I was tagged by Kev Quirk to complete a “Blog Questions Challenge”, so here we go. The questions are: Why did you start blogging in the first place? What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before? How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog? When do you feel most inspired to write? Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? What’s your favourite post on your blog? Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? ...

Back when I regularly maintained a “Spark file1”, I wrote the following on Aug. 26, 2012: Do something with a 3D Printer Me, in 2012 Today, I can finally cross that one off the list. It’s Benchy! The Bambu Lab A1 arrived yesterday, so I did what everyone does and printed the little “Benchy” tugboat. The A1 only came with 20g of filament, and of course I forgot to order more with the printer, so the starter filament is all I had to work with. It’s so cute, though!l. k ...

Ghostty is a new, platform-native terminal app from Mitchell Hashimoto. I’ve been alternating between Ghostty and Apple’s Terminal for about a week. I like Ghostty. It feels nice right out of the box. Configuration is done via a simple text file, but almost no configuration is necessary. Sensible defaults always make a good first impression, and Ghostty makes a really good first impression. Most of the early reviews I’ve read begin with raves about how fast Ghostty is. Is it that fast, though? It’s pretty fast, actually, but it’s not noticeably faster on my Mac than Apple’s Terminal. I keep comparing the two, and I find no meaningful difference in speed for anything I do with a terminal. It’s not slower than Terminal, certainly, but I suspect that all this talk about speed is partially because we like new things and because everyone else says it’s fast. We’re an impressionable lot 😀. ...

One of the things that frustrated me about Kirby last year was handling code/template changes vs content changes. I complained about it here. Ideally, since Kirby is a PHP CMS, I would do everything directly on the server. What I’ve done more often instead, is to run a full copy locally and rsync the final product (code, blueprints, content, images, etc.) to the production instance. Content is kept in plain text files, so both code and content changes need to be kept in sync. ...

It’s the same old story. I don’t know whether I want to use one or multiple notebooks. Or even if I want to use paper notebooks at all. Here are some random thoughts about my intended notebook use for 2025. Each year for the past 13 years I have ordered a Hobonichi Techo. Some years, I write in one nearly every day. Other years, I fill the first few pages, then it remains mostly blank for the rest of the year. This morning, I (optimistically, as always) set mine up for 2025. ...

I like the idea of building my own Emacs config, so I set Doom aside and (re)built my own configuration (mostly) from scratch.

I don’t feel like writing full-on blog posts, lately. What I’m interested in is journaling…in public. I don’t like this Hugo template for that purpose, but I have learned that changing Hugo templates isn’t worth the trouble. Now what? I want to be entirely self-sufficient, but I don’t want the job of maintaining anything. How’s that supposed to work? DVD is dead. Long live DVD. In a media landscape where the only sure thing is that there are no sure things, our best bet is still to put a disc in a drive ...

I was working on a little shell script for generating GoAccess reports on the web server but I was running into a minor problem that I couldn’t figure out. I asked ChatGPT for help and immediately had the solution, and a better overall script than I had written. The side effects of LLMs suck, but there’s no denying their utility right now. I feel dirty, but I have a nice script, I guess? ...

I’m deleting a bunch of old files. There’s a significant psychological difference between “zipping them up and putting them on some hard drive somewhere” and actually deleting them. Deleting, where feasible, is better.

It’s Christmas 🎄. Organizing things. da Vinci.

I was going through my Braintoss messages and this one from April, 2023 jumped out at me: there’s a low-level specific pain in having to accept that putting up with you requires a certain generosity of spirit in your loved ones Ouch 😬 (It’s from ― Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility) Also this one: The thing I miss most about working is canceled meetings. And this: ...

I thought maybe I’d change themes here just to change things up a bit, without completely bailing on Hugo, as I’m wont to do. Changing Hugo themes is almost as much of a pain as changing blogging engines. I gave up after an hour.

jAlbum is pretty good at creating nice static web photo galleries. I made an elaborate gallery last year. It was nice, but now I can’t find my copy (or settings, originals, etc.) I’m not mad because I have to start over. I’m mad because all I do is organize stuff and despite that, I still can’t find things. Probably because of that, honestly. Anyway, starting over. I need some new sources. Everything I read is related to AI or social media or some gadget I simply must buy. I’m bored with all of it. ...

See, the thing is, I need to somehow keep the the “Reduce & Simplify” dream alive. It’s OK if my system takes a little work to maintain, but it has to be one system. I can manage one. What I can’t do, is have a bunch of completely different setups that each take “a little work” to maintain. I’ve become overwhelmed as a result of my never-ending urge to tinker (combined with boredom). So here we are, on baty.net, doing daily notes again. One Blog, One Life or some such thing, right? ...

See how the way I’m doing this blog ruins the archives?… Part of my Archives page. Useful, huh?

I like the idea of building my own Emacs config, so I set Doom aside and (re)built my own configuration (mostly) from scratch.

Thanks Frank! It’s good to know I’m not alone. I went to sleep last night having decided that, “Tomorrow, I’m going to revamp my Emacs config and go back to my home-grown config.” This morning, I thought, “Life would be easier if I just used Obsidian instead.” So yeah, normal day so far 👋🏻. The market has chosen Markdown over Org mode files and I hate that.

Nothing specific today. Tiny thoughts about energy, Obsidian, Adobe Bridge, JFK Jr, and Starter Packs.

On daily.baty.net, each little whim of a post has its own page and is part of the RSS feed (and gets cross-posted to my mastodon.social bot account). Some days, that’s exactly what I want. When I write daily notes here at baty.net, using the single-entry-per-day format, I feel less pressure to make anything “count”. And some days, that’s exactly what I want. Living in my head is frustrating. Century-Scale Storage: But at the century scale, even our most widely adopted file formats are completely untested. Digital history is not long enough to definitively settle on best practices. ...

I know y’all are sick of me waffling about where to post these little daily notes, but I can’t help it. I’m honestly split right down the middle about it. I want everything to be in one place, but I can’t seem to make it all fit in one place. At least not the way I want things to fit. I could leave baty.net for the longer posts and daily.baty.net for these daily notes. Or, I could try combining everything here. Or maybe combine everything there and make this a landing page. I think each of these options has equal merit, so I haven’t been able to decide, and probably never will. I guess I’ll continue posting wherever I’m in the mood to post on any given day. ...