I wanted to write something here. So far, so good, since deciding which blog is "correct" for a post is usually where I end up derailed. The thing I was writing about wasn't worth an entire post, so I figured I'd put it here in the Journal section. I was then confronted with the following:
Sigh. Is what I'm about to write useful enough to be worthy of a new "Note", which gives it its own URL and adds it to the RSS feed? Or is it just something I'm blurting out into the main journal text area? The way I've set things up here means I need to make these decisions every time I want to post something. It makes me wonder if I should get rid of something. I could force everything to be a Note or a Post, and remove the generic journal area. Or I could get rid of Notes and make the daily stuff non-RSS-ified and into a big wall of text. Or I could get rid of Posts and turn the site into a version of my daily blog.
Something I've always liked about TiddlyWiki is that I'm never forced to decide where something goes or what it's named. I can simply click on the new tiddler button, type something, and hit save. Links, tags, or other organization can be applied later, but none are required.
The Howm Emacs package works similarly. By default, Howm1 notes are organized in YYYY/MM/ folders and file names are automatically created based on the current time, e.g. 2024-05-07-130712.txt. I don't have to think about them.
It's nice to just make a new note and not care where it goes. I sometimes get twitchy about not having useful file names. "What about accessing your notes outside Howm?" First, I never do that. Second, there's grep, Spotlight, or any other text editor that can search a folder full of plain text files. This is not something I need worry about. In fact, it's slightly better than with TiddlyWiki, since to find something in TiddlyWiki, I need a web browser to open the wiki and search. There's only one useful way in. Of course that's never a problem, but still.
This is fine:
I continue to be surprised by how quickly Howm has become an important part of my workflow. I should write about how the combination of Howm and Denote fit into my process.
I've decided to write it as "Howm" with an initial capital. Howm is an acronym, but I've never seen it capitalized as "HOWM". I don't like it all lowercase, since it feels like it should be treated as a proper noun, so I'm going with "Howm". ↩
Well, of course itâs great, even fantastic - for Adobe. They can lure you in with low prices, then gradually make the subscription more expensive, and then move the features you use to the âpremiumâ tier where you have to pay even more. Not to mention that they can remove features on a whim if they feel like it, or charge you even more if you want to keep them. And if you want to keep access to your files, you have to be subscribed until the end of time - ânice pictures you have there! Itâd be a shame if you couldnât open them because you decided to opt out of our subscription model, wouldnât it?â
I dislike subscriptions. I rage-quit everything Adobe a few years ago in a huff about subscriptions and, well, I don't love Adobe. However, I'm once again paying a subscription to Lightroom Classic and Photoshop.
Why? First, because the product is, overall, more appropriate for me than the alternatives. And second, in seven years of subscribing to the Adobe "Photography" plan, none of the things Andreas mentioned have happened. The price is the same (I'd happily pay double). They've only ever added features (I don't remember a single feature being removed. Has there been any?) If I cancel my subscription, I still have 100% access to my files (I just can't make additional edits).
I'm not trying to single out Andreas. His post just reminded me that these "What if...?!" doomsday scenarios have guided way too many of my decisions. What if [SOME APP] stops being developed? What if Apple behaves even more badly? What if some "proprietary" (usually sqlite, so not really) database becomes corrupted? What if I can't read [FILETYPE] in 50 years?
Of course these things can happen, but how often do they? Basically never, has been my personal experience. And if they do happen, there's almost always a reasonable way out.
Why suffer using something we don't love, on a just-in-case, instead of something we do love and find immediately more useful, because "what if!?"
I still keep an actual calculator on my desk, and use it regularly. I find it easier and more "stable" than using either a calculator app or even the built-in calculator in Raycast.
Generic Casio MS-80B calculator
I bought the Casio shown above years ago because it had a large screen and doesn't use batteries. It's fine, but there are a couple of things about it that bother me.
First, there's no "On" button. Ok, there is, but it's buried under the AC button. Bugs me.
The On button issue is bad enough, but that's not why I hate the Casio. I hate the Casio because when I turn it off, the screen reads "CASIO" for a few seconds before actually turning off. It's like watching a little ad each time. I hate it, so I bought a new calculator.
Reissued Braun ET66 calculator
This is the re-issued version of the iconic, Dieter Rams designed Braun ET66 (1987). I recently watched the Dieter Rams documentary, "Rams" (2018), which reminded me of the Braun, so I thought this model would be a fine choice.
I like it. It's simple, clear, does what I need, and looks good doing it. And it doesn't shout its own name every time I turn it off. Much better.
I love software. I love learning what software can do. I love setting up workflows using all the fun software I've learned about. The problem is that this leads to chaos and complexity. Every time.
You're probably wondering what made me think of this. Well, yesterday I was exhausted from fighting with Obsidian and Emacs, so I installed Bear. You see what I mean? I spent an hour this morning importing stuff from Obsidian and cleaning up tags, etc. Bear is so nice and simple and absolutely does not lend itself to tweaking.
Problem solved! Not really.
What about daily notes? What about templates? What about complex exports? Why is folding so cumbersome? Where are the backlinks displayed again?
Sigh. I really appreciate Bear, but can I live in it? Probably not. I love simplicity, but can't abide constraints. I'm screwed, I guess.
The AEKII uses an ADB port, so I had to dig out my ADB->USB-A adapter (save everything!). I'm typing this post on the keyboard right now. The Alps switches are as great as I remember, and might be my all-time favorite switches.
Beyond the great switches and nostalgia, using the keyboard leaves a bit to be desired. First off, it's enormous. It takes nearly all of my felt deskpad and leaves barely enough room for a mouse. And speaking of the mouse, the size of the keyboard means that the mouse is over 12 inches away from my right hand. Reaching for it is a whole thing.
Another quirk is that the little home row nubbins are on the D and K keys. On newer Apple keyboards, they are on the F and J keys. I can't tell you how many times I've had to delete a bunch of gibberish and reorient my hands while typing this.
I could get used to the size, but the AEKII's Caps Lock key can't be mapped to Control because it physically locks down when pressed. It thinks it's a manual typewriter, I guess. This is a deal-breaker.
Even though it'll probably end up back in the box soon, it's fun using a 34-year-old keyboard that still works and is, in many ways, better than anything made today.
A few months back I decided to use the Kirby CMS control panel right on the server. That way, I can edit a post, click Save, and it's out there. Also, managing the differences between local files and server files was getting confusing. For example, I had to be careful not to step on the redirect plugin's data, which meant adding exceptions to git and my Makefile. I became frustrated so gave up and went server-only.
I've changed my mind again.
I don't like having the canonical version of my site's files "out there" on the server. Kirby doesn't use a database, so backups are simple, but I still would rather have everything "here" and then push the finished product to the server for, well, serving.
So I made the decision to rebuild my local copy, install PHP and Herd on the new Mac Mini, and go back to simply rsync-ing stuff from here to there. In the process, I removed the redirect plugin and put the redirects in the Caddyfile instead. I don't get fancy 404 logs in the panel this way, but I do get them via GoAccess directly on the server, so I'm ok with that trade-off.
I'm writing this in a local instance of Kirby's panel, so if you're reading this, it worked.
I switched from using Lightroom Classic (LrC) to Capture One Pro (C1) "for good" back in 2021. It wasn't because of Adobe's subscription model, or because I had some vague aversion to Adobe, the company. It was because I felt like I was getting better images, faster, with C1.
I kept a few notes on Lightroom Classic vs Capture One but haven't updated it in a while, so here are a few notes about why I have moved back to Lightroom Classic.
C1 has become laggy for me. I'm working on either a MacBook Pro M1 Max or Mini M2 Pro. Nothing should be slow on these machines, but whenever I move a slider in C1, I have to wait a couple of seconds while it catches up. This gets pretty annoying.
C1 never seems to improve its cataloging features, which have always felt a bit lackluster. I like C1's "sessions", but then I need some other app for cataloging. I'm working on using less software, not more, so cataloging is important. Â
Aside from specific issues, the thing that has put me off C1 is that over the past couple years, Capture One (the company) has made some moves that have affected how I feel about C1, (the app).
Capture One now basically forces me to pay for a subscription, and it's expensive. I know I said that subscriptions weren't the reason I switched, but that doesn't mean I like subscriptions. I don't.
More importantly, they've become increasingly focused on professional, in-studio customers. That's great for pros, but I'm just a guy who likes to take pictures. I'm paying a lot of money for software that is becoming less relevant to me.
The latest beta update of C1 introduced a "Studio" version and includes things like Client viewers and "Live" for Studio. These are not just less useful to me, they are useless to me. I started wondering if I'd be better served by Adobe. That was a surprise.
So I forked over my $10 for the Photography Plan subscription and installed Lightroom Classic and Photoshop (still one of the best deals going, regardless of how one feels about subscriptions). I resisted the temptation to install the new Lightroom, because I know how that ends.
I started by importing everything from 2020 through today. Since I'd used LrC for years, I was immediately comfortable. I made the few changes that LrC allows to the UI and settings, imported my old presets, set up my export templates, and was off and running.
It was nice to have nearly-instant response while spotting film scans again. It's good to have a catalog that feels robust. LrC feels tighter than C1 somehow. And the community is so big. Almost too big, honestly. It can be overwhelming. Adobe's huge ecosystem is valuable. I've never been great in Photoshop, but I'm better there than in one of the "other guys" like Affinity. And if I don't know how to do something, a dozen YouTube videos showing me how are within arm's reach.
I'll miss some things about C1, certainly. I'll miss the wildly-customizable UI. I'll miss that hitting "Auto" is often all I need. I'll miss the fancier exports. I'll miss the culling features during imports. And if I ever do get in a studio, I'll miss the flawless tethering.
If Capture One ever decides to cater to amateurs like me as well as pros, I'll take another look, but for now, I'm in Lightroom Classic. I feel a little dirty about it, though.
When I ordered the M2 Mac Mini I opted for the smaller 512GB internal SSD knowing that, since the Mini would be always-on, I could hang as much storage off it as I wanted.
A hodgepodge of external drives scattered over my desk is not the prettiest setup, though. I wanted something cleaner. Something nicer-looking. I went with an OWC miniStack STX.
The miniStack can be ordered pre-configured with a variety of storage options, but I figured I'd save a few bucks and set it up myself. I ordered a 2TB Gen 4 M.2 NVMe stick and a Seagate IronWolf 8TB HD. It took about 10 minutes to install both drives into the miniStack and I was ready to go.
The whole point of the thing is that it is the exact dimensions of a Mac Mini. It sits underneath the Mini and so takes up zero additional desk space. This is way better than normal external drives.
An important bonus with the miniStack is that it adds three Thunderbolt 4 ports (actually four ports, but one is used by the Mini->miniStack cable).
There's a small catch. The PCI bus only uses one channel so top transfer speeds are limited to around 750MB/s. I don't know anything about NVMe drives or PCIe buses so I'm just taking their word for it, but my disk speed test showed around 790MB/s. That's plenty for my purposes.
I still need the CalDigit hub for the SD slot, Optical audio, and extra USB-A ports. Here's what the stack looks like:
Setting all this up gave me an opportunity to tidy up the rest of my desk. I think it looks great.
So far I've not heard any noticeable fan noise, so that's good. I do hear the HDD grinding away but that's probably due to both Spotlight and BackBlaze doing their things.
The 2TB SSD will be used for working files and recent photos. The big HDD will contain the rest of my media and photo archives, along with anything else I want near-to-hand but don't need fast-transfer access to. That leaves a 1TB SSD (not shown) hanging off the back for Time Machine and the vertical 8TB HDD for nightly backups using Carbon Copy Cloner.
