A roll of HP5 through the Stylus Epic. I love that little camera, but taping up the seam to avoid light leaks is no longer working. It'll be sad if I have to retire the camera.

The cover photo here is the kind of photo I love. It's just slightly off, somehow. It causes the viewer to stop and think, "Wait, what's going on here?" for just a moment. That's what it does for me, anyway.

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Spoiler and Content Warning: Claude did it for me

I normally use a custom function in Emacs to create new posts here, but I'm in the mood for BBEdit today, so I wanted something more generic. I asked Claude to rewrite the function as a shell script (bash). It worked perfectly, first try. Scoff at this LLM stuff all you want, there's no denying that it can be incredibly useful. In this case, it was 10 minutes from idea to working code. Maybe I'll find bugs later, but Claude will fix them for me ;).

A gist of the script is here

Here are Claude's comments:

Here's the bash script equivalent of your Emacs Lisp function! This script recreates all the key functionality:

Key features:

1. Title input: Can be provided as argument or prompted interactively
2. Slug conversion: Converts title to dashed-words format (lowercase, special chars become dashes)
3. Bundle vs Single file: Prompts whether to create a bundle (directory with index.md) or single .md file
4. Directory structure: Creates posts in ./content/posts/YYYY/MM/
5. File naming: Uses YYYY-MM-DD-slug format
6. Force overwrite: Same safety features as the journal script
7. Command line options: Flags to skip prompts and force behavior

Usage examples:

# Interactive mode (prompts for title and bundle choice)
./hugo-post.sh

# Provide title, prompt for bundle choice
./hugo-post.sh "My Amazing Post"

# Force bundle creation
./hugo-post.sh -b "My Amazing Post"

# Force single file creation
./hugo-post.sh -s "My Amazing Post"

# Overwrite existing file
./hugo-post.sh -f "My Amazing Post"

# Combine flags
./hugo-post.sh -f -b "My Amazing Post"

Command line options:

• -f, --force: Overwrite existing files
• -b, --bundle: Create as bundle (directory + index.md)
• -s, --single: Create as single .md file
• -h, --help: Show usage help

The script handles the same logic as your Emacs function: it asks whether to make a bundle, creates the appropriate file structure, and generates the same frontmatter format.

My first blog post was written on August 10, 2000, making today the official 25-year anniversary of my blog^[1].

Most of the early posts were simple links to other sites, with brief comments. It was a link blog. Sadly, many (most?) of those links are dead. I've left the posts up, because to me it's still a form of history.

I don't get all philosophical about blogs or blogging. My blog has become a simple journal. It doesn't mean anything. I write about what I'm thinking or what I feel like sharing. That's it. I never worry about posting frequently enough or writing about the right things. There is no lane to stay in. I write whatever, whenever. Some days I love doing it. Other days I wonder why I bother.

For a brief moment, I thought about shuttering this site as an anniversary present to myself. I may not fret about the content here, but I spend a lot of time thinking about the platform and presentation. I probably consider switching platforms or themes or colors or something every day. It's a fun part of the hobby, but it can also be crazy-making.

So what's next? More of the same, I suppose. The platform may change. The style of writing may change. The topics may change. The domain may change. All I know is that I don't know how to stop, so I'll keep doing whatever it is I'm doing here for as long as I feel like doing it.

Switching between the MacBook Air keyboard and the HHKB keyboard can be off-putting. I have loved using the HHKB for years, but I've lost patience for the function layer and missing arrow keys. My pinky hurts too often.

I've been using an Apple Magic Keyboard and Logitech MX Master 3, and, while I love the mouse, the keyboard was boring, but fine, except the spacebar would intermittently fail to register. That's annoying.

On a bit of a whim I made the decision to go all in with Apple's keyboard, so I picked up a new Magic Keyboard with Touch ID, and a Logitech "MX Master 3S for Mac" to go with it. My old mouse works, but is so worn and gross that I thought it was time for a new one. You know, while I was shopping anyway.

I love having Touch ID on the keyboard, especially since I've not been wearing my Apple Watch as often.

I thought about going with some new fancy-keyboard route, but this is practical, simple, and done. It's fine, and now I can stop thinking about my keyboard so much.

Here's what Claude says about my recent posts:

I'll help you summarize your recent blog posts. Let me search for posts in the Blog/posts container that have been modified in the last 30 days.I see the Blog/posts container is organized by year, but these are just the year containers themselves. Let me look specifically at the 2025 posts since that's where your most recent content would be, and get the actual blog post content

Based on your blog posts from the last 30 days, here's a summary of what you've been writing about:

Key Themes in Your Recent Writing

Software and Tools Decision Fatigue You're clearly experiencing significant tension between different tools and platforms. This is your most prominent theme, appearing in posts about:

• Moving between Emacs, Tinderbox, and other tools for note-taking and journaling
• Email client struggles (particularly with Notmuch and various Mac email apps)
• Blogging platform decisions between Hugo/Kirby/Tinderbox/Ghost across multiple sites (baty.net, daily.baty.net, baty.photo)
• The exhaustion of having "3 or 4 ways of doing everything" and constantly second-guessing decisions

Tinderbox Appreciation Despite the tool-switching struggles, you consistently return to praising Tinderbox as:

• Your "longest-running favorite app"
• A "pointy-clicky graphical counterpart to Emacs"
• Making you "twitchy when you don't use it for too long"
• The perfect tool for this daily blog format

Blogging Philosophy and Structure You've written thoughtfully about:

• Preferring the simplicity of this Tinderbox blog's "lack of necessary decisions"
• Wanting to consolidate to "One Blog" but currently maintaining 4 active sites
• The value of curation in an era of fragmented social media
• Preference for static sites over dynamic ones to reduce server maintenance anxiety

Social Media and Digital Wellness Several posts touch on:

• Taking sabbaticals from social media due to amplification of "terrible shit"
• The health impacts of sitting at computers all day
• Finding the right amount of "friction" in digital tools
• Questioning LLM hand-wringing and asking for more nuanced discussion

Creative and Technical Observations Shorter posts about:

• Music criticism (Blood Incantation's metal)
• Photography gear obsession vs. artistic vision
• Server migrations and technical deployments
• The importance of making notes "immediately useful" rather than just having them in plain text

The overall picture is of someone deeply thoughtful about their digital tools and workflows, but perhaps caught in analysis paralysis about the "right" way to do things. Your writing suggests both technical sophistication and a desire for simplicity that sometimes conflict with each other.

Yeah that's no hallucination.

I take a lot of screenshots using the built-in screen capture tool on macOS. By default, these are saved as PNG files, which are unnecessarily ginormous for my purposes, so I always convert them to .jpg files.

Today I learned that the default format can be changed:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
killall SystemUIServer

Better.