Journal

The best way I've found of preventing photos from looking too digital is to make them with film.

Sometimes I defend people from pile-ons, even when they deserve the pile-on. I feel like too many people wake up and think, "Who can I decide is bad, today?" and that's just no way to be. So, if you point out that someone did something horrible (and by "horrible", you usually mean "something I don't agree with") and I say "But maybe they just...", it's not always because I agree with what they've supposedly done, but rather to point out that there might be more to it. We're complicated. Situations are complicated. You don't know everything about it, so maybe back off a smidge and consider that.

I used to look forward to "advances" in the technology I use. Those days are gone. Sometimes I think this is because I'm older now. I don't think that's it, though. The changes that happen now are not meant to make my life better. They're meant to make someone else's life better. Maybe they always were, but I doubt it.

When I started this blog in 2000, I mostly posted links to articles I enjoyed. In recent years I've stopped linking to things and I don't know why. Maybe I should include a section in these daily posts with links to things I found interesting that day. Noodlin' on it.

Links for October 4, 2024.

• Remind me later – The Secret Knots. What technology is like today. A comic.
• Brooke DiDonato - Surreal photography. Great colors and fun ideas.
• Why Is Yellowstone National Park Such a Crowded Mess? - I would love to see Yellowstone National Park, but I don't think I'll bother.
• 11 damning details in Jack Smith’s new brief in the Trump election case - POLITICO - JFC.

How about we collectively stop apologizing for how often we write on our blogs or what we write about on our blogs. Newsletters, too, while we're at it.

I like the new message/alert summaries on my Apple devices. I just used ChatGPT to help me write some emacs lisp for my blogging workflow. DEVONthink can now use AI to intelligently rename files. I use that all the time. Complaints about social and environmental impact of AI use are justified, but it's probably time to stop suggesting that LLMs aren't useful.

Never apologize or make excuses for not commenting on a topic or event or anything. You don't owe "the world" your opinion.

Let's see if this works. I've added some basic opengraph tags.

I've gone from not caring as much about the things I used to care about, to not caring about much of anything at all. Moving 100 or so blog posts from Hugo to Eleventy is a brain-dead way to pass time while feeling like I'm Doing Something™.

Today

It bugs me that I'll be in New Orleans next weekend, and I don't have any plans around cameras. I'll probably bring the little GRIII and that's it. I'm not interested in lugging the SL2 everywhere. Nor do I feel like dealing with the hasseles of traveling with film. I'm disappointed in myself over this.

Well, once again a Hugo upgrade broke rendering of the site. Apparently, they've decided to enforce a specific date format or formats in the front matter. Fortunately, I only had a few old posts with a "bad" format, so fixing things wasn't difficult. Still, using Hugo is not my favorite part about publishing this blog. I will do my best to calm down and not do anything rash, even though I'm tempted to do something rash.

Autoplaying video ads should be a jailable offense. At the very least I should be able to come to your house and kick you in the crotch.

I'm more likely to go back to using Roam Research than I am to Obsidian. Weird, huh?

What would it take to move back to Kirby?

After having a bit of a hissy fit this morning about Hugo, I almost moved this blog back to Kirby CMS. Almost. Since then, I've taken a deep breath, stepped back, and thought about what it would take to make me move back from Hugo to Kirby.

• How can I have URLs like /YYYY/MM/post-slug without complex routing that I don't understand? The connection between content location and URL is too tight, IMO.
• New posts/journals should go where they belong, without code changes. I still have to update the blueprint YAML every month to e.g. change from "2024/09" to "2024/10" otherwise new posts and journal entries go in the wrong folder. I don't know how to fix this.
• Better deployments (code vs content). I would like a better way to manage content vs code changes.
• Can I just list all the posts in the panel? Currently, I have to view the current month's post, then navigate "up" in order to just see a simple list of posts. I'm sure there's an easy way to handle this, so why don't I know how?

Most of all, it would take a stronger desire to build everything myself. It often feels like Kirby makes the hard things easy and the easy things hard. I'm not in the mood for that right now, so I will probably tough it out with Hugo for a bit longer. As nice as Kirby's panel can be for managing content, I'm more likely to jump back to Blot or Ghost, to be honest.

Yesterday I did that thing where I wanted to use something other than Emacs and Org Mode, so I re-installed Obsidian and launched both Tinderbox and SilverBullet. Then, I wrote some notes in all of them. It was so darn nice having somewhere new to work. It lasted a few hours, after which I copied all of those notes into the appropriate .org documents and properly scolded myself for straying again. Everything else is inferior to Emacs, but sometimes I just need a break.

"Oscillation creates Isolation" is a new phrase I just made up.

I dusted off my old Kirby blog after reading Kev's post this morning. I'm not falling for it, Kev! Kirby is really nice, and tempting, but I've forgotten how it works and I don't love the idea of learning it over again right now.

A phrase that bugs me is, "You have to wonder..." when what they really mean is "I wonder..." or more likely, "I think this but am too chickenshit to come right out and say it." It's a bit like "I'm just asking questions!"

There's nothing on my schedule today and that is totally fine with me. It's not just fine, it's preferred.

I made some small (5"x7") prints in the darkroom this morning. I sometimes feel that the small prints aren't "worth it", but they're cheap and easy to make, so I keep doing it. I guess at the exposure and only reprint if I'm way off. Otherwise, as my dad says, "Good enough for who it's for". And I'm always happy I have them later.

Is it too early to begin speculation about the iPhone 17?^[1]

Two buffers I always have open in Emacs are: the current journal entry here on baty.net, and my personal journal (org-journal). I type the same kinds of things in both places. Which one I choose depends on my mood.

I hate when I run out of feeds to read and so just sit here staring at the screen. Running out of feeds isn't the problem, fyi.

Every notification ping holds the possibility we have merit.

...

we strain our moral character to cosplay a life of plenty.

--Thea Lim

I just dropped in and scrolled through the feed on LinkedIn. If LinkedIn is the game I'm forced to play, then I forfeit.

So many people seem to travel around looking only for red flags. Maybe they should spend more time looking for green lights.

A few weeks ago, my Dad's Apple Watch (Series 3) died, so I gave him my Series 7, since I was hardly ever wearing it anyway. Then last week I started reading "Younger Next Year" and all they talk about is doing aerobic workouts six days a week and closely monitoring my heart rate. Lacking an available heart rate monitor, I ordered a new Series 10 Apple Watch. I had to. HAD TO.

Speaking of "Younger Next Year", they're doing a good job of convincing me that what I've been doing is not helping. By "what I've been doing," of course I mean, "Almost nothing". I really hate exercise, but I also really want to be healthy when I'm 80, assuming I live that long. So, I've worked out 4 days in a row so far, which might be a record for me.

Social media is umatched as a method of letting me know what and whom I'm supposed to be mad at right now.

My Org mode capture templates are acting funky. Things aren't going where they're supposed to. e.g. my Daybook entries are going into the wrong part of the datetree. I've changed nothing relevant that I know of. I hate this.

I would still exist if I deleted my Instagram account.

-- Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Would you? Would any of us?

I don't want the things I create to be nothing more than something to scroll past. But maybe that's better than having noone see them at all.

Yesterday, I tried talking my dad through authenticating the Bally Sports app on his Apple TV. It involved going to a web page on his phone, logging in, and entering a code. It was the worst experience possible. Have you ever tried editing a long URL on an iPhone? Have you ever tried helping an 82-year-old do it over the phone? Technology is terrible. All he wanted to do was watch the ball game.

"Today's video is about [something something] and I'm going to tell you all about it. OK, let's jump right in!"

::45-second overwrought intro video::

"OK, like I said, in today's video we're going to..."

Sometimes I hate YouTube.

I broke down and bought a Blackstone Griddle. Today, I made my first smash burger. I'm happy now.

I think I'll (reluctantly) stop using Capture One and go back to Lightroom. I was using Lightroom for a while because it's good and keeps getting better, but I get the best results from and prefer using C1. However, it has become so slow as to be unusable. It can take 3 or 4 seconds to update the preview after moving a slider, which is maddening. I've done all the recommended things to improve performance, but nothing helps. Lightroom updates immediately. Plus Lightroom syncs, has modern features that non-professionals use, and is relatively inexpensive.

The Online Photographer: Disillusion:

Now, I approach all photographs with distrust

Me too, Mike.

I'll go on record saying that I prefer pre-recorded events. I suffer from some kind of empathetic anxiety around live events. I spend the whole time thinking, "Don't screw up, don't screw up". It's also why I prefer movies to plays, probably.

When I post regularly and to only one blog, my traffic numbers go up. This is pretty consistent. It's an interesting data point, but I'm not doing this for visitor numbers, so I'll continue to be inconsistent and scattered about.

The smartest thing for me to do would be to double down on using Org Mode for all of my notes and be done with it. I re-installed Logseq last week but haven't launched it. Today, I downloaded Standard Notes but didn't even install it. See? I'm getting better!

Whenever I read posts raving about Emacs, they focus too much on "efficiently editing text". I barely care about that and they shouldn't either. Actual editing comprises about 5% of writing^[1]. Making that tiny slice 20% more efficient adds almost nothing, if you're looking at the big picture. Efficient editing is fun though, so I'll give you that.

Finally got around to ordering The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. Should arrive tomorrow. I expect to declare I'm "going all-in on paper" within the next 48 hours.

I used Emacs to create this file and now I'm editing it using iA Writer. As much as I love Emacs, I don't necessarily need to spend all day, every day in there, you know? I also wanted to check out the iA Writer update because they now use a sensible UI for navigating folders. The old way made me ditch iA Writer, as much as I love the actual editor.

I took a week or so off social media but have been unable to maintain my distance. The trick is to limit myself to checking the feed a couple times a day. There's so much great stuff out there, so I don't want to leave completely, but I have to stop reaching for it every time there's a lull in my thoughts.

Posts here are no longer being automatically syndicated to Mastodon via EchoFeed. I want to control when they show up on Mastodon, and that may be different than when I publish them here.

I'm still undecided about where to put small posts. It's easy to put them here, collected into a single daily note, but things feel like they get lost this way. I tried getting back into Micro.blog but that's just confused things more. Plus, I'm in a "control the stack" mood. I'll either end up continuing to put everything here, or I'll split small posts off to daily.baty.net using Tinderbox. The individual Tinderbox posts can then be syndicated via EchoFeed to Mastodon. Still noodlin' on it.

In high school, I mowed lawns for extra cash. I remember vividly the time I was mowing our neighbor's back yard and I had the idea for a painting (see above). I actually stopped the mower and went inside to start painting immediately. I miss feeling so creative that I'd stop whatever I was doing because I had an idea.

Had second sewing class yesterday. We made drawstring bags. Well, tried to. I struggled with the sewing machine for half the class. It kept jamming. And when it wasn't jamming, I was mis-threading it. We cut several pieces of fabric for the first time. That was harder than I expected. Like my dad often said while building something, "I cut it twice and it's still too short." I didn't finish. I still need to make and thread the drawstring.

People think too much of themselves. We're not that special. Or important.

Early this year, I decided I was Hanging up the Hobonichi. As is normal for me, I changed my mind and ordered the 2025 Techo, just in case. FOMO, mostly.

You can't read the room if you're not in the room.

I was considering bringing back ox-hugo for generating posts here, but according to this comment, he plans to remove support for YAML frontmatter, and I'm not using TOML, so that's a no-go.

I feel like if Apple just said "Screw it, we're sick of this" and stopped making iPhones altogether, we'd all just go buy some Android phone and it would be fine. Then maybe we could collectively shut up about Apple and that would be even better.

Why do Apple people spend so much time gossiping about the future? Speculation about Apple bores me to tears.

Blog mood today: I want a blog, a wiki, and a social media account. One of each. The blog is for writing. The wiki is for keeping various bits and bobs, and social media is for sharing the above and others.

Why is it that the first part of every issue of every newsletter is about either changes to the newsletter format or apologizing for being late with the newsletter?

A few of the things I never want to think about:

• Timezones
• Retina versions of graphics
• Unit tests
• Git branches
• Code linting
• Pen testing
• Licensing
• Build pipelines
• Docker

I'm having a lot of trouble staying away from social media. The idea was to limit myself to checking once or twice a day, but I still find myself reaching for it every time there's a lull in my thoughts or as soon as I finish something. It's insidious. I'm convinced that social media is bad for my brain and it's definitely bad for my attitude. I'll keep trying. I don't think I should even allow the once-a-day checking. Perhaps I'll bookmark just the notifications tab and check that, since I don't want to be rude and not respond to people.

I dare you to read the Denote manual and not feel 100% like it's software you can trust. Prot is just so damn thoughtful about everything.

What would my brain feel like if I didn't have the urge to share every single thing I do or think? Better, I bet.

Haven't settled on whether to continue combining notes into these daily posts or to split off certain ones into Micro.blog or Tinderbox. Or even as small separate posts here. I like all of the approaches, so it comes down to my mood.

Notes from today

Have you ever looked into your completely disheveled pantry and said, "That does it! I'm fixing this right now!"? I did that today. After two hours of, "What the hell is this doing here?", everything that doesn't belong in the pantry is not in the pantry, and everything that remains in the pantry is where it belongs in the pantry. This feels really good.

More on Micro.blog

I'm a week into my Micro.blog Revisited experiment and have not come to any conclusions. There are two questions I need to answer:

1. Do I need a separate micro/daily blog?
2. Should that blog be run at daily.baty.net or jack.micro.blog?

The more I continue to enjoy using the Hugo blog, the less I feel the need for a separate blog. If I could simply make the call that I only have One True Blog, things would become much easier.

Sometimes, though, I want to quickly and easily share an image or quote or link. That's where Micro.blog shines. Plus, it will syndicate to my social media accounts. Micro.blog also federates nicely with Mastodon, etc. Seems like a no-brainer.

But! My Tinderbox blog is the result of a long slog of wrangling Tinderbox into building the blog I really want. It works great for that, now. Plus, it's in Tinderbox, which is one of my all-time favorite bits of software. Plus, I control the entire stack. And I can syndicate using something like EchoFeed.

The answer is that I don't yet have an answer, so I'll continue tinkering until I do^[1].

Notes from today

How every news article about a court ruling sounds to me:

"Court refuses to overturn rejected ruling not banning those refusing to undo denying a double negative."

I'm feeling the urge to keep daily notes here. Remember when I used to separate long-but-not-enough-for-a-separate post notes with a heading? And the table of contents adds a nice touch, I think.

Freddie deBoer - The Temporal Copernican Principle

I often vigoriously disagree with Freddie deBoer, but I also often love how he puts things. In The Temporal Copernican Principle, he considers Yuval Noah Harari to be a charlatan, and says this about his continual optimism around technology:

Lately, Harari’s interest has (of course) been in AI, insisting as so many do that contemporary systems primarily used to generate B- essays for lazy college students and logos for fantasy football teams are, somehow, going to orchestrate the most consequential revolution in the history of our planet, and soon.

I mean, right?

And then:

The value associated with improvements to fossil fuel extraction, electrification, modern plumbing and sanitation and hygiene, drug development, motorized vehicles, germ theory, flight, telecommunications, etc, that were born from 1830ish to 1970ish are just immensely more consequential in human terms than the iPhone.

I tend to agree.

Whenever I visit Kottke.org I'm reminded that he just posts anything and everything all day. Long posts, short posts, anything. It's kind of a beautiful mess and I shouldn't worry about mine so much.

As much as I'm enjoying using only one blog, I'm still drawn to the way my daily.baty.net blot works for short posts throughout the day. Plus, I love finding excuses to use Tinderbox. If the daily journal posts here disappear or become sparse, that's why.