Journal

There won't be much time for farting around today and I'm already feeling twitchy about it.

People who can do stuff like this are not the same species of human as me. Redbull downhill urban biking POV

I was able to prove my ownership of a copy of DaVinci Resolve Studio so they finally sent my activation code. That was A Whole Thing, but B&H and Black Magic came through. Now to properly test the new RAW editing features in v21.

I thought I would get along fine with Ubuntu, but I've found it unreliable on my Framework 13. Same with Mint. Anyway, I'm back to Fedora/KDE, which I've come to prefer anyway.

I should probably write a long, excuse-riddled blog post about it, but I have been committed to using Obsidian on macOS for nearly a month. Thing is, I have not been able to let go of either Emacs or Linux. I can't quit them. Using macOS again has been nice. It has the software I love and, Tahoe aside, the macOS is great. What's weird is that I prefer using the Framework 13 instead of the M4 MacBook Air, so I tend to grab that when away from my desk. The final straw has been that Linux doesn't (by default) use Emacs key bindings system-wide, like macOS does. I can't live like that, so I dragged Emacs along and here I am, writing this post using Emacs on Linux.

I am rebuilding the old jackbaty.com. I've been hand-editing the HTML but I think I'll go back to using Markdown and building using Pandoc. I'm updating the Leica timeline to make it easier to update. I'll cleanup up old attempts and abandoned ideas.

I was reminded today by a mention in the JTR interview at People And Blogs that I've been neglecting daily.baty.net ever since I rebuilt this one. This is not a surprise to anyone, but I feel badly about leaving things hanging like that.

Being snarky is lazy and you should avoid doing it.

Hoping the slight changes to <hr> elements within posts and the dividers between posts helps when scanning the page. They were so similar before that I didn't bother with separators within posts, but I didn't like the way different topics within a daily post look all smooshed together without them.

eBook readers should not have touch screens.

I've been alternating between 1Password and Apple Passwords and you can probably guess what the problem with that is.

There are a lot of things I should be doing today, but I don't feel like doing any of them.

Speaking of not feeling like doing something. Taxes are due today. I have a service take care of the heavy lifting, which is great. All I needed to do was write checks, put them in envelopes, and get them to the post office in time. I owed much more than expected, and the 2026 estimates are shocking. I felt blindsided, but looking through the documents I can see why. Then, while putting the paperwork away, I noticed that the copy of the check (yes, I still send them checks) was missing the dollar amount. I wrote the long form, just not the number in the box. That's going to come back and bite me. Time for some bourbon.

I just noticed that I forgot to annotate today's image. It's fine. Day's nearly over, anyway.

I can't find my activation code for Davinci Resolve Studio and I'm furious with myself about it. I tried the new v21 beta with built-in RAW photo editing. It's a bit primitive now, but it will improve. If I were primarily a videographer, this would be a welcome addition. Also, it's one more option for photo editing on Linux, which is nice.

I used Kevin's Boring Weather app instead of my janky shell script for annotating today's image. It's 90% of what I need. I might beg for the remaing 10%.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I may have finally done it. I've been using Obsidian for notes/planning for a couple of weeks and it's working really well. I don't love the UI or editing a lot of text there, but the tooling around it makes it quicker and easier to get to useful than Emacs and Org mode. For me, anyway. Although I'm writing this in Emacs, so I'm obviously still working through the details :).

I'm testing MacWhisper for dictation and translations. Sometimes I don't feel like typing. You're soaking in it.

I really need to clean up some of the typography and layout around here. It feels off in a bunch of small ways. Remember that time like a week ago when I completely rebuilt this blog and then stopped posting here? That was pretty much the definition of me. Update

I don't like the way I feel when Claude is down.

I guess I'm posting this here, today. The past few days have been all about Ghost over at Coping Mechanism so that's enough of that, right?

I don't suffer from burnout, but I might die from fizzle-out, though.

Now that I have the various post types sorted here, I'm pretty sure I can live without the daily blog. The wildcard now is Coping Mechanism. I like using Ghost. I like the ActivityPub integration, built-in comments, emails, and analytics. I even like the editor, most of the time. And I really like just dragging images into it. I'm not sure I want to give it up, but I'm even less sure that I want two blogs that do essentially the same things.

I plan to avoid most news and all social media for a week. It's to the point where, between the daily barrage of horrible, incompetent people doing stupid, horrible things and the incessant misinformed chatter about all of it on social media, I'm going to lose my shit. I need a brief respite in order to reset.

Since I'm mostly only using macOS right now, I've punted on the NetNewsWire <--> Miniflux connection. There has been something off about it for a while. I've moved all my NNW feeds into the iCloud synced collection and it's working better.

"README-driven development" is a phrase Simon Willison used and it's kind of perfect.

I'll never understand why people get such a boner over ridiculing someone else's code. It's not a good look.

I'm spinning today. I want to do everything at once.

One of the things I did was completely revamp my Obsidian vault, with Claude Cowork's help. I wouldn't have done it without the help. Made the whole thing consistent, easy, and complete. Don't ask yet why I'm even looking at obsidian.

Much of yesterday was swallowed by converting this blog from Hugo to Eleventy (Like Twitter, I'll probably never call it Build Awesome 🙄). I wondered if I'd wake up today feeling like I'd made a mistake. So far, I don't miss Hugo. It's only been a day, though. Whether I continue to like the design is another story. I meant for it to be basic and simple, then decided to put everything on the home page. I like the individual pages, but home is pretty messy. That's probably OK, since most people read this via RSS anyway.

Today has been a whirlwind of indecision. It started with wanting to write a daily post (you're soaking in it), but I couldn't decide which blog to post it on. There are three good candidates. I'm choosing this one.

And then there's Emacs. I've spent a lot of time tidying up my config and it's still kind of a mess. It's starting to wear on me. Sometimes I want things to be clever and cool, but sometimes I just want it to be easier. I launched Obsidian yesterday, if that tells you how bad it is. Thankfully, I've come to my senses and I am typing this in Emacs. Phew!

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?

...10 minutes later... https://baty.blog/im-so-moody-when-it-comes-to-blogging

The photo for this post was taken using a Leica M4. This one...

It had M3-style levers, a recent and expensive CLA by Sherry Krauter, custom framelines, and it worked perfectly. I sold it because I wanted the money for some stupid digital camera that I no longer have. This was a terrible mistake. Never sell a Leica unless you absolutely have to.

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.

Guess what. I thought about quitting Emacs again yesterday. Went so far as to re-install Obsidian. After a few hours of new-shiny-this-is-way-easier, I remembered I can't stand using Obsidian. I do this once every month or two and I never learn.

Speaking of being back. I'm doing a daily post here, today. I've been enjoying using Tinderbox to publish the daily blog again, but I'm so far into my Linux experiment that I get twitchy using software that limits me to using a Mac. At least when there are alternatives that I also enjoy using.

Why didn't I think of doing this with my HHKB? https://medium.com/lim-less-is-more/sonshi-style-a-style-of-putting-keyboard-on-laptop-67f0a825a53c

How crazy is this? WordPress running locally, in-browser.

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!

I've spent much of the morning deleting stuff. It's possible I've been too aggressive, but it feels great. One of these days maybe I'll have the guts to delete all of it.

There is no "productivity system" in the world that will make me less lazy.

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

I don't know which camera to use. I don't know which computer to use. I don't know which fountain pen to use. I don't know which writing app to use. I don't know which blog to use. And so on. Yes, yes, I'm very lucky and privileged to have this problem. Still, it's a problem I have. One to which the answer is probably, "All of them". Which breeds a different set of problems, but I can't complain.

It's too late to be pessimistic

--Yann Arthus-Bertrand (and others)

Using LLMs and agents to do stuff for me is amazing and exhilarating, but it's not fun and it feels dirty.

MODE by Flickr | The Next Big Thing in photography

The Next Big Thing in photography is landing February 26, 2026.

Hey Flickr, I love ya, but unless whatever you're planning actually is going to be the Next Big Thing in photography you're shooting yourselves in the foot with all the breathless hype.

Wouldn't it be funny if I just punted and moved my blog to Pika?

I am constitutionally unable to decide anything and then stick with that decision. For example, I moved my blog to baty.blog because Pure Blog is so cool. Then yesterday I went back to Hugo because I missed editing posts in Emacs. Now today I'm using the Tinderbox version of my daily blog because I want it static, not Kirby-generated. Sheesh. I've typed this paragraph in 3 places.

Continued reading "Manifesto for World Revolution". It's wildly unrealistic but still gets one fired up.