Thinking of starting a routine of "Unsocial Sundays" during which I avoid all social media. Today is Sunday, it's 05:52 AM, and I'm already twitchy about it. Worth a try, though.
Stick with it
A link from an earlier note lead me to:
you can stick with it | ava's blog
Trying out new tools and things is generally cool and I love reading the hands-on experiences, but in this case, I just see people running through things anxiously with no direction seeming stressed and sad.
The behavior Ava describes fits me, but only to a point. I'll tell you why.
Ascetic Computing - ratfactor by Dave Gauer resonated with me. I have been unable to "Reduce & Simplify" or "Use What I Have", even after years of trying. My definition of what "simple" means changes daily. Still working on it.
Saturday, May 16, 2026
I changed the body font here to Instrument Sans. For some reason, I find that serif fonts in blog posts feel pretentious. It's not me.
I asked Claude Code to convert my entire denote directory to use Org-roam style links. I wanted to try Org-roam again, but without losing work. Took Claude 20 minutes.
Logging life in Tinderbox
Dave wrote about his Captain's Log, into which he logs information "too trivial to remember, but too important to forget." It's a Tinderbox document.
A later post from Jacob Evans described his own "LifeBox" kept in Tinderbox.
These two posts resonated with me, as I've used Tinderbox for the same thing since 2008. See my post, Tinderbox as a Daybook, from that year.
Last year I revamped the Daybook and went all in.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
This morning started off as another "Emacs tripped me up again so I should use something else." mood. It passed, because everything else is worse in more ways.
I don't mind tinkering with Emacs, but I can't stand fixing Emacs when something goes pear-shaped. It seems like something is always going pear-shaped.
My corner of the internet this morning is nothing but navel gazing and hand wringing. I may need to go do something else for a while.
What a day for networks. My UGREEN NAS suddenly dropped off the network. Reboots didn't help, so I moved ethernet cables around. It works now, but I wish I understood why. Mostly I either jiggled or restarted everything and it started working. You just know this is going to blow up again some day.
Then, while at my parents' celebrating Mother's Day, we noticed his internet was down. Turns out his WiFi had stopped working, so Xfinity sent a new router. It seemed like the network was insisting that he set it up. So I did. Different network name/password, which meant updating every wifi-dependent device in the house. I'm just glad my dad isn't a nerd. It was mostly iPhones, the TV, and a camera. Still took an hour and a half.
FAQ: How do you use your typewriters? | Chris Aldrich
Below are some various recent uses I’ve made of my typewriter collection
I have a handful of nice typewriters that sit unused. I would really like to change that. Chris' list gives me a few ideas.
taken. — Since You Arrived Vol. IV
You opened this page. It already knows the following.
I already knew most of this, but it's still alarming to see it all at once.
Thursday, May 7, 2026
I get a lot of newsletters, the traditional way, via email. Those newsletters often contain links to interesting things. Unfortunately, people love metrics, causing many of those newsletters to obfuscate the URLs with tracking links. I don't usually bother clicking those, because I can't hover over a link and see where it's really going. The ones I do click are usually blocked by my network filters. I'm not paranoid as much as just annoyed. Parannoyed?
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
I gotta start bugging Claude Code to help me make adding images here easier, before I'm sucked backed into Ghost.
Monday, May 4, 2026
I have many ways to listen to music. Vinyl, cassette, streaming, etc. Lately I haven't been listening to much music. I don't know why.
I cut myself on both edges of the Emacs sword. Even so, I've been having so much fun with Emacs I can hardly stand it.
Grove.el is "An Obsidian-like note-taking mode for Emacs". I'm already overloaded with note-taking tools, but Grove is an interesting take on the idea.
It's from Jonathan Chu. Here's the introductory post.
Sunday, May 3, 2026
I'm on my own this weekend, which isn't good for being productive in real life. I am on such a roll cleaning things up, digitally. My Emacs config, my Read Later process. Next up, backups. Or maybe more Emacs! I did make time for laundry, a water change in the fish tank, and cleaning the interior of my wife's car. Not a lot, but enough for me to finish the day doing some guilt-free farting around.
From web page to printable PDF for reading later
Rather than using a normal-person's "Read Later" service, I print long-form web articles for reading later. I print them, pile them up, and read them all when I have some time away from the computer. It's the only way I can truly pay attention to them.
The process took some work to dial in, but I've gotten it close to how I like it. It goes like this:
- Save the page as Markdown using the Obsidian Web Clipper
- Convert the Markdown to PDF using Pandoc
- Print!
Saturday, May 2, 2026
Could I just scroll your web page without shit moving all over the place, please?
The last couple days have been a whirlwind of changes to my Emacs config. I have to admit that Claude Code made quick work of things I've been avoiding for too long. My config is now cleanly cross-platform. I've removed hundreds of lines of unnecessary lisp. I removed the complexities around using the minimal-emacs starter kit. My fonts work correctly. I cut startup time in half. Tons more. I'm pretty happy with it.
I was going to post something cool I did with Claude Code's help on Mastodon but the Never LLM! hoards would scold me and I don't want to deal with it.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
Someone mentioned org-roam and it reminded me how cool it is. I moved away from org-roam a couple years ago, shortly after denote was released. Denote felt lighter and less dependent on Emacs-ey stuff. Denote is great and I'm happy with it, but that didn't stop me from digging up my old org-roam config today, just to play around with it. That was 3 hours ago and I've not slowed down. I may need to revisit Using both Denote and Org-roam.
There's currently another internet pile-on happening. "Everyone" is leaving Github because someone else said, "Everyone's leaving Github". I'm no fan of Github, but a handful of people will actually leave, and we'll forget about it in a week, because it's the internet.
"I refuse to use anything that has touched A.I. in any way!"
...later...
::rubs sticks together to make fire::
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
The dog's surgery went well yesterday. She had several large masses removed from her skin. This is the third time we've had to do this. The vet convinced me to send a sample out for a biopsy, even though the aspiration looked benign and cyst-like. The fact that they regrew on the same scar line as last time is concerning. Alice is recovering, but is in a lot of pain. It's killing me to hear her whine. She never whines. It'll get better, slowly.
I am (mostly) down to two blogs. I've spent a lot of time recently dialing things in with both of them. I'm enjoying both of them equally, which means it's hard to decide which one to use at any given moment. Been here before, many times. After De-ghosting my Ghost theme, I quite like that one. This one is static and has a fresh redesign. Now what?
The things I use for writing and note-taking
Do you know why have trouble finding things? Here's why...
