Hi, I’m Jack Baty šŸ‘‹

Director of Unspecified Services.
Welcome to my blog about Everything.
My beloved Focomat IIc Enlarger

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

I was going through my Braintoss messages and this one from April, 2023 jumped out at me: thereā€™s a low-level specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones Ouch šŸ˜¬ (Itā€™s from ā€• Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility) Also this one: The thing I miss most about working is canceled meetings. And this: you know I think I want to read a book about minimalism as a concept but really I just want somebody to tell me how to organize my closet ...

Mist 30.7 | Low 28.2, High 33.4 Ā· 119 words

Monday, December 23, 2024

I thought maybe Iā€™d change themes here just to change things up a bit, without completely bailing on Hugo, as Iā€™m wont to do. Changing Hugo themes is almost as much of a pain as changing blogging engines. I gave up after an hour.

December 23, 2024 Ā· 44 words

Friday, December 20, 2024

jAlbum is pretty good at creating nice static web photo galleries. I made an elaborate gallery last year. It was nice, but now I canā€™t find my copy (or settings, originals, etc.) Iā€™m not mad because I have to start over. Iā€™m mad because all I do is organize stuff and despite that, I still canā€™t find things. Probably because of that, honestly. Anyway, starting over. I need some new sources. Everything I read is related to AI or social media or some gadget I simply must buy. Iā€™m bored with all of it. ...

Overcast 30.2 | Low 26.2, High 34.0 Ā· 94 words

Thursday, December 19, 2024

See, the thing is, I need to somehow keep the the ā€œReduce & Simplifyā€ dream alive. Itā€™s OK if my system takes a little work to maintain, but it has to be one system. I can manage one. What I canā€™t do, is have a bunch of completely different setups that each take ā€œa little workā€ to maintain. Iā€™ve become overwhelmed as a result of my never-ending urge to tinker (combined with boredom). So here we are, on baty.net, doing daily notes again. One Blog, One Life or some such thing, right? ...

Overcast 29.9 | Low 27.5, High 32.7 Ā· 203 words

Sunday, December 15, 2024

See how the way Iā€™m doing this blog ruins the archives?ā€¦ Part of my Archives page. Useful, huh?

Mist 35.1 | Low 31.8, High 36.1 Ā· 18 words

Emacs from scratch once again

I like the idea of building my own Emacs config, so I set Doom aside and (re)built my own configuration (mostly) from scratch.

December 14, 2024 Ā· 400 words

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Thanks Frank! Itā€™s good to know Iā€™m not alone. I went to sleep last night having decided that, ā€œTomorrow, Iā€™m going to revamp my Emacs config and go back to my home-grown config.ā€ This morning, I thought, ā€œLife would be easier if I just used Obsidian instead.ā€ So yeah, normal day so far šŸ‘‹šŸ». The market has chosen Markdown over Org mode files and I hate that.

Clear 10.9 | Low 16.7, High 33.4 Ā· 67 words
Plant on my desk that I haven't killed yet.

Friday, December 13, 2024

Nothing specific today. Tiny thoughts about energy, Obsidian, Adobe Bridge, JFK Jr, and Starter Packs.

Overcast 14.5 | Low 14.2, High 27.7 Ā· 224 words

Thursday, December 12, 2024

On daily.baty.net, each little whim of a post has its own page and is part of the RSS feed (and gets cross-posted to my mastodon.social bot account). Some days, thatā€™s exactly what I want. When I write daily notes here at baty.net, using the single-entry-per-day format, I feel less pressure to make anything ā€œcountā€. And some days, thatā€™s exactly what I want. Living in my head is frustrating. Century-Scale Storage: But at the century scale, even our most widely adopted file formats are completely untested. Digital history is not long enough to definitively settle on best practices. ...

Light snow 12.0 | Low 13.5, High 17.6 Ā· 116 words

Monday, December 09, 2024

I know yā€™all are sick of me waffling about where to post these little daily notes, but I canā€™t help it. Iā€™m honestly split right down the middle about it. I want everything to be in one place, but I canā€™t seem to make it all fit in one place. At least not the way I want things to fit. I could leave baty.net for the longer posts and daily.baty.net for these daily notes. Or, I could try combining everything here. Or maybe combine everything there and make this a landing page. I think each of these options has equal merit, so I havenā€™t been able to decide, and probably never will. I guess Iā€™ll continue posting wherever Iā€™m in the mood to post on any given day. ...

Fog 36.5 | Low 34.7, High 40.3 Ā· 138 words

I have deleted all my PikaPods

Deleting things I donā€™t really need is liberating.

December 8, 2024 Ā· 124 words
Powerlines on my walk. Olympus Stylus Epic. HP5.

Sunday, December 08, 2024

Digital Minimalism. Organizing. Markwhen.

Partly cloudy 39.0 | Low 32.9, High 37.4 Ā· 99 words

Roll-189 (Olympus Stylus Epic)

A roll of HP5 through the Olympus Stylus Epic.

December 7, 2024 Ā· 9 words

Friday, December 06, 2024

I spent a good portion of yesterday offline. Well, not technically offline, but not on social media, which feels like the same thing. Trying to remember to step away from the computer once I notice that all Iā€™m doing is clicking things basically at random. That means Iā€™m done for now, but I rarely heed the clues.

Overcast 25.0 | Low 23.2, High 29.5 Ā· 57 words

Thursday, December 05, 2024

Cleaning up my servers and backups

Partly cloudy 17.1 | Low 21.0, High 31.6 Ā· 142 words

Wednesday, December 04, 2024

Social media, blogging, subscriptions.

Overcast 24.1 | Low 26.4, High 32.9 Ā· 117 words

Tuesday, December 03, 2024

ā€œI donā€™t know anything about what you asked, but hereā€™s what I got from Perplexityā€¦ā€ is not helpful. Plus, you still donā€™t know anything about what I asked. Weā€™ve gotten nowhere and youā€™ve wasted our time.

Overcast 26.1 | Low 28.2, High 34.2 Ā· 36 words

From Hugo to Ghost and back again

Itā€™s been nearly a month using Ghost, so it was time to switch back to Hugo.

December 2, 2024 Ā· 294 words
Playing with the old X100

Monday, December 02, 2024

I find that I kind of enjoy starting the day with a quick jab/hugo-new-daily in Emacs and here we are. The issue with publishing right away is that for people who use RSS they may think Iā€™m finished for the day, and thatā€™s seldom the case. Sometimes I worry about this, but most of the time I remember that the people subscribed via RSS know me, and I think they understand. :) ...

Overcast 25.0 | Low 24.6, High 35.4 Ā· 177 words
Alice chilling (2021)

Sunday, December 01, 2024

Oh dear. Itā€™s OK, though. What happened was that I started to feel twitchy about having my posts and photos locked up in Ghost. ā€œLocked upā€ is an exaggeration, of course, but you know what I mean. Itā€™s better when everything is in a nice, tidy set of folders on my hard drive, in Org or Markdown format. So here we are, back in Hugo. Iā€™ve noticed a drop-off in interaction on Mastodon the past week or two. Is it because people are leaving? Maybe they just donā€™t find me interesting anymore. ...

Partly cloudy 28.0 | Low 21.0, High 29.7 Ā· 92 words