One of the reasons for my Ghost/ActivityPub experiment was to try to better integrate both short and long posts. Since that didn't pan out, I started thinking about how I might manage it with Hugo.

It turned out to be relatively easy. I added a /content/notes folder. Then I made a tweaked Hugo list template that doesn't render a title and instead displays the entire post content rather than just a summary. And finally, I added a custom RSS feed just for notes.

To create new notes I use a small Emacs lisp function I wrote which creates the proper folders and Markdown file and populates the YAML front matter. This makes posting quick notes quick and easy.

Here's the Notes page. /notes.

Everything that goes in /notes is cross-posted to Mastodon using EchoFeed. All in all, I like how it works.

Flickr is still the best place to host and share images, I don't care what anyone else says.

After migrating content from Hugo to Ghost (and back again) this past week, I'm reminded of the mess I've made over the years. I'm leaning toward letting Flickr host my blog's images.

You might be thinking, "But Jack, that's a third-party dependency! What if Flickr goes away?" Fair question, and one that has prevented me from going with Flickr on my blogs. For more than 20 years. And you know what? If I'd have been using Flickr all this time, I'd have 20 years of working links instead of the broken mess I've made by changing platforms and hosts and whatnot all the time.

Mike Hall made a handy Raycast script for grabbing the image URL while visiting the photo page in a browser. It works a treat. I've tweaked it so that clipboard includes a link to the image so that folks can link through for the big version. (And who knows, maybe it'll inspire one or two of you to get back into Flickr, where we belong.)

The Lindy Effect is real and I may start taking advantage of it.

Note: The "featured image" in this post is coming from Flickr. If you can't see it, I was wrong :).

I tinker with moving to Ghost every few months because I get bored, and Ghost is a nice change of pace. It's the best experience out of the box of all the CMSes I've used. The idea of using Ghost for blogging and also having ActivityPub features baked in is pretty compelling. Once Magic Pages supported it, I dove right in, but it's too early.

Having a Fediverse handle of @jack@baty.net is terrific. It's what triggered this whole thing. I thought I'd snuggle into my little CMS control panel and still participate in the wider web. It's still a good idea, but there are a couple of things I need before it feels right.

First, I would like to migrate followers from Mastodon. I thought it would be fine to start fresh and mention the move on my Mastodon account. That wasn't working. Very few people followed me over and I felt dirty begging for followers.

Second, the "notes" need to be better integrated into the blog proper. This is on the road map, but as it is today it feels like I'm working in a feature-poor, buggy Mastodon client embedded in my blog's CMS. They're basically separate things.

Every time I've moved to Ghost, I've backed out in weeks or months. (Or, in this latest instance, days). What made me try again was the ActivityPub stuff. What made me stop, in addition to the above, was that I got twitchy knowing that my Fediverse identity and my blog platform would be completely and forever entangled. I'd need to get over that.

Jannis from Magic Pages was a huge help getting things running for me. I feel guilty backing out of it now, but there's a strong chance I'll be back once Ghost 6.0 hits.

So, I'm back using Hugo for now.

It's been great having the MP back from DAG. Sometimes I feel like it's too much camera ($$$-wise), but then I use it and realize it's the exactly right amount of camera.

I've stopped being able to think for myself. I need you all to get out of my head for a minute.

I often joke that my entire personality is based on the latest YouTube video or blog post I've "consumed". It's funny, because it's true.

It feels as though everything in my brain has been influenced by something I watched or scrolled past in the last 8 hours. I never watch a movie without first reading the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I visit Goodreads before choosing a book to read.

Recently, I needed to replace a broken kitchen tool, so I went to Amazon to see what was "recommended". After twenty minutes reading reviews, I finally felt secure enough in my research that I ordered the goddamned spatula.

Social media is funny and fascinating. I learn so much from it and it can be wildly entertaining. Except that too much of the time it's telling me what I'm allowed to enjoy and what I need to condemn because reasons. I'm bombarded by hot takes and uninformed opinions about everything and everyone. I'm susceptible to those opinions and it's not good for me. You're not the boss of me, internet!

Part of my move to Ghost and ActivityPub in Ghost was an attempt to narrow the scope of my social media inputs.

Anyway, I'm going to spend some time outside or in a book or both. Maybe I'll take some photos or doodle in my notebook. Anything is better for me right now than piping The Scroll into my brain.

I had a couple of drinks last night and opened my laptop and accidentally launched Obsidian and thought, "Oh, I remember. This is pretty cool! I should use this for everything." so this morning I'm staring at Obsidian wondering what now?

But why not just bail on the Obsidian app and drop back into my beloved Emacs?

I've been asking myself that question all morning. Ostensibly, I simply felt like a change of venue this morning, and Obsidian seemed as good as any. But there's something larger lurking under the surface.

Playing with my Emacs config is a fun hobby. I do it all the time. Like, all the time. Every moment using Emacs can feel like, "...but this would be better if I made this one change..." where "one change" is a keyboard binding or a different package or a new theme or some little behavioral tweak using some homemade lisp.

I've recently broken some stuff that used to work. And do I really like the way my Org Agenda looks? Emacs gives me all the rope I need, which is great. For many, it's the perfect amount of rope. On days like today, though, it feels like too much rope.

I'm not planning to switch from Emacs to Obsidian. That would be silly. But I am taking a short break. A change of pace can be fun, and I'm in the mood for something fun and different. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

After a couple of days, I have mixed feelings about going all-in with Ghost for my blog and fediverse identity.

This all started because I was frustrated with Hugo breaking things after nearly every update. When I get mad at Hugo, I start CMS shopping. Usually, this ends up with me moving to Eleventy or Blot or Kirby. Sometimes it means I move to Ghost. I seem to always end up back in Hugo, though.

Ghost is one of those things that looks like The Right Answer™. It's open-source, can be self-hosted, is pleasant to use, and the themes look good right out of the box. It comes with newsletter features that I don't need yet, but might one day. Ghost's editor strikes a decent balance between plain and fancy. It's not "plain text" but I don't hate it, most of the time.

At the same time I was growing frustrated with Hugo, the Ghost team was working on adding ActivityPub features directly within Ghost. What this could mean is that my blogging and my social media posting could be done in the same place. Even cooler, my social media identity could become @jack@baty.net, which I find ideal. Not being part of someone else's "instance" is a welcome change. Even better, I don't have to self-host my own Mastodon or Mastodon-like instance, which was a nightmare last time I tried it.

Yesterday, I migrated my content as best I could and flipped the switch. Baty.net is now running Ghost. I've done this several times before, but this time is different because of the corresponding migration from being @jbaty@social.lol to @jack@baty.net. If I change my mind, it won't just be a matter of making a little DNS change.

So, how do I feel about it after a couple of days? I'm nervous, to be honest. I'm twitchy about not having my "main" blog as a static website running on a simple server somewhere, nearly free. The fine folks at Magic Pages are hosting everything for me, at a cost of $15/month. This is a fair price, but there's a weight behind the "pay every month forever" feeling.

Blogging with Ghost is mostly a pleasure. The editor does some stupid things that may drive me nuts later, but I'm ignoring them for now while I enjoy simply dragging images into the post and having them resized, placed, and linked for me. That's really nice, coming from the manual process when using an SSG.

What I'm more troubled about is that living in Ghost as my social media hub isn't feeling the way I expected. It feels claustrophobic, somehow. It's lonely, even though it's very Mastodon-like. There's no way yet to migrate followers, so I've got to spam my Mastodon followers and beg them to follow my new account. This is a little gross for me. I'm watching where Ghost goes with all this and I am banking on them making it all feel more, smooth, I guess.

I know me, and that means I know that some day, probably soon, I'll feel like I should be using an SSG for my blog. Some thing or things will bug me about Ghost and it'll make me second guess everything. Happens every time. Maybe this time I'll ignore it and just keep going with Ghost. For now, I'll occupy my time fretting over themes. Otherwise, I'll keep you posted.

Update, the next day: I can't live in Ghost.

Whenever I don't feel there's anything interesting to photograph, I fall back on self portraits. I'm a willing subject, and who doesn't like looking at themselves? 😆

I set up one Westcott strobe and my backdrop in a spare room/studio. The bulb release wouldn't work, but thankfully the Rolleiflex has a self timer.

These are from a roll of HP5, processed in HC-100(b) and scanned on the Epson.

I'm not sure that they give me the "Wow!" like the Hasselblad does, but they're not bad.