Tech

When a horrible billionaire ruins my wonder at the night sky

My SetApp subscription was scheduled to renew today, but I didn’t let it. I figured that if I buy the apps outright that I actually use, I’ll spend around the same amount as I would on a 1-year SetApp license for both Macs. The purchased apps would either come with lifetime licenses or a small annual upgrade fee. This means next year I’ll pay a much smaller amount for all the same software. ...

I’ve been testing a version of Johnny Decimal using folders and org-mode files. While doing this, I found myself frequently wanting to create a new .org file in the current (Dired) directory with the same name as the directory (long story). In a past life, this would have been a fairly straightforward challenge. I’m not remotely fluent in (emacs) lisp, but I’ve always enjoyed learning, so I would have dug in and figured out how to write the function myself. ...

howm is an Emacs package for taking notes. It was recommended to me recently, so I thought I’d take a look. The project page says “howm: Write fragmentarily and read collectively.” Worth a shot, right? I haven’t seen too many people talking about howm. The best introductions I’ve found are from Leah Neukirchen and Andrei Sukhovskii. I installed it via use-package with the following ;; howm package config (use-package howm :ensure t :config (setq howm-directory "~/Documents/howm/") (setq howm-home-directory "~/Documents/howm/") (setq howm-keyword-file (expand-file-name ".howm-keys" howm-home-directory)) (setq howm-history-file (expand-file-name ".howm-history" howm-home-directory)) (setq howm-view-use-grep t)) ;; (setq howm-view-grep-command "/opt/homebrew/bin/rg")) ;; Fix for help bindings (define-key howm-menu-mode-map "\C-h" nil) (define-key riffle-summary-mode-map "\C-h" nil) (define-key howm-view-contents-mode-map "\C-h" nil) ;; Sensible buffer names (add-hook 'howm-mode-hook 'howm-mode-set-buffer-name) (add-hook 'after-save-hook 'howm-mode-set-buffer-name) I couldn’t get the rg settings to work, so I’m still using grep. It’s fast enough for this test. ...

Canceling things brings mixed feelings

I spent some time in Obsidian again yesterday. I do this once a month or so just to see if somehow it’s changed into something I’d like to use. Obsidian is great software, in theory, but I still find it boring and unpleasant to actually use.

I tried OpenBSD. It’s nice. I don’t need it right now. (Or do I?)

A few months ago I became twitchy about my aging Synology so I replaced it with an old Mac Mini. The idea was that I understand how Macs work and if something breaks I can more easily deal with it. I never unplugged the Synology, though. You know, just in case. A week ago I started getting emails from the Synology that Drive 1 was failing. What I should have done is to unplug the thing and move on. But what I did was to order a new 8TB Seagate Ironwolf drive. ...

The more I lean into using Org-mode files for everything, the more isolated I’m feeling. It may be irrational, because “plain text”, but having to export or otherwise translate everything when I post to my blog or other tools is becoming less fun. Org-mode Island is beautiful, but lonely. Later: Jeremy Friesen reacts to the above with his take on the isolation of using Org-mode. Here’s some follow up.

Generating yearly and monthly calendars using Pcal on the command line

Following up after reading Jeremy Friesen’s response to my earlier post

I’m using using Denote’s silo feature for accessing my Beyond the Infinite folder

My current thinking is that our little blogging society doesn’t need secrecy, it needs visibility.

After using Arc for months, I’ve made Safari my default browser.

I mentioned that I should create a lisp function for sending my org-journal entries to Day One. Turns out I’d already done it. The only problem was that the original version assumed I was using a new org file every day. I’m now doing monthly files, so I needed to change how the text selection was made. Here’s the new function. (defun jab/dayone-add-note () "Sends current subtree as Day One entry" (interactive) (org-mark-subtree) (shell-command-on-region (point) (mark) "/usr/local/bin/dayone2 -j=Journal new" nil)) It’s not perfect, since it includes any PROPERTY drawers and leading stars, but it works and was easy to make.

Let’s not overthink it, eh?

C’mon, everyone’s doin’ it. Here is my list of default apps (in alphabetical order by task): Backups: Backblaze, Arq Blogging: What day is it? I mean Kirby. Calendar: BusyCal, Apple Calendar Chat: Apple Messages, Signal Clipboard Manager: Raycast Code Editor: Emacs File Manager: Forklift, Dired (Emacs) Journaling: Org-journal (Emacs), Day One Launcher: Raycast Mail Client: Apple Mail, notmuch Mail Server: Fastmail Music: Roon, Qobuz, Apple Music Notes: Org-mode (Emacs), TiddlyWiki, Tinderbox Password Management: 1Password Photo Editor: Capture One Photo Management: Capture One, Apple Photos Podcasts: I don’t listen to podcasts RSS: NetNewsWire Read It Later: Omnivore Screenshots: Cleanshot X Search Engine: Kagi Shopping List: Apple Reminders shared with wife Social Networking: Mastodon (web UI) Terminal: iTerm, Kitty Text Editor: Emacs, BBEdit Task Manager: Things, Org-mode (Emacs) Weather: Hello Weather Web Browser: Arc Word Processing: Emacs Org-mode -> LaTeX

I should stop trying to roll my own Emacs config. So I did.

Mike mentions disabling Alfred and going back to using Spotlight as an app launcher. I’ve been having similar thoughts. I use Raycast, and its latest release notes are mostly around features of the $8/month subscription version. I thought, there’s no way I’m paying monthly for what’s basically a glorified app launcher, which brought me back to thinking about Spotlight. My first app launcher was Quicksilver and it immediately became an intregal part of using a Mac. From there I moved to LaunchBar and then to Alfred before settling on Raycast. I still sometimes fire up LaunchBar because it’s great for navigating the filesystem. And it’s faster. ...

A lisp function for generating either Page Bundles or normal Markdown files when creating new Hugo posts.