Journal

I continue to overthink everything related to my blog(s). I want specific things for specific posts, depending on my mood that day. It's exhausting. The dream of course is to have One Blog. I have 4 active sites right now. That's more than one, for those who are counting.

The new baty.photo blog that I've set up just for posts about photography feels like the right move. That one stays. I like using Ghost for that.

It's the daily.baty.net thing that has me conflicted. I like how both the Tinderbox and (currently) Kirby versions work. They're good for showing a rolling set of random stuff, separated by day. This blog, running Hugo, is less suited for it. It's a combination of long posts, short posts, and these daily notes. Each of which must be clicked through to read. The daily notes don't feel like they belong here, which is why I keep trying to move them elsewhere. Except I don't much feel like maintaining both places. Both the Kirby and Tinderbox versions are custom and fairly complex to use and maintain. Do I really need more of that?

Thing is, none of this matters. Most folks visit via RSS anyway. And those who do actually come here, well, they don't really care how it works. They just want to read the latest stuff (for some reason).

OK, it just happened again. I'm reading this and realizing it doesn't belong in a daily note. It should be a separate post. Here in Hugo that means moving a file on disk and renaming it and modifying the front matter. Ugh, right? If this were in Kirby I'd just toggle "Show title" and it would do the right thing. Now what? Kirby isn't static. It's not difficult to host, but it's not simple, either.

I just also posted this over on daily.baty.net, to see how it felt. See how I am? Like I said, it's exhausting.

(Later): Guess what, tag searches stopped working on the Kirby site. I don't feel like debugging it, so the mood shifts back to Hugo. 🤓

I'm not even supposed to be here today.

I'm a little tired of all of this. Blogging, I mean. I've been writing about the same things on repeat for 25 years. Aren't we all sick of hearing about blogging tools and software and tech and bla bla bla? I am. Maybe I'll open a barber shop, like my great grandfather did.

I don't feel much like writing full-on blog posts, so I keep spouting off little bits and bobs over on Mastodon instead. It's not ideal. I mean, I just added the /notes feature here, so why not use that? I honestly don't know. There's something about it I don't like.

I made the font here a bit smaller and a bit less black. It looked chunky and amateurish to me, somehow. Anyway, it's different now, which might be all I wanted.

Why bother blogging when even I don't feel like reading my posts?

I guess I don't understand why blurring my "content" behind semi-transparent UI controls is any better than hiding it behind easily-distinguished UI controls. The content itself is unusable either way, so why not make the controls easier to see/use?

What do we think about about the whole /notes implementation here? I don't think I like it. I don't feel like creating a whole thing every time I want to share whatever useless thought pops into my head. OTOH, I don't much like putting everything into these daily posts, either. Not on this blog, in this format, anyway. On the other hand, why not just do it here? Problem is already solved, right?

Can you tell there's something going on with me? I don't feel like thinking about all the details and options with everything I do. Is it possible to underthink thinks? Because that's what I'd like to do for a while.

"I've decided to use Emacs for my notes" doesn't really narrow my options all that much, since Emacs is a self-contained infinity of choices all by itself.

I'm reluctantly realizing that most of my cassettes sound like shit. I'm not talking about the inherent limitations of the format. I mean that my specific copies are terrible.

I read about a Leica gathering, where someone wrote, "...you can learn a lot about someone’s journey just by the glass they’re rocking." That's three words (journey, glass, and rocking) in one sentence that I'll never use that way in any sentence. Also, no you can't.

Can you imagine much easier things would be if I...

• Used (only one) digital camera
• Put my photos in one big Lightroom Classic catalog
• Or maybe just used my iPhone with Apple Photos

I saw a post where someone complained that the timeline for some community was "...a sanitized version of reality." My question is, must every "community" always, no matter what, include content from every possible awful corner of the universe? If I wanted "reality", I'd go read about it, or visit just about every other timeline on the internet. I know shit is terrible, that's why I'm hanging out in this nice space for a spell...as a respite. Is it not OK to want to be mildly entertained and amused for a little while? I mean, we don't bitch about, say, The Disney Channel existing, do we? I don't believe people have the right to demand that every space conform to every situation.

I turn 61 years old, today. That seems like a lot.

Too hot for chores, today, so I'm in my air-conditioned office, futzing with AI tools, server options, and my Emacs capture templates.

For some reason, I can't get a markdown-mode-hook to fire and call olivetti-mode when I open a Markdown file in an Emacs buffer. I'm using the exact method that works with org-mode files. It's a small annoyance, but this is why I sometimes want to quit.

Posted: Roll 037

Ozzy died today. For a long time, I expected this to happen any minute. He didn't exactly live a healthy lifestyle. After a certain point, though, it seemed like he might live forever. His "Blizzard of Ozz" tour in 1981 was one of the of the first concerts I saw. I remember leaning my head into a speaker cone, because LOUDER!

With any luck, I'll spend time today far away from the computer and very close to the lake.

Don't you wish I had only one blog? I do.

I'm editing this in (Neo)Vim because I feel like living in normal Vim bindings for a minute, without the grief I cause myself trying to use evil-mode in Emacs.

Firing up a new daily note every morning used to be a regular thing for me. Lately, it just gives me blank page anxiety. It's possible that an "I don't feel much like blogging" phase is starting. I know this because I don't feel much like blogging.

I have a doctor's appointment today. Just a scheduled follow-up, but there's a lot of pre-appointment guilt happening. My blood pressure is a little higher than we'd like, so in our last meeting I suggested that instead of upping my meds, that I eat healthier and exercise more. I've done neither of those, so my BP will still be too high and he'll have to tsk-tsk me and prescribe something stronger. I hate having to take medications, but it's my own damn fault.

Update: BP was 130/80, which is an improvement, so no pressing concerns about changing my meds. I told him to pick something for me to focus on and he just said, "Walk a bit every day. 30-40 minutes is fine." I can do that.

Film Roll: 2025 Roll 035 (Rolleiflex 2.8D), a Series by Jack Baty. (See post about using Glass for this)

Blogging with Ghost and using Ghost's ActivityPub features is a fine setup, but I can't seem to get comfortable with it. There's this feeling that it's not "mine" that I can't shake. Also, the ActivityPub stuff is functional, but not nearly finished. Blogging with a static site generator (e.g. Hugo) can be frustrating, but it's what feels right. And "real" Mastodon is still a much more consistent and complete experience. So, I'm back in Hugo for baty.net and my @jbaty@social.lol identity for socials. You all knew it would happen, though, right? I gave it a month this time, at least.

Just seeing if this thing still works.

Daily notes. What are they for? I guess it's like having a legal pad open on my desk, where I can write whatever I'm thinking about at any time. The problem for you, dear reader, is that you're subjected to all of it. I feel a little guilty about that. Not guilty enough to stop doing it, of course.

I am a different person every day. Too different.

If there are "Notes" listed under this post, it means the thing I've been working on here is...working, I guess.

(Update, they're missing from the RSS feed. I'll work on that later.)

Trusting your own judgement on 'AI' is a huge risk:

Something seemingly working is not evidence of it working.

(Long, but worth reading).

I dunno, seems to me that if it's working, it's working, but I suppose that's his point. One can argue that AI is bad for the environment, or bad for artists, or stealing, and you'd have a point. But when you argue that "Well, it doesn't actually work. It can't think!" then that's where we part company. Even though I agree with a lot of the article, it's the kind of thing someone writes when they really really don't wan't something to be true. I swear I'm going to stop commenting on all this nonsense and go back to the super-cool homeopathic software I co-wrote (aka "vibe-coded") today. You know, the one that's working. I don't need to prove anything to you.

Between AI and Liquid Glass, it's been an exhausting, take-filled nightmare around these parts lately.

Maybe I'd blog better if I was a more gooder writer.

While visiting my grandson this morning, I finished a roll of expired Portra 400 in the Rolleiflex. When I got home, I didn't feel like developing the roll. C-41 processing is a whole thing. It's not hard, but I don't love it. Still, I'm usually excited to at least see what's on the roll. Today, I wasn't. Not a great sign.

There are things I want to talk about, but I don't feel like writing any of it.

Mike Hall: There's an addressable market of 1.

What finally made it "work," if our definition of "work" is "make code that does what I want with about as many obvious bugs or issues as if I'd devoted months to this project starting from scratch..."

You see, that's what LLMs are good for. They may not be smart enough to write production-level, professional code, but goddamn if they're not great for helping normal people whip up things that would have been next to impossible for them just a year ago. I do it all the time.

LLMs today are like desktop publishing software in the late 1980s. Using Claude feels like when I first got hold of an Apple LaserWriter and PageMaker. Suddenly, I could make things, all by myself. Didn't matter whether I was "qualified" or not.

I've been going through my Lightroom library and noticed a couple things. First, I used to just walk around with a camera and take pictures of things. Some of them are pretty good. Second, my Lightroom catalog has everything and I'm wondering if abandoning it was a good idea.

My mates at lunch today are all in with AI. One works at a startup, the other for a large manufacturer. Both manage development and product teams. Both claim to be "10 times more productive since using AI." One said, "I get things done now that I'd never even attempted before AI."

A counterpoint to all the "AI is useless and stupid!" discourse out there, I guess.