Hi, I’m Jack Baty š
Welcome to my blog about Everything.
I posted the same thing on three different blogs today, just for fun. here on baty.net on lmno.lol on baty.blog (BSSG) All three of them were fun to do, which is why I keep so many blogs going at once.
If I were to only have one computer, Iād use notmuch for email in Emacs. I might also import non-email stuff as notmuch messages so I can search everything in one place. But, I now have 3 computers; 2 running macOS and one running (Fedora) Linux. Notmuch takes too much of my energy to keep synced between machines. So what about Mu4e? Mu4e is probably the ānicestā Emacs package for managing email, but it still requires a local synced copy of all my messages. This means configuring mbsync on all machines, etc. ...
Merlin knows: The bummer is we miss so many great little things because it doesnāt conform to the implastic version of ourselves that lives in some blindingly lit menagerie where everything is just so. Where we store the notional version of ourselves thatās never existed. And who do we imagine all that certainty is impressing? Eventually, you can make up someone plausible, I suppose. But, more basic bitches like me and you are stuck trying to puzzle it all out in a world full of people whoāve decided weāre misunderstanding the world wrong. ...
I started using Blot for my blog in 2017. Blot is a really nice way to publish a blog from a folder full of Markdown files. Blotās author, David, is exceptionally helpful. This morning I made an offline backup of everything and deleted all the content from Blotās folder. Then I canceled my subscription. Five minutes later, I restarted my subscription. Iām grandfathered in to the original $20/year pricing, so I decided itās so inexpensive that itās worth twenty bucks just to have it available. Also, it supports a great project by a nice developer. ...
Hugo is actively developed and still gets a lot of attention. This is fine. Whatās not fine is that it seems like every third update introduces breaking changes. I updated to 0.146.5 and my site failed to build. This was a theme thing, and thankfully the theme maintainer was on it. Still annoying. I like using Hugo and I like my theme and I like having a static website. What I donāt like is not knowing if things are going to still work next week. ...
I hope everyone had a relaxing weekend. I did, at least up until I tried setting up a new(ish) iPhone for my mom. She got a hand-me-down iPhone 12 to replace her, surprisingly still working, iPhone 6. Between Find My/anti-theft issues and forgotten passwords, it was much more frustrating than Iād hoped. Still, she has a new phone and thatās good. Iām typing this on the ThinkPad, even though my Mac is /right there/. Itās probably the novelty, but at least itās happening. This is a first for me. hereās the latest. ...
Sometimes I create this daily entry without having anything to write about in mind. It seems necessary, but is it? Probably not, yet I keep doing it, anyway.
Iām rarely in a hurry, so why do I spend so much time working on ways to do things faster? Working on the Linux laptop this week has made so many things slower. I donāt have a text expansion utility configured yet. I donāt have something like Raycast on the Mac. Still, I donāt feel like Iām doing less. In fact, my mind has been calmer. Writing on the ThinkPad feels more like using a typewriter. OK, thatās an exaggeration, but you see the point. Thereās much less going on, here. I have the usual urge to āimproveā things, but I may just wait a minute on that and see if I can settle in with something simpler. ...
Iāve been busy with my Linux experiment. Iām writing about it there, if you want to follow along. Today, I put a Framework laptop in my cart. This whole experiment only got rolling because I thought I might like Linux on my desktop, so why am I looking at laptops when I have a perfectly servicable (2015) ThinkPad X1 Carbon (that Iām typing on right now)? I canāt explain it. Most likely itās because I have an Apple Studio Display and (Iām told) itās quite challenging to use it with Linux. Iām not changing monitors for this, the Studio Display is too good (and expensive). ...
Nostalgia is some powerful stuff, aināt it? My old Nakamichi cassette deck stopped working a few years ago, and I never bothered to replace it. Iāve been into vinyl and still have a good CD transport, so I didnāt see a need for cassettes. Occasionally, though, Iāll spot a cassette somewhere and think I might like to bring mine out and play them. I didnāt want some ancient āvintageā cassette deck, and I didnāt want to spend much. ...
Linux is fun, but frustrating. Iām trying to stick with it long enough to blame Linux rather than my inexperience for my troubles. As a way to help remember the process, Iāve started a new blog at linux.baty.net1. The new blog is a journal of things Iām learning or struggling with. Iād normally be taking these notes locally but I thought it would be worthwhile to publish them. I must admit that this was also a fun excuse to play with BSSG.Ā ā©ļø ...
So, yeah, I seem to have four blogs at the moment. Itās fun, but not sustainable. Anyway, good morning! I mean, maybe Iām meant to be the guy who has a bunch of different blogs and nobody wants to follow because heās inconsistent and spread so thin. Is that so bad?
Today I learned about BSSG, a static site generator written using Bash. Iāve been chugging along with Hugo for a minute, but you just know I have to try every new thing I discover, so⦠bssg.baty.net How fun is that!? Written by Stefano Marinelli, BSSG is so simple and easy to use that I had a blog started in, I swear, two minutes. The only thing I had to do was change MARKDOWN_PROCESSOR to use pandoc, and I was off and running. Nice. ...
Dammit, now Iām posting journal posts in two places. I get bored doing things the same way every day, so I change things. I donāt know if this makes me interesting or if itās a symptom of some deep-rooted mental issue. Read Mikeās Deft, Markdown, Marksman/Emacs LSP, iA Writer and then spent an hour playing with Marksman and I ended up getting nowhere and now Iām upset that I canāt get wikilink completion in random Markdown files. This is why I shouldnāt be using Emacs. ...
I had fun yesterday working with the Coping Mechanism blog and Ghost. If you ignore the upsell and āplease subscribe!ā noise, Ghost is rather pleasant to work with. The problem is that I donāt want to migrate this blog to it, and I donāt want multiple blogs. This means that, while I still may tinker with Ghost, I shouldnāt use it for anything ārealā. So, what am I doing? ĀÆ_(ć)_/ĀÆ. Iām typing this in iA Writer for reasons I canāt explain. ...
Iām supposed to be working on a new website for a family member. Iām 80% finished, but the final 80% is the uninteresting part and I donāt feel like doing it right now. Instead, I spent an hour this morning feeling like I should go back to using Lightroom Classic instead of Capture One, but I still prefer Capture One, so Iāll have to deal with the things I donāt like about it. ...
Itās my dadās 84th birthday. I had the M3 with a roll of HP5.
In a mood, evidenced by changing Denoteās default file format twice in ten minutes.
I donāt know what to write about today. Iām sitting here at my usual desk typing into a full-screen Emacs frame with a few of my usual buffers open. I did end up giving up on Doom again. Itās just more than I want, even though it does a lot of nice things without my help. And I miss having SPC as leader key. Iām not doing that general.el thing again, either. Oh well, I guess itās back to C-c or C-x for everything. ...
āThere is a computer disease. Anybody who works with computers knows about it. Itās a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is that you āplayā with them!ā Richard Feynman, āSurely Youāre Joking, Mr. Feynmanā