Posts

I haven’t used Doom Emacs in a while. Thought I’d give it a spin. Besides, I still miss my vim bindings from back in the day. Evil mode to the rescue.

In How about some blogging stability for 2026? I wrote that I resolved to not change blogging platforms more than once a quarter. This would be an easy goal for most people. For me, though, it’s a bit of a challenge.

I’m typing this in NeoVim on the Framework running Fedora/Gnome. Earlier today, I fired up the Mac Mini and thought, “Man, this is how I want to do computing.” This, in direct opposition to how I’ve felt about it for the past few months. As part of the new year, I’d “decided” that I was putting the Linux experiment on hold indefinitely. I’d fired up Tinderbox for blogging at daily.baty.net as part of my new move back to macOS.

Over at Irreal, Blogging Platforms: For me, blogging is all about writing and sharing my discoveries. The last thing I want is to worry about is my blogging platform. I want it to be as transparent as possible so I don’t have to think about it. I just want to write my post in Org mode and push a button to publish it.

How about this for a resolution… Don’t change blogging platforms more than once a quarter.

Sooo, I thought I wanted a new theme but that didn’t work out, so I changed my mind and decided to go back to my old PaperMod theme. Trouble is, that theme was made for Hugo1, so I also had to move things back to Hugo. Had to! 😀

Update: I went with something else :) Then again, maybe I want the previous theme instead

My daughter has been sending me adorable AI-generated images of her and my grandson in various Christmas get-ups. They’re so fun and cute and she’s having a blast.

My first serious foray into Linux was driven by how deeply I fell immediately in love with Omarchy. Omarchy made me realize that I could totally live in Linux. If I wanted to.

I’m over 60 now, so I often react differently to certain things than younger people do. Badly, most of the time.

Tinderbox has a great feature that indicates the size of a note using a tiny icon next to each note. This makes it easy to see which notes are long or short at a glance.

As a huge fan of Denote, I still sometimes dabble with other ways of taking notes in Emacs.

I was bored this afternoon so I just walked around the house and used up a roll of HP5 in the Rolleiflex.

Don’t ask me why I occasionally try to move away from Emacs. I can’t explain it. Under duress, I’d say it’s because Emacs swallows the world, and I like changing things up. Doing everything in Emacs makes that difficult. Org-mode is unmatched, but it’s also essentially useless outside of Emacs1. I get a little twitchy about that. Also, sometimes a package update throws a wrench into my Emacs config or I become tired of C-x C-whatever all the time and so I start shopping for a replacement.

Well, I finally did it. I deleted my 50,000-photo iCloud photo library and moved everything to self-hosted Immich.

On macOS, I prefer Capture One as my RAW editor, but C1’s cataloging features are weak. Plus, I’d prefer not having my catalog and editor so tightly tied together. I’d love to get out of the Adobe ecosystem, so I don’t want to get too deep into using Lightroom Classic for my catalog. Photo Mechanic is great, but has gotten too expensive.

In November, I experimented with using only CLI tools. How did it go?

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

In Baty.net • What do I even mean by “Simple?”, I was looking for a definition of “simple”. I aspire to simplicity, but never seem to find it.

I’ve become a bit overwhelmed by text after using mostly CLI/TUI tools for the past few weeks. I need a break from looking at tedious walls of text all day, so instead of creating posts here using Markdown, I’m posting to my WordPress blog over at baty.blog for a while1. I needed a change of venue. Hope to see you there!

Some thoughts and observations around my feelings about using Linux vs macOS.

It’s been the kind of day where using (or trying to use) Emacs frustrates me.

For nearly two years I’ve been telling myself to Reduce & Simplify. For short periods, I’ve almost done that, but entropy takes over and I once again overcomplicate everything.

When I started running the macOS 26 (Tahoe) betas, I didn’t have strong feelings about Liquid Glass one way or the other.

I’m trying to get everything running smoothly on the Linux machines. I really am. And I’m close, but I’m not there yet, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever get there.

I started my CLI app only experiment at the end of October, meaning that it’s been just over a week of nothing but CLI and TUI apps for nearly everything. How’s it going?

Speaking of jrnl, did I mention that I’m testing jrnl as my daily logging tool?

I’m slowly learning how to customize Hyprland.

Since I’m using only CLI and TUI apps in November, I needed to find a replacement for Mu4e in Emacs. As a long-time Mutt user, I assumed that’s what I’d use. A couple people recommended that I try aerc instead.

I think I’ll try something. I think I’ll try using only CLI and TUI apps during the month of November.

I use Zen Browser on Linux. While playing around with LazyVim (I know, I know) I learned about Tridactyl which is a plugin that let’s you manipulate Firefox (or Zen) using Vim-like key bindings.

I prefer seeing a new tab, not the URL search dialog

I’m fishing for a new theme. I’m willing to change SSGs to get one I like.

I’m becoming a fan of this awkward kit. The F100 is such a sleeper and can be had relatively cheaply. I ended up with that weird-looking SB-20 flash as part of a local Facebook purchase. There might be something to this TTL flash, auto-focus, auto-exposure photography thing.

I impulse ordered the new Pebble smartwatch as soon as it was announced. At the time, I was looking for excuses to stop wearing my Apple Watch, and this seemed as good as any.

It’s nice having a pocketable point-and-shoot film camera with me. Normally for me, this either means an Olympus Stylus Epic or Ricoh GR1. Both of these are having issues, so I impulse ordered a Canon Sure Shot AF-7 from eBay. It was $30 shipped, so there wasn’t much risk.

Sometimes one really needs to go out of their way to borrow trouble.

My family and friends have always told me, “Oh, you definitely have ADHD.” I’m not inclined to diagnosis shopping, so I’ve just assumed that’s what it was and ignored it.

The appeal of cynicism is that it makes you sound smart without asking for a whole lot of independent thought. It’s easier to tear down than build up, to assume the worst than to evaluate evidence, to sneer than to engage, to smirk rather than smile.

I’m trying. I really am.

That’s not entirely fair. Wallace’s most famous book, Infinite Jest—1,079 pages and weighing 3.15 pounds (in the hardcover first edition)—is challenging. But Wallace wrote many other things, and some of them are quite accessible.

TL;DR It’s a love/hate thing, with love in the lead.

I’ve carried one kind of paper notebook or another on my person for years. Moleskine, Field Notes, Travelers, you name it. The idea is to “capture my ideas and thoughts” while on the go.

tanrax/org-social: Org Social is a decentralized social network that runs on an Org Mode file over HTTP.

I’m feeling like a break from all this SSG-ness. I’ll see you at my WordPress blog at baty.blog for now.

How I’m pulling my Fastmail calendar entries into Emacs diary entries.

So many options. So little patience.

⚠️ Note that this doesn’t work properly. There’s a “nil” at the end.

It makes no difference what software I use.

I had better be right about this.

this is a question, not a manual

I got a new keyboard.

I got a different new cassette deck and it’s pretty neat. Weird, but neat.

i run arch btw

Remember that time I was trying Linux “for real” and even created a blog to write about it? It was more an excuse to play with the clever BSSG blogging engine, but still.

New old stereo gear is wonderful

Sometimes I think I should quit shooting film. But I never do.

I’ve tried to make Mylio work a few times. Maybe this time it will.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve been posting over on the wiki and daily.baty.net this week. I was in the mood for a change of venue. Also, I kind of got spooked by a small surge in traffic here. For someone who posts in public every day, I still don’t like being watched. So, I write in places that fewer people know or care about. It’s weird, I know.

YouTube video about how hobbies aren’t fun anymore

Rambling about a little loop I find myself going through with Emacs vs Not Emacs

Every year I renew my subscription to Curio, even though I haven’t used it much recently. I renew mostly to support development of one of the nicest, most thoughtful apps on macOS, but another reason is that George continues to add truly useful and interesting features year after year. I don’t know how he does it.

The Ricoh GR1 looked sad in the “broken camera” drawer, so I loaded it up with a roll of HP5 and gave it a shot. It worked just fine. This time. Sometimes the LCD stops working. Sometimes the viewfinder gets blocked by something loose inside the camera. Usually it’s both those things, but this time I got through the roll without issue. It’s a great camera when it works.

I enjoy using the Rolleiflex so much that I am able to ignore how difficult it can be to focus and how sometimes it flares badly.

The Stylus Epic, HP5, and light leaks at the beach

I wanted a more generic version of my emacs lisp function for creating new posts. Claude helped me write it.

My blog turns 25 years old today

Switching between the MacBook Air keyboard and the HHKB keyboard can be off-putting. I have loved using the HHKB for years, but I’ve lost patience for the function layer and missing arrow keys. My pinky hurts too often.

I asked Claude to summarize my recent blog posts. Claude knows me.

I take a lot of screenshots using the built-in screen capture tool on macOS. By default, these are saved as PNG files, which are unnecessarily ginormous for my purposes, so I always convert them to .jpg files.

I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’m just not feelling it lately, ya know?

Captured in the act

I’ve rejiggered the Ghost blog I was using for this site into a dedicated photography blog. There’s a lot of cruft scattered about, and I’m using the default theme for now, but it’s a start.

Ongoing issues with choosing to journal using fountain pens.

The other day, I converted my entire TiddlyWiki into an Obsidian vault, just to see if I could. Since I still spend most of my time in Emacs, I thought it would be nice to search the vault from there.

If he’s a bit manic for you, here’s part of the transcript that I’ve reformatted a bit:

org-mouse is a built-in package for Org mode that lets one do some handy things using the mouse in Org files. Things like checking checkboxes and toggling subtrees.

I know I won’t like Obsidian this time, either. Yet, I keep trying.

What if I used Glass for my film roll posts, instead?

I like to have Make and Model information available in film scans, and use exiftool for this. I have a lisp function in Emacs that does this, but sometimes I’d like to do it from a terminal instead.

Here are some (probably) unnecessary things I’ve been doing.

The new M4 MacBook Air arrived, and it changed how I have things set up around here.

It seems I’ve finally actually “Reduced & Simplified” something.

I wanted a different view into my org-journal history, so I imported it into Day One

Baty.net is going to move back to Ghost, I think. Y’all will I’m sure get a chuckle out of it and I’m happy for you. :)

Joan Westenberg, in The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites:

When a simple app “cleanup” on my Mac Mini went way WAY too far.

At $10/month, SetApp is a good deal, especially if you use more than a handful of the included Apps. I’ve been a subscriber since early on.

I wrote the following in 2021 but can’t find where I posted it, and I’m feeling it again, so I’m recording it here

The past week has been weird for me, blog-wise. Normally, I fire up a daily post every morning because I want to. I then keep my eyes peeled for interesting things to post about. I like posting stuff on the blog. Lately, though, I haven’t felt like it.

As of Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM, all of my sites (including this one) are being served using Caddy on a FreeBSD server from Vultr.

One of the reasons for my Ghost/ActivityPub experiment was to try to better integrate both short and long posts. Since that didn’t pan out, I started thinking about how I might manage it with Hugo.

Flickr is still the best place to host and share images, I don’t care what anyone else says.

I don't know what the over/under was on my Fedivers-via-Ghost experiment, but yeah, it’s paused.

It’s been great having the MP back from DAG. Sometimes I feel like it’s too much camera ($$$-wise), but then I use it and realize it’s the exactly right amount of camera.

I’ve stopped being able to think for myself. I need you all to get out of my head for a minute.

I had a couple of drinks last night and opened my laptop and accidentally launched Obsidian and thought, “Oh, I remember. This is pretty cool! I should use this for everything.” so this morning I’m staring at Obsidian wondering what now?

So, how’s it going now that you’ve committed, Jack?

Putting the new Rolleiflex through its paces by subjecting it to some self-portraits of me