Here are some (probably) unnecessary things I've been doing.

For posting to baty.net, I first create the post as a Markdown file in Emacs for the Hugo version of the blog. Which, as of today, I'm not even using. Then, I copy the rendered post from a browser and paste it into a new post in Ghost's control panel for publishing.

I tell myself that this is so I have a local, plain-text copy of my posts. While this is true, it's also so that I have a Hugo-ready copy of everything, for when I inevitably switch back to Hugo from Ghost.

Another case of duplication involves photos. I edit photos using Capture One, where I use "Sessions" rather than their catalogs. For my main catalog, I've been relying on Apple Photos. Whenever I finish editing photos, I export a copy to Photos. As a result, I have many photos—some, not all—stored in two places. I don't see a way around this duplication, as I prefer not to use Lightroom, and Capture One's cataloging features are lacking.

For personal journaling, I've used Org-journal in Emacs for years. However, there's nothing like Day One for dealing with photos, geolocation, and resurfacing past entries with the "On This Day" feature. Plus, mobile.

So I've continued using Org-journal, but at the end of each month, I import the entries into Day One.

What else? Oh, right, speaking of journaling, I try to write in my paper notebooks every day. This is like meditation for me, and I adore having the handwritten artifacts. Except I'd like certain things to be easily searchable, so I rewrite(type) those entries into Org-journal. So yeah, now there's 3 versions of some stuff.

Anyway, I don't know if there's anything I want or need to do about all this, it's just something I noticed.

The plan was to only use one computer so that I could stop thinking about syncing and software updates and backups and so on. That one computer needed to be portable. I had a 2021 MacBook Pro, but I traded it in for a new M4 MacBook Air (w/24GB and 1TB HDD). The MBP is still perfectly fine, but I wanted newer and smaller/lighter. I set the Air up "from scratch", and, after a few painful days, it's starting to feel like a usable machine that has most of my "stuff" on it.

My "One Computer" setup involves several computers 😁.

1. MacBook Air (M4) - Primary
2. Mac Mini (M2) - Home server
3. Intel NUC - Roon server
4. Synology - (retired)

The Mac Mini (M2) has been moved into a home server role. The Mini has an OWC Ministack enclosure hanging off it loaded with a 2TB SSD and an 8TB HDD. These drives contain all my RAW files/videos/archives/etc. Both drives are a just little over half full, so I have some room there. I decided to renew my Backblaze subscription and have it back up the Mini and both the drives in the Ministack. It's $100/year to have all my important stuff backed up remotely. Even though I still clone the backup drive to another HDD and carry it offsite manually, Backblaze is a good value for the size of the backups and the piece of mind it brings.

There are 3 other drives attached to the Mini...

There is an 8TB HDD, to which I copy everything from the Ministack every night using Carbon Copy Cloner. These are my local backups.

To avoid having to plug an external drive into the Air for Time Machine backups, I attached a 4TB drive to the Mini for use as a Time Machine drive.

And finally, the Mini is home to my Plex server, so I plugged another 8TB HDD into it for Plex media. So far, this drive is not backed up anywhere. I could include it in the Backblaze backups, but it just seems like too much. Honestly, if I were to lose that drive, I wouldn't be out anything I couldn't replace. It's not like I throw my DVDs away after ripping them. 90% of everything is available for streaming anyway. Plex is more because I like how it feels to play movies from inside the house.

That leaves 2 other computers on my shelf.

There's a little Intel NUC running my Roon Core. It's been running flawlessly for years, so I'll leave it be until it dies. The actual music files are backed up elsewhere. If it dies, I'll install Roon on the Mini and that will be one less computer to think about.

I'll be retiring the Synology. It's going on 10 years old and at this point it's redundant. What I may do is pull the (2) drives out of it and put them in a cheap enclosure with RAID for my Plex media. I know, I know, RAID Is Not a Backup™, but it's better than a single drive on its own, and we've already established that I'm not too worried about it.

One flaw I see here is that there's no explicit offsite backup of the Air. Nearly everything on that computer is synced via iCloud, so I'm not too concerned about this yet. Technically, I'm not down to "One Computer", but the goal was to only use one computer, so I think I'm good.

I spend most of my computer time at the Mac Mini (M2) on my desk. I also have a 2021 MacBook Pro that I use occasionally, when I'm looking for a change of pace.

If I only used the stock Apple or cloud-based apps and didn't do anything fancy, having two computers would be fine, but I do neither of those things. I tweak the shit out of everything all the time. This means copying configuration changes between both machines. Sometimes this can be done via iCloud or symlinks or something, but it's still something I need to think about.

Other things I deal with when using multiple computers are: backups, Homebrew installs, OS and application updates, software licenses, etc. I have a whole routine that I run weekly on both computers.

Yesterday, there were suddenly dozens of Syncthing conflicts I needed to sort through. Syncthing normally runs like butter, so this was an unwelcome surprise.

I started thinking about all these hassles and how they'd mostly disappear if I only had one computer. So, that's what I've done.

I got everything up to date on the MBP and unplugged the Mini. I have two USB-C docs attached so that all I need to do to connect the MBP is to attach the MagSafe connector and one USB-C cable. I run docked and in clam-shell mode 75% of the time, so popping it in and out doesn't happen much anyway.

The current plan is to move the Mini to a "Network File Server" role, which probably just means Plex. I'll retire the 10-year-old Synology. Technically, I'll still be dealing with another computer, but that's fine. Using two computers for the same things is the problem.

Part of me wishes that my One Computer could be a nice, repairable Linux (or even *BSD) laptop, but that's just not feasible. I'm a Mac guy for now.

UPDATE: My One Computer is about to be an M4 MacBook Air...

I wanted a different view into my org-journal history, so I imported it into Day One

Plain text is great, but has limits. I've been journaling in plain text (.org) with org-journalsince 2018. It's just a bunch of .org files in a folder. It's great, and, you know, future-proof.

Before Org-Journal, I used Day One for journaling as far back as 2011. Day One is pretty, powerful, and available everywhere. There are "on this day" and "today" features that I find useful. It integrates smoothly with the Photos app, and it stamps entries with the current location and weather conditions. Add fast sync on all devices with end-to-end encryption, and it makes for a darn nice journaling setup.

I thought it would be nice if I could pull my org journal into Day One. This would give me a nice way to peruse my history that doesn't involve regular expressions 😁.

I asked Claude for a shell script that would use the Day One CLI tool to import my org-journal files. With one small tweak, it worked the first time. Here's a gist with the shell script.

The script pulled in 1,315 org-journal entries into a separate "Org Journal" Day One journal. Pretty cool.

Recently, I've been journaling with Journelly, which is a nice, simple journaling app for iOS. The killer feature for me is that Journelly stores my journal as an .org file. This means I can also create journel entries right from Emacs on my Mac. My next trick is going to be importing Journelly entries into Day One the same way I did with org-journal.

Baty.net is going to move back to Ghost, I think. Y'all will I'm sure get a chuckle out of it and I'm happy for you. :)

I've noticed that when running both Ghost and Hugo blogs, when I want to post something, my default is to reach for Ghost. It's just easier overall. Plus, I can have that sweet, sweet @jack@baty.net Fediverse handle that I loved but didn't want tied to my blogging platform.

And to think, just two days ago I added a bunch of new features to the Hugo theme.

This is fine.

Joan Westenberg, in The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites:

...hard mode is where status lives.

This is exactly what I've been thinking about lately. It hurts to hear it out loud.

Read the article, but here are a few quotes that reminded me how far down the complexity rabbit holes I've traveled.

And under it all is the same impulse: make it harder than it needs to be, so I can feel smarter than I am.

Simple tools become suspicious. Using Apple Notes or Google Docs is like admitting you didn’t bother to invent your own language. But this is a strange inversion. In most fields, simplicity is the result of expertise. In tech, it’s taken as a sign you’re not even trying.

The fear is not that a simple tool won’t work. The fear is that it will - and that its success will render your complexity performative.

So instead of the boring thing that works, people gravitate toward the interesting thing that doesn't.

I mean...ouch!

Part of the fun of using Emacs is that I spent the time learning how to use Emacs. I mean, like, a lot of time. It makes me feel like I have a cabinet lined with nerd trophies.

If nobody was watching, would I behave differently? Maybe. I mean, Emacs might be the most amazing bit of software I've ever used, but wow do I fiddle with it. Fiddling is fun, but some days I wonder what it gets me, you know?

The timing here is interesting, because while reinstalling only the necessary apps over the weekend, I used Apple Notes to take notes. The interesting part is that I continued to use it, even after Emacs was installed and ready.

Apple Notes is surprisinglyl capable, but I don't enjoy using it. So what did I do? Yesterday, I re-installed Bear. I've always liked using Bear. It's beautiful and simple and gets right to the point.

Bear is totally an Easy Mode app. Other than tags, there's not much to play with. Monday, I wrote this in my journal:

Find things with fewer knobs to twiddle

Bear is about as close to knobless as it gets. It's the anti-Obsidian. It's the opposite of Emacs. Maybe that's why it called to me. No knobs is good knobs, or something.

I had no plans to go back to an old favorite for notes. In fact, the plan was to not take notes at all. I nice idea, but I still want to keep records and log things.

Anyway, I'm in a mood. I think I'll try living in Easy Mode for a minute, even if it means I'm stripped of my titles.