A blog about everything, by Jack Baty

Early AI photography tools like automatic masking and object removal were a miracle. Then came “Replace Sky” and it’s been downhill ever since. The better generative AI gets and the easier it becomes to use, the more inclined I am to do the opposite and never touch the stuff. What if I started posting from scratch at a completely different blog, but didn’t tell anyone about it?

Whenever I test a new blogging tool or return to an old one, I’m reminded that there are things I need to relearn or rebuild. Everything has specific requirements. Doing this can be fun. It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. Or, more precisely, it helps me pretend I’m accomplishing something. This Hugo blog has been feature-complete for a while. Creating and editing posts with Emacs is a no-brainer. I’ve got little functions and helpers and snippets for everything I need. So, while blogging using various platforms is fun and reduces boredom, it’s anything but productive. I get tired of both Emacs and Hugo sometimes, but I’d love to stick with them and be done with it. If only, right? ...

It’s a pain finding a photo for every daily journal post, but reviewing my catalog helps remind me that I enjoy photography and have made many photographs that are interesting to me. It acts as a tiny bit of inspiration each day. For today’s photo, it’s the guy in a suit talking on the phone while leaning against the wall. It was taken using my 1946 Leica IIIf, which is adorable. ...

A new version of daily.baty.net built with a brand new Tinderbox document

Shooting Kodachrome from 1982 through 2010.

When I was born my dad drove a 1957 turquoise and ivory Chevy Bel Air convertable. It’s what brought me home from the hospital that first time. Wasn’t long before he had to sell it because it was impractical once he had a kid. The Chevy was replaced with some beat up station wagon. I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me 😀 I avoid any apps that involve “streaks” because breaking a streak makes me feel bad about myself. Although sometimes I break them on purpose because YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME! ...

Having too many choices is bad for me, but I refuse to give up any of them. You know, just in case.

What’s brewing at Flickr? Maybe I should just move to Pika. Unkept promises to myself.

Am I back? Not sure yet, but I think I’m a static-blog kind of fella. Pure Blog is awesome, and Kev’s done a great job with it. I like it a lot. And yet

The guy sure works hard at blogging. Using AI to help do that seems like a fine use case. He addresses the usual anti-AI backlash with a few choice quotes. Doctorow, Six Years of Pluralistic Purity culture is such an obvious trap, an artifact of the neoliberal ideology that insists that the solution to all our problems is to shop very carefully, thus reducing all politics to personal consumption choices ...

I seem to have completely lost the thread when it comes to managing my photos. I blame Linux, but it’s totally my fault, and has been happening in some form for years. When living on macOS, I moved between Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, Capture One, and Bridge/Photoshop for editing and managing photos. That was bad enough, but now I’ve thrown Linux into the mix and all hell has broken loose. None of my usual tooling is available for Linux, so I dove into Darktable, which seems to be the top contender for dealing with RAW files. (RawTheraPee doesn’t attract me for some reason). Darktable is the oddest thing. It’s super powerful and flexible, but the UI and workflow are inscrutable. I could learn to live with it if I had to. ...

There’s been talk lately about why RSS readers are designed like email clients and whether they should use unread count indicators This goes back to at least 2014. The latest discussion is around Phantom Obligations. I love seeing new approaches to things, so I bought Terry Godier’s new RSS app, Current, which is designed in a way meant to avoid the sense of obligation around unread articles. Current does some clever semi-algorithmic manipulation of feeds based on frequency, importance, type, etc. It’s quite clever and it looks nice. I have a few early thoughts about it. ...

I’ve been experimenting with Pure Blog and liked it so much that I made a new blog with it. I’ll be posting there for a spell, if you’re interested. ☛ baty.blog or subscribe to the RSS feed.

In order to use Linux full-time, I’ll need to find a feasible workflow for my photography hobby. Weeks working with Darktable hasn’t converted me. I still prefer both Lightroom (Classic) and Capture One for editing photos. I see people mentioning WinBoat as a possible option, so I installed it, along with Windows and Capture One. It works! Well, technically it works, but is it usable? See that app in the upper right? That’s Capture One, running in KDE via WinBoat ...

Well, I did it. After days of tinkering with Pure Blog, I’ve used it for this site at baty.blog. I didn’t have the guts to replace my main blog at baty.net yet. Too much work. Baty.blog has been powered by Blot for a while now, but I had to put this one somewhere, so Blot had to go. Most of the Blot content has been archived at blot.baty.net. It feels nice to start fresh. Now, what should I use it for?

D’ya ever grow weary of thinking about blogging and blogging software and blogging workflows and blogging culture? No? Me neither. Not normally, anyway, but it’s happening now. I’ve been having a blast testing Kev Quirk’s new blogging platform, Pure Blog. He’s done a great job of nailing the basics. It’s easy and fun to use. So fun, in fact, that I’ve been teetering on using it for this blog at baty.net. Sometimes I just want a CMS. ...

“TILES is an Emacs package for taking quick, title-less notes.” Well color me intrigued! Screenshot from the TILES Github page: I love trying different methods for taking notes. TILES is sort of a cross between Howm, Deft, and Denote. I think I’ll give it a go. (via Sacha Chua Emacs News)

Remember when I said I wouldn’t change blogging platforms? It’s still (mostly) true. So far.

Just to be clear, I don’t have serious plans to migrate my main Baty.net (Hugo) blog to Pure Blog. That doesn’t mean I won’t explore the “But what if I converted baty.net to Pure Blog?” scenario. Things will be wonky while I tinker. Probably don’t link to anything here, since I’m almost certain the links will break. Some things I’ve noticed: Date formats in YAML are inconsistent with different SSGs. For example, Hugo wants date: 2026-02-05 05:29:52 -0500 and Pure Blog uses date: 2026-02-07 16:25 which throws an error in Hugo. Adding seconds to the date fixes it. Quoted strings in YAML front matter are optional. Many of my Hugo posts do quote the title: attribute using either single or double quotes. Would need to be removed, because in Pure Blog, those quotes are included as part of the title, etc. Same goes for tags: [“Tag1”,“Tag2”] vs [Tag1,Tag2].

Note This has been mostly superceded by the built-in upgrade mechanism introduced in version 1.5.0. ...