Journals

Trying some things with Eleventy

New Orleans without a camera. Hugo and Kirby options.

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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 writing1. 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. ...

Editing in something other than Emacs. Social media and syndication.

Noodling on short posts

Melting Face (1982) 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. ...

Websites I want. Newsletter observation. Things I don’t want to think about.

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. ...

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: ...

News article nested negatives. Freddie deBoer on the Copernican Principle

Don’t worry about inconsistent posts and what about daily.baty.net?

I can’t figure out how to coax Hugo into generating full URLs to images when I’m using Page Bundles. The whole point of bundles is that I can use links to images like [](yet-another-self-portrait.jpg) and it just works. But it doesn’t work in RSS feeds. Not all RSS readers automatically figure out the full URLs. The figure short codes should at least work, but don’t. Frustrating.

With all of the free time and curiosity I have, you’d think I’d be good at something by now. I’m starting to figure out that if I don’t know where to put something, I probably shouldn’t be keeping it to begin with.