my goal, anyway. I find all current discussions about AI to be boring and annoying. 👉 Post: …

• Film vs Digital and value over time
• Pandoc to PDF issues
• Into Doom and out again

I spent some time today moving my vanilla Emacs config aside and ramping back up with Doom Emacs. Now, I'm not sure why I did that.

• My 20-year anniversary with Flickr

It's July 4th and we're going to a nearby beach. Like everyone else, probably. Wish me luck.

• Making up with Emacs

My wife's sister and her fiancé are arriving from New Orleans today, so I have a week of entertaining and "being on" so I expect to be exhausted. I have zero confidence in the Ladybird browser making meaningful inroads, but one can hope. 🍿 Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F ★★★

🍿 The Fuzz ★★ Farted around with Kirby again this morning. I fixed the og:image and og:description metadata. Improved the layout of movie pages. This is the fun and useful sort of futzing that I don't mind doing. I saw that Supacel was seeing 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Should be …

• Tolstoy on doing the simple thing

Hang on, I'm trying something

• AI hype is a different kind of hype

Some days I care deeply about, well, everything. Other days (such as today, so far), I could not care less about anything. "Reduce & Simplify" does not mean install Keyboard Maestro, Jack. I keep reaching for Evernote instead of Bear or Emacs and it's embarrassing.

• Now that I'm back in my custom Kirby blog...

I took a digital camera (Ricoh GRIII) on my walk yesterday. I was feeling lazy and the GRIII is tiny, easy, and makes great images. I don't know yet if this is the start of a digital phase, but I've been shopping for new cameras. Not one second of the "debate" passed my eyes or …

Do I even have a lane?

• Poem: I'm sorry

I was quickly refunded for the Ghost theme I'd purchased. I can't say enough good things about Aspire Themes. This frees up $150 for something fun. Or maybe I'll use it to assuage the guilt I feel for paying for an Evernote subscription.

• See? I'm already tweaking things

Here we are again, in Kirby. Sorry for any disturbance. Watched Furiosa last night and when I told my daughter she should watch it she said, "I saw the other one and it was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo on a moving vehicle." I give up :). So, I'm editing this journal entry on the …

To no one's surprise, I'm feeling twitchy about Ghost again. Every post is one more thing buried in Ghost's database. I know, exports blah blah, but still. My blog doesn't feel like mine, ya know?

I wondered what it would be like to write a journal post in Kirby again, so here we are. 👋🏻 There's a lot going on around here today, so I don't have time for this nonsense. Probably a good thing.

• Welcome back, Kirby

• A different blogging mood
• Prepare for changes here

• Instagram is depressing

My dad and his great grandson. (Olympus OM-1n. Tri-X)

• Maybe it's not hallucination

Shouldn't I be out doing something?

• Generative Remove
• OpenAI just gave away the entire game - Atlantic
• Motivations

Selling this M6 was one of my dumber moves. There is a looming battle between my TiddlyWiki and Kirby here for daily notes. I'm going to give daily.baty.net a break while these other two duke it out.

• Trust but verify
• Social media is at it again

Chair (2009). Leica M4. I can't believe I'm considering moving the Kirby installation back to server-first. Have I learned nothing?

Bertrand's Pen and Shaver sales. Grand Rapids, MI (2009). It's been one of those weeks. Again. Now I'm here in Kirby and using Bear and Day One and Lightroom and anything else that doesn't require me to care about file organization and naming. See File Management Fatigue. You …

• Separate blogs

I started building a movie review template for the blog, but I seem to have lost any energy I had for that kind of thing.

• Sub-apologizing for DHH

Field on my walk. Leica M3. 50mm Summilux ASPH. HP5.

• Easy vs Cool

Self-portrait, double exposure (1983)

• Of two minds
• I kind of want a Stream Deck
• Oh right, now I don't like it either

• MailMate
• RSS fix
• Crush this

Self portrait (2013). Mamiya 6.

• Even having one blog requires too many decisions

Film photo of my TV screen showing a photo by Renato D’Agostin I just added notes about the new Casual Dired Emacs package to the wiki, Obsidian, and as a Howm note in Emacs. It's going to be one of those days, I guess. What I'd like is my Baty.net blog and Emacs for notes and …

It's hopeless. I'm mad at the trend of creating giant social media (open graph) images for blog posts that don't otherwise have images. They're basically ads.

• BBEdit shell worksheets

• Daily notes, where?

Silos. Olympus Stylus Epic. Superia 400. Is it really a "walled garden"? Maybe it's actually a "gated community". I'm not even going to talk about the past couple of days with Emacs and Obsidian duking it out. It's exhausting. fwiw, Emacs is still the winner, but I've wasted so …

Snow fence. Leica M3.

• Hey
• Moods
• Moods II

Grilling season. Leica MP. HP5. What if, instead of social media, we all just shut the fuck up?

Notebooks. Leica MP. HP5. I've already forgotten how a lot of this blog works. This makes things slightly frustrating when I'm not in the mood to dig in. Guess I have no choice, if I actually want to write here. Which I do...right? So, what I'm seeing, is that people who don't …

• Cross-posting to Mastodon

My grandson and my dad. Both handsome. Leica M3. HP5. Some days I like writing in Tinderbox. Some in Emacs. Some in a textarea on a Kirby-managed website. Today, I'm starting with the latter. If I was "finished" with my Kirby setup, I might spend more time here. However, there …

• Cross-posting from baty.net

Yesterday I thought about letting this blog just idle. Today I want to live here. My brain hurts.

Upgraded Kirby to 4.2.0. It's telling that when I saw an update to Kirby I thought, "Well crap, I don't feel like upgrading." Even though upgrading is pretty simple, I worry that something will break and I'll be spending my day dealing with it. So far, upgrades have been …

• Lonely blog

I'm elsewhere for a bit.

• Please stand by

Please stand by

I'm finding that there's too much to think about when using Kirby. Should I edit content locally or on server? How should I handle upgrades? Routes? Kirbytext or Markdown? PHP? It's too much.

• 3 blogs and a wiki

Kirby is really nice, but I'm still trying to get comfortable with it.

• Baty.blog

I should just make baty.net into a redirect to whichever blog I'm active on at the moment.

Every third link I click on one of my blogs is broken. I hate that I've created such a mess. Some days I'm determined to clean it all up, once and for all. Other's, I don't care as much and figure I'll just leave it be.

• Hitting the bricks again

I'm impossible. I've been posting daily notes over on daily.baty.net for a couple of days, after swearing that I was going to focus my attention here. Sometimes I convince myself that this is just me playing with stuff, but I can't describe how frustrating I get with this whole …

• RSS feed changes
• Nitro for macOS

Day 2 of the new Mac Mini setup. I'm already tired of it.

Oscars hot take: Christopher Nolan is not the "premier director of his generation." Both Yorgos Lanthimos and Denis Villeneuve make better films. Someone noticed that a few links from my old substack were coming up 404. I moved those posts over here, and then started bringing …

Drool Intentions I'm increasingly convinced that the single thing I've wasted the most time on has been capturing and organizing miscellaneous "knowledge".

• Just answer the phone, you baby

I've had the same roll of Tri-X in the MP for weeks. I don't deserve such fine things.

• Tinkering with Dave
• I keep posting over on baty.blog
• Moving posts here from baty.blog

Upgraded Kirby to 4.1.2. Bug fixes, mostly. I really don't want to talk about tools anymore, but that's all I know how to talk about. Should I tell you how I've been forcing myself to use Obsidian again? I can't seem to stop trying. Speaking of my websites (huh?), I'm …

It's possible that there's a limit to how much information about Apple I can stand to look at every day. I believe I've reached it. I can feel myself changing, but I remain stuck between phases. It's frustrating to know that changes are coming while feeling powerless to affect …

The other day I wrote that, "I've been writing some version of the same five blog posts for nearly 25 years." and I've been sort of sad about that ever since. Have I really not grown at all? It feels like I haven't grown at all. Maybe I need a new hobby.

• New music?

Alluvasudden CTRL-e stopped moving the point to end of line in Emacs (Evil mode) and I really hate when stuff like this happens. Speaking of breakage, Python never works on my machine. Every single time I upgrade Python half of my scripts break. How do I nuke & pave Python? …

I'm kind of bored with the internet. As I read through my RSS feeds and Mastodon just now, I felt myself shrugging or rolling my eyes at everything. This has been happening a lot lately and is definitely a Me problem, but it still ruins my time online. I get it, the climate is …

I'm Nukin' and Pavin' today. OMG I've been writing some version of the same five blog posts for almost 25 years.

Well, I've gone and made everything too complicated again. Notes, tasks, blogs, text editing, cameras, sharing, reading...all of it. The phrase "nuke & pave" comes to mind.

• My Leica timeline

I am the kind of person who owns both a signed 1st Edition of "Infinite Jest" and a reading copy of "Infinite Jest". This makes me feel smugly superior but also like the kind of intolerable wisenheimer that I can't stand.

• Easter egg on O'Reily Auto Parts website

Here's something. Since where I'm writing this now on a Journal post does not get sent to RSS, maybe I'll put links to all my other posts here. That way people who don't use RSS can visit this site and find links to all my other posts on various blogs that I can't seem to give …

• Post: Blogging experiences
• Editing in the live Kirby panel
• LazyVim

Some feelings about baty.net today.

I like Kirby but I don't like the format of the content files. I should ignore this, but it seems I can't.

• Platform changes

I wonder what I'd do if I didn't sit in front of a computer all day.

• Quote: John Maxwell on unimportance

Is it enough to just exist every day? Whenever someone calls a YouTube review "honest" it just means that they agree with it.

• Fujifilm X100VI

Today I'm asking myself what it would feel like to be an Obsidian user

• Does anyone know what they are doing?
• Now I'm futzing with Obsidian (again)

I would like to use handwritten notes for everything, but computers exist.

• Using Denote wrong?

I'm in a mood. Stay tuned. It's all just computers talking to other computers now. Okay, so now Jennifer Lopez is working in some kind of dystopian factory with no windows and several OSHA violations. She is dirty, like beautiful-person dirty, where there’s some dirt smeared on …

Whenever I post things on 3 or 4 different sites in a day, I know it's time to reel things back in. But where is "in"? Anything but finish something I started, right?

It takes some of the fun out of it knowing that moving the content here to a different platform will be a significant project. I wrote something similar about using Tinderbox over on daily.baty.net. Basically, I'm ever completely comfortable with anything. This might explain …

MoMA, NYC (2009). Leica M4, Tri-X. I've been experiencing Capture One fatigue I think, so I almost went back to Lightroom.

• Dream journal: Poor grades
• Flickr subscription decision

MoMA, NYC (2009). Scanned silver gelatin print. I've posted the same photo on both blogs because I can't decide where I want to put stuff. You know, the usual.

• Over on the daily blog today

Meta note: I've switched local Kirby development from Caddy->php-fpm to Laravel Herd. It seems like a newly-endorsed method and it also gets me on-demand PHP versions and easy management of multiple sites. So far, so good.

• My life

Now that I have the blog working how I wanted, it's become too complicated. Be careful what you wish for. I'm keeping this little rant out of the RSS feed because it's embarrassing. I still have no clue what I want to do about notes. Emacs and Org-mode are the answer, and yet …

• Library card generator

Blog note: I'm now including titled notes in the list of posts on the Archives page. Hopefully this prevents things from getting "lost" in the daily shuffle. And speaking of the archives page, I've condensed the layout considerable. I'm worried that it's harder to read now, but …

• Ordered a Kobo Libra 2

• Blake Crouch on assigning value
• Deleted 21 apps

• do something photographic today

This is the second daily post I've generated using Tinderbox. It is such a terrible but compelling thing to do. I should stop now. When I become disenchanted with social media, I withdraw into posting places that don't "go anywhere". For example, the post-text part of journal …

• Superior smugness
• Attention grabbing
• All of the options are too many options

This post was published using Tinderbox, just to see if I could. The Kirby content file is generated via an export template in Tinderbox. I have no idea what I might do with this, but it's a neat idea. I think. If I update and republish, what happens?

If Kirby formatted its content files using "normal" YAML front matter it would be perfect.

• Changes to the home page

Neat, I'm mentioned in the latest Kirby CMS newsletter. It's a link to my post about implementing my daily notes here on the blog.

Kirby is so nice but it requires PHP to run and it stores data in text files that aren't as portable as they could be. It's got me twitchy again (still?). Not going back to Hugo, though, that's for sure. But then why am I still blogging with Tinderbox over on daily.baty.net? …

• Hits to feeds

I have NotePlan, Logseq, Obsidian, and Emacs running. Cool, cool. Everything could go here. Just sayin'

• Everything.rss

• Your everyday AI companion
• Niko Kitsakis - In Praise of buttons

I spun up a WordPress "pod" at PikaPods because I wanted to take a peek at the refreshed Kubrick (2024) theme. I'm not linking to it because it'll almost certainly be gone in a week. I pine for the days when people would say, "Thank you. I accept your apology."

• Ideas for your personal website

Whenever I visit my grandson I spend the rest of the day with a kind of buzz on.

• Paisa

Spent time this morning taking baby steps toward running this (Kirby) blog on OpenBSD using httpd. I can get the home page to load, but nothing else works (images/links/etc). I've posted a question on the forums so we'll see if that gets me anywhere. Bragging about blocking …

I'm interviewing for a position that I'm ideally qualified for, at a company that sounds great to work for. I would be a valuable addition, I'm sure of it. I'm just not used to convincing people of that. 🤞 I write so poorly at times that I'm probably actively poisoning LLMs.

• Logseq is so close
• My wiki is priceless

I sat down at the computer and fired up a new post for Hugo in Emacs, forgetting that yesterday I switched back to Kirby. So it's going to be that kind of day, I guess. Just because you don't like something, doesn't mean it's bad.

• Lesser equipment

The sun came out for a few minutes, finally. I take a photo of this loading bay every time I go to founders, usually with a film camera. Today I only had the GRIII so I used that and applied my HP5 preset in Capture One. Saved me a lot of time, actually. Founders. Ricoh GRIII.

• The death of Ello
• Mad at Hugo. Not mad at Kirby.

The weather. The blog. Logseq and Denote fantasy

I'm fine.

• Rolling my own theme?
• I've lost interest in everything

Our near-blizzard conditions continue today. Alice had a hard time finding a place to poop on our walk this morning.

So much for canceling my OpenBSD experiment

• Sync is where it gets tricky
• Editing Kirby content via the server's panel

My favorite lamp shade to photograph Alice was up at 3:30 which is a little early, but at least we got to have a nice long walk through a beautiful blanket of fresh snow. I'm still waffling on what to do with this very text you're reading. It's part of the "Journal" entry …

• Dodged the Hugo bullet
• I'm going to go ahead and suggest you stop saying "I'm going to go ahead and..."

After yesterday's Kirby->Hugo-Kirby debacle, I've been thinking about why I spend so much time farting around with and on my blog. Fair question, and one I don't really have an answer to. I guess it's my little place on the internet and I like to have the furniture arranged …

• Subscription changes

Have you ever been so enamoured with plain-text-static-html publishing that you’re willing to burn down a month of implementing a blog using Kirby CMS in order to go back to using Emacs and Markdown and Hugo? I nearly did that today. Close call, but it's still idling in the back …

• Today's battle, Kirby vs Hugo

I remain tempted to keep writing directly in the freeform area of each daily note and make the individual (sub)notes the only other posts. In other words, I'd eliminate the main Posts section as their own content things. The Posts page would show every individual daily note, uh, …

• Prose.sh
• Multitudes
• Analytics
• Non-plain-text guilt

I now have OpenBSD running on a laptop. I think OpenBSD on a laptop might be the wrong choice for anything beyond, "Cool, I'm running OpenBSD on a laptop!" Repeatedly asserting something, I don't care how many times, doesn't make it true.

My Mastodon feed right now is chock full of people telling other people why some thing or person or group is bad and why we all must stop using/supporting/talking to them or else we are also bad and it's exhausting and I'm not interested.

• OpenBSD on a laptop is eluding me
• Happily using ZSH again
• Skipping the good parts

Now that I've had my "ideal" configuration for blog posts for a few weeks, I'm realizing that I've added friction and I'm not sure how to feel about that. I can write in the main daily note entry, or a note attached to a daily note entry, or a full-on individual Post. This means …

Spilled some fixer on the counter New post: Ending my OpenBSD Experiment

• Obsidian is not at all joyful to use

Today's mood. (Leica MP. 50mm Summilux. HP5) New post: The care and feeding of my system in which I whine about what I've done to myself. And of course now Emacs is crashing regularly. Might be a tipping point.

Alice in field Sometimes the deer stay put and we watch each other as I walk by but mostly they run away

• Fish Shell

Ready! Yesterday I was convinced that I should keep tasks out of Org-mode and use OmniFocus instead. I need my todos on mobile right? Now I'm not sure. I need reminders on mobile, but not my giant todo list. I'll need to figure this out, today. On the Journal page, I'm now …

• Formatting dates in org-capture templates

• Synology drive replacement
• Reduce and Simplify

• DHH shuts up. Maybe?
• Jackbaty.com

• Running an OpenBSD Server

A reminder of my goals for 2024

• Command Line Tasks
• Doing stuff with computers
• The Org-mode Island

End of a roll.

• Using SetApp versions of apps

I need social media. Without it, how will I know who I'm going to be or how I'm supposed to feel today?

• Tinkering as identity?
• Michal Zelazny's Blogroll
• Vanilla Emacs

It's Christmas. I'm just killing time until everyone is up and around and ready to enjoy the day. I hope you all enjoy yours! 🎄 I replaced the Photography link with a More link in the navigation. The photo area is unfinished so I've made it a bit less visible for now.

• Doing to Day One

I can't believe I fell for the AI Funko thing. Don't tell anyone, but I hate Christmas music. All of it.

• Proprietary Database
• Cross-platform is a mistake

I'm frustrated with myself and my lack of enthusiasm for taking photos. More here: Not taking the photo

• Subscriptions
• Overlap

So, all you need is Apple Notes and Reminders apps? Good for you. Your medal is in the post. (P.S. I'm just a little jealous, tbh)

• Journal CLI from Brett Terpstra

The AppleTV lost its network connection half-way through my Fitness+ yoga workout. I took it as a sign and quit the session early :). Saying "Thanks for coming to my TED Talk" stopped being funny at least a year ago.

• Improvements here on small screens
• But you ARE building a web browser

I've been back to using Safari as my default browser. More here.

• Spotlight limits

My morning routine. Home page changes. Apple's keychain

• Home page updates
• 1Password -> Apple's Keychain
• A morning routine

Something neat about the way I'm building this site is that I can write directly in each journal post and it shows up alongside the individual notes on the day's page (this paragraph, for example), but it's not included in RSS or anything, so it could be useful for meta …

• Usefulness of notes
• Using what I have

Sometimes it feels as if I'm (at least) two different people.

• Beer is boring now
• Book list

Journaling in Emacs. KirbyText considerations.

• Journaling options
• Should I fear using KirbyText?

Bowling and Kirby updates

• Bowling is hard
• RSS feed changes

A disruption in Kirby for this blog

• LLM yawn
• Standard Ebooks
• Back to Mu4e
• I'm really messing with stuff now

Puppy that followed us around. El Pescadero, Mexico (2004)

• I like Kirby, but...
• Moribund
• OmniFocus 4
• Unhired
• Adding a note via the panel
• Emacs is neat

Started reading a couple of books this week that feel like an indication of something. First is "The Intellectual Life" by Antonin Sertillanges. Second is "The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin. Can you tell I'm reaching for different things at the same time? I don't …

I spend too much time letting other peoples' thoughts into my head. Until everyone else also lives in plain text, it's difficult for me to live there. I don't agree with DHH often these days, but he's spot on about how good the little KEF LSX speakers are. They're fantastic. …

I have to say, I'm about up to here with snarky takes on AI.

My view this morning. Same as every morning. I've spent several hours over the past two days bringing my early photos into Lightroom Desktop. Its new ability to browse and edit local files before sending a selection of them to cloud storage tipped me toward trying Lightroom …

If I had to keep a journal using my phone I wouldn't bother. I can't decide if the recent trend of using old digicams is fun and nostalgic or just stupid. ( Later) Internal Kirby permalinks are broken here for some reason. I'm working on it, sorry. I just renewed my annual …

It's like I'm memory-wiped once every few days/months/years. An example: I recently struggled with how to make contact sheets from 6-frame negative strips. I solved the problem nicely, but later found that I'd gone through this exact process twelve years ago. This sort of thing …

Photo by Richard Baty. (Aug. 1954) I'm still writing things down in four places. Sometimes I'll rewrite the same thing in several of those places, just in case. I'm terrible at this. Enjoyed watching The Holdovers (2023). I should make a movie review template for Kirby but maybe …

I'm trying to decide if I should continue to combine these journal posts with the "regular" posts in both the feed and other lists like on the Posts page. I'd also like to split the daily journal into individual posts and combine them, like I do on daily.baty.net. That would …

I was saddened to learn that Elliott Erwitt, on of my favorite photographers, died this week. I just a week ago ordered his book Personal Best. It is scheduled to arrive today and reading it will be a melancholy journey. Magnum has published a memorial piece:  Remembering …

Lots of discussion about the new version of iA Writer and its "Authorship" features meant as a way to indicate AI vs. Human writing. They've obviously spent a lot of time thinking about it, but I'm not sure I get it, yet. Of course I never use LLM-generated text for anything I …

Burlap on trees. Roll-127. (Leica MP. HP5) I've made a few Kirby changes, so please yell if you spot any issues. I'm using the Markdown Field plugin, now that it's compatible with v4. I also updated the RSS feed to include cover images, when available. I'm already tired of the …

Yes, I'm afraid we're back on Kirby here at baty.net. Let's not pretend we didn't know this was going to happen. It's been a tumultuous couple of months, hasn't it? 😁. It's just that I eventually end up hating WordPress. Every time. Not at first! At first, it's awesome. …

Some days I prefer the individual-but-collected posts that my Tinderbox blog allows me. Other days I prefer one long stream-of-consciousness daily post like this one (currently in Kirby). What's a fella to do?

I'm having those thoughts again. You know, the ones where I feel like these daily notes just clutter up an otherwise perfectly fine blog. I want to be Frank. Frank Sinatra exiting helicopter with drink in hand. (Photo: Yul Brynner)

Two things I'd like to have: A Stream Deck and a Wacom tablet. Just recording it for later. I believe that the worst thing for my mental health would be to divide my days into half-hour slots of "productivity". Gross. I would like to do things that require a giant work surface.

I upgraded the Rudimentary Lathe blog to WordPress 6.4 so thought I'd give the new Twenty Twenty-Four theme a spin. Close, but nope. I'm editing this via the Kirby panel in my local installation and I was right, I like it better this way. No confusion about code vs content and …

I didn't move the blog back to Hugo or WordPress today, so that's something, right?

I follow a popular photographer on Flickr and YouTube and his content is mostly photographs of beautiful female models. He uses various cameras, lenses, and film stocks. I've noticed that all of his photos look basically the same, regardless of camera/lens/film. What's worse, …

I wonder what I would do every day if there was no way to tell people about it. Finished the final season of "Reservation Dogs". It's a really good show. I spent some time catching up on news today. Nearly everything I saw or read made me sick to my stomach. I need to go take …

I learned a new term today from Robin Sloan (emphasis mine): This post is going to run a bit long, with a healthy blockquotient, but I think it will end up somewhere interesting. The art of working in public / Snarkmarket

I'm having thoughts of backing away from being online. I'm not talking about some crazy "digital detox" nonsense, but rather a return to sanity when it comes to my time online. Related to that are thoughts about sharing photographs. Sometimes I take photos just to have something …

I upgraded Kirby to v4.0b3 so let's see what's broken, shall we? People in real life aren't interested in the things I'm interested in. I used to think this made me special, but I think instead that it makes me seem weird and anti-social.

Welcome to November. Good morning, ladies.