Journal

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, there's this nagging feeling about it running "out there" and needing PHP, etc. Pure Blog is super simple to host, but not as simple or portable as a static site. A CMS with a nice, simple UI is pretty great, but I've spent years honing my combination of Hugo and Emacs. Blogging is a "solved" problem, right? :) Anyway, I'm going to try this again for a minute. I've migrated the "regular" posts from there to here. I don't think I'll bother with the journal entries.t

The reef tank is a struggle. I'm always fighting some unwanted critter or algae or chemicals or something. I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. I do like watching the coral wave around in the current. The urchin is super cool, too.

We're celebrating a family birthday today, which means ice cream!

Have you ever thought about just not doing this being online thing any more? I do, sometimes. It passes quickly, but I do wonder what it would feel like to spend more time in the world. You know, the real one. And don't say, "BUt OnLInE Is tHE ReAl WOrlD noW!" because no it isn't. And it becomes less so every day.

If I were to start a new business, it would be entirely focused on offline activities. In-person is the thing I want, and I'll bet other people do, too.

Kev Quirk has created a new (php-based) blogging tool called Pure Blog. Of course I had to spin up one of my own: pure.baty.net. I'm just tinkering (for now).

I posted to baty.photo, the Ghost blog I'd intended to use for focusing on my hobby. It's been months. Every time I think I want to have a dedicated blog for photography, I start a new one, then abandon it. Maybe I just wanted to tinker. Maybe I wanted a CMS to do things for me for a change. I don't know.

Most things I post online are me thinking out loud and are rightfully taken both with salt and with the knowledge that I'm usually just exploring how I feel about things or what I've noticed. Sometimes, I get pushback from people. That's fine. It doesn't make me wrong, though. Unless it does, and in that case I'll change.

I'm reminded, though, why I try to post only (or mostly) positive things online. Even the positive things can be taken in ways I never intended, and sometimes are. But I'm certain that if I were to use this space to vent about how shitty the world is right now (and it is very shitty), I'd be scolded for doing it wrong. I don't have the headspace for that. I'm not here to argue. Everyone else has that covered.

I've donated, I don't even know how much, but real money, to causes that I believe are doing good in the world. I don't talk about it, and I don't list them. It's my business. And again, I don't need to be told why I've chosen badly.

I get to choose what works for me here and what I write about. This is my space. I don't need approval. Neither do you. Isn't that awesome?!

I think I'll go shovel some snow.

Snow shoveled. Now what? Whine more about my hurt feelings when people criticize or poke fun at me? Nah, I'm playing with self-hosted music servers and streaming clients on Linux. Much more fun!

I should be taking more photos. One roll of film for the entire month of January is embarrassing. I have a new Leica Q2 to play with, and I've taken maybe 20 images with it so far. What's up with that?

I'm bored with all the performative quitting going on. What do you want, a medal?

Later: I don't think Dave cared for my comment about being bored. Fair enough. Sorry, Dave, you're excluded of course :). I wasn't "sub-posting" you or anyone else in particular. And I'm not bored with people quitting things that don't line up with their ethics or anything else. That's excellent. I'm bored with people talking about it in that particularly smug tone that social media brings out in people. Frankly, I'm so angry about just about everything happening righ now I can hardly think. I'll exercise my privilege by being bored by the tiresome discourse around so much of it.

Come to think of it, I'm bored by just about everything. I seem to have only two reactions to everything: anger or boredom.

Took the M3 loaded with a roll of HP5 over to my grandson's this morning. Shot the roll at ISO1600. Nothing very good to show for it, but at least I did something.

I woke up thinking about why using Linux makes me feel good. It isn’t really an ethics thing or a Tim Cook’s Bad Behavior thing or even a Liquid Glass Sucks thing. It’s just a feeling I get with Linux that I no longer feel on macOS. It feels quieter. I feel like it’s just me and the computer. Like it’s mine, you know? It's a Linux kind of day, today.

Let's face it, I will never stop futzing with blogs. Yesterday I was all over the daily.baty.net blog, but was writing both in the Tinderbox and Kirby versions. Almost switched it back to Tinderbox, but chickened out. This morning, I started this post in Kirby, then decided I'd just put it here, because my dream is to have One True Blog™ and if that dream ever comes true baty.net will be that blog.

There are a few loose ends on the website I'm building for a friend's new business. I can't seem to make myself work on it. I enjoy the first 90% of every project, but struggle to get through the second 90%.

Still working through what goes in the daily journal posts and what goes in separate /notes. Diary-like stuff goes here. Things I share or statements I make go in notes. Maybe?

Most of the time when I try new things, It's to see how those things feel. Software, hardware, cameras, workflow, all of it. I love experiencing new ways of doing things. Sometimes I end up "deciding" on a particular thing, and that's that. Except it never is, is it?

What I'd like is to show the current journal post, pinned on the home page. It should display the full content of the post. Then, below that, only show recent non-journal posts. I'm sure Hugo will resist and I'll end up hating the process and the results. I'd ask Claude for help, but that's a whole 'nuther can of worms and I'm not in the mood.

I'd like to spend my days reading, thinking, and making art but I can't tear myself away from the computer for more than 30 minutes, so I do none of those things. The computer used to be a creative environment for me. It's not anymore.

Do you ever get tired of people writing better than you, drawing better than you, thinking better than you, being better than you? I do.

What's with the irrational fear of databases?

It was -15°F while walking Alice this morning. I tried the doggy boots, but she wasn't having it, so we barefooted it. She must be tough, because I didn't see any signs of her feet bother her.

I don't know why I worry about what kinds of posts belong where or whether they belong at all. No one else cares, why should I? So yeah, these daily posts are going to stay here for the moment, until I decide I was wrong.

Oh, and fuck this entire administration.

I swear every one of my gel and ballpoint pens has started skipping at once.

The plan was to only generate /notes with ox-hugo, but I just spent like an hour getting the snippet and properties configured so I can generate these journal posts also. WHY!?

I'm sure you are tired of hearing about my non-stop waffling around software, operating systems, workflows, etc., and in that case, I apologize in advance.

After putting the Macs in the closet and committing to Linux, I went 180° and dug the Macs out and shelved the Linux machines. Now, I've been back on Linux exclusively again for a few days. I'm finding I prefer being in KDE than Tahoe. A week ago I wrote How I feel when using Linux and that became even more true the longer I was back on macOS. I need to decide if I can live without the apps that I thought I couldn't live without. Still working on that.

I hit a computing wall yesterday. Suddenly, I stopped caring about any of it. I'd just as soon live in the woods than think about how to manage my dotfiles (again). Or sync, or window managers. In fact, I don't want to think about the computer at all. I just want to use it. For some reason all I do is think about it. I'm back on macOS again on my desktop and thinking about just ditching Linux for now. It's so cool, though! Maybe when I start wanting to think about the computer again. This mood probably won't last, but for now, I'm going to go out and take some pictures.

I'm sitting here at my Fedora desktop thinking about how I spent hours yesterday learning about and setting up Chezmoi for managing my dotfiles. Just a week ago I posted something on Mastodon to the effect of, "I think I lost the thread the minute I started worrying about managing my dotfiles." I started wondering if maybe maybe the all-in-with-Linux thing wasn't such a great idea. It's fun, but it has consumed so much of my time that I'm wondering if it's worth it. I kind of want to stop thinking about it. I'm charging the MacBook Air as I type this. You don't want to be in my head. It's chaos in there.

And now I'm typing on the Mac Mini at my desk. I need a break from trying to make everything I want to do on a computer do it the way I want it to on Linux. I think where I'll end up is macOS on desktop and Linux on the Framework. The laptop will be more of a satellite device and not one that I need to do everything on. Just writing and browsing, mostly.

I'm considering bringing back the /notes section of the blog. For a minute I planned to modify the template so that /notes didn't display or require titles. Thing is, I don't want to go down the customize-my-blog-all-day path right now. I'm busy enough with the move to Linux. Maybe later.

Are you sick of me talking about Linux, yet? I am. But this is such a big change in my entire computing world that it's hard not talking about it. I'm running Fedora/KDE on my desktop and have had few issues. Yesterday, I scanned another roll of film using Vuescan and editing them in Darktable. I didn't hate it, which is an improvement. The only way to judge something is to use it for a while. Familiarity breeds contentment. Or something :).

By the way, I posted something related to this on the linux blog: How I feel when using Linux

It's so easy to be kind to people. Why do so many people find it difficult?

I'm kind of tired of everything related to the internet right now.

I'm on macOS this morning. Every day it's different. Sometimes I change multiple times in a day. It's fun, but crazy-making and unsustainable. I should pick one, but I can't.

☀️ Clear +27°F

Journal (Daily) posts don't show up on the home page, currently. I can't decide if that's a good or bad thing. On one hand, I don't need to worry about journal posts cluttering up the "important" stuff. Except then they disappear into the void, so I may decide to include them after all.

The other bit of trouble I ran into was the default RSS feed in the Blowfish theme. Hugo's default rss template is lacking. It only sends the summary and doesn't include any featured images. You'd think all theme developers by now would have dealt with that. I've done it myself a half-dozen times, but nope. I had to build one. It now includes the full content of each post, and the featured image, if available. The next thing is to include the Reply By Email button

I spent all morning toying with a few different static blogging options that could replace Hugo.

Kev had generously sent me a head start on a Jekyll theme that mimics my WordPress theme at baty.blog. I installed Jekyll and (to my surprise) I didn't hit any Ruby walls. While it was a great head start, I realized how much work remained, and I'm still not sure I want to use Jekyll.

The worst thing about Hugo is the templating language. It's so weird to me. Weird enough that it prevents me from tweaking things the way I like. For kicks, I installed Zola, which I haven't played with in years. It's like a sensible version of Hugo (single binary, etc.). I failed to port the theme Kev gave me to Zola, so I installed a pre-existing theme, Tabi. I kind of like it, but it's not really what I'm looking for, and I don't think I want to learn enough about Zola to make it happen.

So it's 2:00 in the afternoon and I've got nothing but dead ends to show for my day. Still in Hugo for now. It's a beautiful day, so I think I'll go for a nice walk.

You know what site of mine works just the way I like it? daily.baty.net. I tend to forget that. The problem is usually that it's (currently) built using Kirby CMS and I kind of don't want to stay sharp with Kirby. Maybe I'll just use it as is until something breaks. If nothing ever breaks, I'm golden.

It’s weird how I spend a few days relaxing in WordPress, then I wake up one day and think, “Maybe I’ll generate my whole website with Org-mode and Emacs!” I probably won’t do that, but I sometimes consider it.

I don’t want photography be just another way to generate files to play with on the computer.

The temperature dipped to freezing for the first time this year. This usually means it's truly the end of summer. Blech.

My therapist asked me why I thought it was a problem to have so many blogs/cameras/notebooks/etc. and I couldn’t give her a good answer. It often feels like a problem, but is it? Maybe not. Maybe I’m just having fun and that’s fine.

I’m using WordPress lately because it’s easy and I don’t have to think about anything but the typing. Images are easy to add and it can do fancy things when it needs to. Sure, it’s a bit bloated and janky, but if what I do most of the time is hit “New post” and write, who cares?

I swear to god if I see one more person accuse someone else of being “complicit” with one evil group or another because they happen to use a product that is somehow remotely tangental to that group I’m going to become complicit. Fuck off.