Hi, I’m Jack Baty đź‘‹

Director of Unspecified Services.
Welcome to my blog about Everything.

A Doom Emacs status update after several days

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

November 5, 2024 Â· 471 words

Monday, November 04, 2024

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. ...

Heavy rain 54.2 | Low 50.9, High 62.8 Â· 82 words

Sunday, November 03, 2024

You should vote vote for Harris. I did.

Partly cloudy 39.9 | Low 41.2, High 57.0 Â· 84 words

Friday, November 01, 2024

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.

Clear 38.2 | Low 37.1, High 49.8 Â· 34 words
Polariod of a tree in our yard

Thursday, October 31, 2024

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. ...

Sunny 66.4 | Low 45.4, High 65.3 Â· 125 words

Diving back into Org-roam

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

October 30, 2024 Â· 475 words

Tuesday, October 29, 2024

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

Thundery outbreaks in nearby 53.7 | Low 50.0, High 70.0 Â· 413 words

Monday, October 28, 2024

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

Partly cloudy 36.0 | Low 37.9, High 65.7 Â· 122 words

Another Hugo deprecation

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. ...

October 27, 2024 Â· 106 words
Self-portrait with M3 (2022)

Sunday, October 27, 2024

We’re back on Hugo

Clear 37.0 | Low 36.5, High 59.7 Â· 146 words
Self-portrait as Autocord flash test.

Saturday, October 26, 2024

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. ...

Clear 43.0 | Low 41.1, High 56.8 Â· 204 words
Film photo of "The Substance". Bonkers movie!

Friday, October 25, 2024

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 :) ...

Light rain 46.0 | Low 43.9, High 58.9 Â· 90 words

Wednesday, October 23, 2024

I wish I would find something better to do.

Clear 59.5 | Low 40.5, High 58.1 Â· 9 words

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

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. ...

Clear 51.1 | Low 48.9, High 71.1 Â· 110 words

Monday, October 21, 2024

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. ...

Clear 52.0 | Low 52.0, High 79.3 Â· 219 words
Our favorite nachos from The Score

Sunday, October 20, 2024

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. ...

Clear 50.5 | Low 45.0, High 77.0 Â· 218 words

Saturday, October 19, 2024

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. ...

Clear 43.0 | Low 42.8, High 71.6 Â· 115 words
Two of my favorites.

Friday, October 18, 2024

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. ...

Clear 41.7 | Low 39.2, High 68.9 Â· 202 words

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

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

Overcast 41.5 | Low 37.9, High 53.4 Â· 77 words
Blackstone and bacon. (Leica MP, HP5)

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

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. ...

Partly cloudy 39.9 | Low 39.0, High 51.1 Â· 159 words