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.
Remember when I used wttr.in to pull in the forecast in ascii?
\ / Clear
.-. +13(12) °C
― ( ) ― ↗ 12 km/h
`-’ 16 km
/ \ 0.0 mm
If I were to let someone else manage my blog, I'd probably go with Pika. Not that I'm considering it :). Anyway, there's no search, yet, which makes Pika a non-starter for me.
List a two-word phrase that is destroying the world: "Private Equity"
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.
Some weird things about my behavior that I noticed today. First, I might like Safari more than Arc, which is a complete surprise. I used Safari for a few weeks, then switched back to Arc last week. Today, I switched back to Safari. It's just...less, somehow. Second, I prefer OmniFocus to Things. Another surprise. Things is just so nice, you know? But OmniFocus does a few more little things that I miss when I'm using Things. Third, I've plunged back into my TiddlyWiki wiki again. This was triggered by how much I like using howm in Emacs. Howm is a lot like TiddlyWiki in some ways. Anyway, I was reminded how much fun TiddlyWiki is, so I've dusted it off and started putting stuff there again. Told you they were weird.
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.
If I could stop bringing new things in, I wouldn't have to worry about where to put 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.
I wish I cared more about having something to say than I do about the mechanisms around saying it.
Does every sentence I write need to start with "I"?
Writing full-on blog posts hasn't interested me as much, lately. I don't mind rambling on in these daily notes, but I haven't felt like putting enough coherent sentences together for real posts.
One way to avoid the Reply Guys on social media is to stop making broad, sweeping, controversial statements in the first place. And don't you dare reply and accuse me of victim blaming.
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.
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.
The latest Lightroom update includes Smart Albums, finally. I keep giving up on Lightroom and going back to Capture One, but C1 can be very laggy and it's driving me nuts. Lightroom is fast, and the library/sync is really nice, and improving all the time. I'm so confused.
But I wish Generative Remove was never invented. It's too easy and too tempting.
Is it just me, or does it seem like the entire FOSS movement is crumbling?
I often analyze tools before I actually need them. That's silly, and a waste of energy. It leads to a pile of software that I don't need, but also a bunch of opinions about them that aren't really valid.
It would be nice if I could hold a thought for more than 30 seconds. My brain is so scattered and unpredictable that it makes it difficult to get anything done. So far this morning I must've opened every app, note, and website that I know of. I don't know what I'm hoping to find, but so far I've failed and wasted way too much time.
Here's an example. I was about to write something about watching The Substance last night, so I went to Letterboxd to grab a link to my review. By the time I switched back to this document, I'd forgotten what I was going to write. Not a clue, so I wrote this instead.
I'm trying that thing again where I mark a region of text in each entry. The idea is to emphasize the important bits so that it's easier to scan the page. I'm not convinced it helps, which is why I waffle about it.
While I was unloading the party supplies at the rental place, a woman came out and said, "I just wanted to meet the guy with the cool name." I asked her what she thought was cool about it. She stood straight, lowered her voice, and said, "Jack Baty! It just sounds cool. It sounds like you're either a cool fisherman who lives by himself on an island, or a movie star." I thanked her and left without telling her which one I am.
I'm all for people ragging on DHH, because DHH has revealed himself to be kind of an awful person. Didn't anyone ever tell Matt that one should never wrestle with a pig?
We celebrated my grandson's 1st birthday yesterday. He's so great.
There were 75 people there to help celebrate. Everyone had fun. We ate, played games, and watched Lincoln open gifts (with mom's help). The weather was beautiful, but then it started to thunder, so we took down the tent and put everything away. Shortly after that, it began to pour, so that was a wrap. Perfect timing, actually.
I don't know anyone who thought that LLMs do "formal reasoning", so snickering about the new research is something you can do, but you shouldn't expect responses other than, "Duh!"
I left my desk yesterday with all my favorite, long-term apps running: Tinderbox, TheBrain, Emacs, DEVONthink, etc.. This morning, I did my weekly computer cleanup, rebooted, and now I'm only running a terminal, Emacs, and Safari. It won't last, because I love software too much, but this is how I wish I worked.
My advice, to those using WordPress or other Automattic tools, is to let the current drama play out for a while. Everyone jumping ship now might end up regretting it if things work themselves out. If you feel you must jump in and hate on Matt, though, go for it I guess. We'll probably end up feeling like the whole thing was a tempest in a teacup in six months, anyway.
I've added a search page. It uses Pagefind. It turns out I'd already begun work on this with the original site. The clue was a commented-out line in my Makefile:
index: npx -y pagefind --site ${SITE_DIR}
All I needed to do was create a search page and add a snippet:
To manually build the index, I render the site and then index it. using npx -y pagefind --site _site. I do this as part of the deploy recipe in the Makefile.
That was easy enough. I'll fart around with the indexing a bit, but otherwise it works really well right out of the box.
I just realized that there's no way to search this blog. I wonder if I can use the same tooling as the Hugo blog. This doesn't seem like fun.
An admission: I've been using TheBrain again/still, Like I did late last year. Its value increases over time. Whenever I put something in it, I can always find it later, and quickly. It may be weird and expensive and proprietary and have limited export options, but it's still the app I've found most effective for things that benefit from context and long-term linking.
I'll be spending the afternoon getting things set up for my grandson's 1st birthday party tomorrow. There are tents and tables and chairs and decorations and food and who knows what else.
Baty.net
