Hi, I’m Jack Baty 👋

I’ve been back in Doom Emacs for a few days. This is how it’s going.

Do you ever feel like your life’s wake is littered with missed opportunities? I spend so much time looking backwards that I don’t pay attention to what’s ahead. I don’t understand people who post overconfident, often controversial posts on social media, and then say things like “This is NOT an invitation to debate!…”. I mean, where do you think you are? I’ll tell you where, you’re in a place where everything is an invitation to debate, whether you like it or not. ...

You should vote vote for Harris. I did.

I have a routine that I go through on the 1st of every month, during which I always tell myself that, “This one will be different.”, but in the end they’re all the same.

I’m so mad at Emacs right now. It’s so frustrating when something stops working for no reason I can fathom. I sync everything related to my Emacs config via Syncthing, and the Emacs version is identical, and yet doom-modeline fails to load on the MBP but works fine on the Mini. It’s crazy-making and I can’t figure it out. UPDATE: I had to re-install the “f” and “shrink-path” packages for no apparent reason. I still hate not knowing why things broke in the first place. Makes me want to throw in the entire Emacs towel. ...

I am experimenting with using Org-roam again for my notes.

Roam > Obsidian and Org-roam > Roam. So guess what I’m using today :).

LinkedIn, The New Internet, Worrying about a “lack of updates”

I sure wish Hugo would stop deprecating things. This time it’s site.Social. My theme uses that in a couple of files, and the theme’s author is busy and doesn’t always have time to fix things right away. They now want site.Params.Social so I’ve temporarily fixed the problem myself by editing two files. In twitter_cards.html: {{ with site.Social.twitter -}} # becomes {{ with .Site.Params.Social.twitter -}} And in opengraph.html: {{- with site.Social.facebook_admin }} # becomes {{- with .Site.Params.Social.facebook_admin }} At least now the error is gone and the site builds. I’ll need to keep an eye on the PaperMod repo for a real fix. ...

We’re back on Hugo

I’m not saying anything new, but I feel like we’ve lost the battle for having good and useful products and services. Is it just me, or does every product seem to only grudgingly accept the actual user as a necessary evil? We’re secondary to whatever is actually making the money. Call me a grumpy old man, but I hate this trend. “Enshittification” is an over-used meme word by now, but I can’t think of a better one. ...

The thing about BOGO (Buy One, Get One free) is that I end up buying something I don’t need, just so I can get a second thing I don’t need. I’m (half-heartedly) considering canceling every streaming option I have. Maybe then I’ll stop endlessly scrolling through trailers while never actually watching any movies. Haven’t felt like blogging much. Every time I think of something to “say”, I shrug and think, “Not worth it.” I hope this doesn’t trigger a platform change or anything. I was just getting comfy here :) ...

I wish I would find something better to do.

Certain software tools click with me. TiddlyWiki, Emacs, BBEdit, and OmniFocus are the ones that I am thinking of right now. I love them all. I write here nearly every day, but what’s it for? Speaking of clicking with software, I do not click with Obsidian. After seeing another new error when using Emacs this morning, I thought I’d move some stuff into Obsidian, hoping that maybe this time it would stick. It didn’t. The whole experiment lasted about 3 hours. Sometimes I just want things to be easier for a minute, which things like Obsidian, Bear, etc. are good for, but I don’t know if I’ll every leave Emacs. ...

I noticed that the “cover” images for my posts aren’t showing up when reading my feed in Elfeed. It’s because I use absolute URLs without a hostname. Other readers, like NetNewsWire, prepend the hostname automatically. I don’t think I’ll fix it yet, because using full URLs makes me twitchy, because I’m me and I move things. I’ve been re-discovering TiddlyWiki. My wiki (wiki.baty.net) contains nearly 4,000 “tiddlers”, beginning in 2018. There is so much stuff in there that I search it almost daily. I’ve drifted away from using it for new stuff, probably because I’m all-in Emacs for notes (howm, specifically) and I’ve been publishing my daily notes at either baty.net or daily.baty.net. Now, though, I’m remembering how great TiddlyWiki is for exactly the sort of things I want to record and share. So, I’ll be spending more time there for a bit. ...

It’s unanimous, people prefer the one post/day journal format here on baty.net. “All in one place is best” seems to be the consensus. I’ll try. BSAG » Exploring desktop linux: Part 3 I’m watching this closely. She seems to be getting on well so far. The only way I could use Linux would be to only use Linux. Switching between Linux and macOS is crazy-making. I did, though set up Neovim and LazyVim yesterday, just for kicks. I might be experiencing a mild case of Emacs Fatigue. ...

I removed the “Open to Work” label from my LinkedIn profile. Not because I’m not open to work, but because I truly can’t stand being anywhere near LinkedIn. The type of people who would hire me are just as likely to find me elsewhere. Do people prefer these once/day combined posts, or would they rather see them individually (as seen on daily.baty.net)? I feel like most of the individual notes aren’t useful enough to justify their own slot in someone’s RSS reader. On the other hand, it’s nice being able to link directly to any of them. ...

While scrolling through the Books I’ve Read, I realized that I don’t remember the first thing about most of them. There are a few standouts, of course, but for the most part reading feels like temporary entertainment. I hope some of it is absorbed and becomes a useful part of my brain, but it doesn’t seem like that’s happening. I’d almost forgotten that I re-subscribed to Medium a few months ago. After visiting the home page this morning and reading one vapid headline after another, I canceled my membership. I’m sure there’s valuable content there, but it’s hiding behind clickbait and I don’t feel like wading through it. ...

If they had fed the language machines a diet of cupcake recipes, history might have gone another way. “Moonbound”, Robin Sloan. My Applications folder is a toybox, but it should be a toolbox. I posted a little over on daily.baty.net today. I shouldn’t do that, because it undermines my dream of having One True Blog™. Some days, though, I find it impossible to resist. Links for October 16, 2024 Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader

Dan Milnor: Adobe Max Day One The tools remind me that story is king. I see a lot of criticism of Tesla’s new taxi design. Specifically, everyone seems confused that it’s a 2-seater. Ridiculous! Now, while I’m critical of everything Tesla, I haven’t seen anyone asking how many passengers the typical cab ride accommodates. Is it 2, maybe? It could be that Tesla did the research. Anyway If I need more room on a specific trip, I can alway call an UberX. ...