We are born with hearts that want to leave a mark on the world. This ability is not lost, it is taken from us.

Mike Monteiro, How to draw an orange

Currently, my blog has two types of posts, Journal and Post. Journal entries are comprised of things I collect or think about during each day. I post one per day. Posts are your typical blog post. Posts are (usually) a bit longer and are about a single topic.

I'd like to eliminate the Journal posts, but have not found a way to do that. I could post every random thing that occurs to me as a full Post, but that feels too noisy and weird. I could move the Journal posts to the wiki. I still do that, sometimes. Or, I could stop writing them. Only the first two options are feasible, so which is it? I don't know.

For now, I'd like to move more of the Journal notes into their own Posts, and leave the journal for truly unstructured bits and bobs. It would be noise, mostly.

Still noodlin' on it.

I still don't know what belongs here. It's mostly just a place to write things I'm thinking about. Things that have even the remotest chance of being useful or entertaining to someone else. There are at least three places I write things: Here, the wiki, and my Emacs daybook. And this doesn't include the paper options. I don't enjoy having to decide where to put things, but I have been unsuccessful in limiting myself to only one option.

My personality is a rolling amalgam of the recent movies, blog posts, and YouTube videos I've taken in.

I have more open loops than a macrame convention.

I started free writing again a couple weeks ago, but this time I'm doing it digitally, using the AlphaSmart Neo 2.

I dove hard into "Morning Pages" after reading Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, but it didn't last long. I mean, c'mon, there's no way I can consistently write 3 lined pages, longhand, every morning.

The intended benefits of doing hard-core morning pages are lost on me, but I can get behind the practice of doing a little free writing each day. For me, it's more like forced journaling.

My version of morning pages is more like "Morning Pages Lite". I set a timer for ten minutes, press the On button, and start typing. Ten minutes is plenty long enough for me to uplug the tubes in my head. I'm not an artist, so that's all I need.

I haven't written morning pages longhand in quite a while. As much as I love journaling with fountain pens and paper, writing quickly for long periods as an exercise turns into a chore, and I don't enjoy it.

For some reason, I didn't post about it when I bought my first Neo, so I don't remember when I got it. Around 2012, I think. I remember paying $25.

For digital journaling, using the Neo is fun and quirky and about as far as one can get from writing on a computer. It shows only four lines of text at a time. The keyboard isn't fancy, but it's fine. If I want to transfer my writing to a computer, I plug in a USB cable, open my text editor, and press "Send", like this.

The last set of batteries I put in the Neo lasted nearly 3 years. That's 3 years!

Free writing for a few minutes in the morning is something I find useful. Changing the way I do it once it a while keeps it interesting.

I'd love to have this for my M3. The Leica Summilux-M 50 f/1.4 is the fifth lens in the Classic Line

I dreamt last night that my blog had a really fun, whacky design and everyone talked about it. Then, I woke up and remembered that my blog has a plain, boring, perfectly fine design and I'm keeping it.

I'm considering adding a /notes section of the blog, with tweettoot-sized posts. No titles. Probably no RSS feed. And they'd be syndicated via EchoFeed to Mastodon. It would take the place of these Journal posts. Maybe? Not sure it's something I want, but it's being considered.

It's weird how I can completely agree with someone's politics, yet frequently disagree with them about politics.

I "settled" on using notmuch for my email, but now I'm reconsidering that decision.

Notmuch is great, but using it forces me to have two email stores. One is IMAP (via Fastmail). The other is my local notmuch database. Mbsync keeps things kind of synced, but it's really only a few flags. Notmuch doesn't delete or move email on the server. This means I'm managing, for example, my Inbox, in two places. It's not hard, but is it necessary?

I need to read and manage email on my phone, and on both computers. After spending days wrangling issues with syncing between Macs, and knowing that there is a lot that I'm missing when viewing email on my phone, I'm beginning to feel that maybe doing my email this way isn't ideal.

Email in Emacs is important to me, and if notmuch is causing issues, there's always Mu4e. I used Mu4e for a long time before switching to notmuch. Mu4e is easier and feels "nicer" (subjective, I know). It also is a direct mapping of what's on the IMAP server. This means that my email is my email is my email, if you know what I mean. There's one version of it. I still have local copies of everything in ~/Mail, too.

So, my dream of putting my life in notmuch is on hold. I need things to be simpler right now, and using Mu4e makes things simpler for me.

I'm typing this in iA Writer because I read a blog post. See how susceptible I am to the opinions of others?

10 minutes later: Back in Emacs. Other editors are fun for a minute, but nope.

I’ll be honest here: if being a supermarket janitor paid as well as being a developer at a large consultancy firm that I won’t name, I’d go back to cleaning toilets in a heartbeat. Software is never really done, especially in an “agile” shop, but least I can tell when the toilet’s clean.

I Still Don't Have a Career | starbreaker.org

Replace "developer" with "project/product manager" and same.

I would prefer to write separate posts for everything, but I don't often have the patience necessary for putting thoughts together well enough. So, I keep pouring them out here in journal entries. Good enough for who it's for.

I'm realizing that digital photography is actually not always easier than shooting film. Wrangling the new Nikon Zf to do what I want has been the opposite of easy. It's not the Nikon's fault, really. It's that modern cameras want to do everything for everyone and it's exhausting getting them to do the right things for me.

Trying to use both Lightroom and Lightroom Classic and syncing between the two was a terrible, terrible idea that I've tried and failed at several times. The worst being this past month. Now I'm spending the morning either finding missing photos or dealing with duplicates. I never learn.

Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #313

I endeavour to seek beauty wherever it presents itself. In doing so, I am reluctant to invalidate the best of us in an attempt to punish the worst. I don’t think we can afford that luxury.

On the inseparability of art from artist, yet still finding beauty in the art of bad men.

For every book Trump bans from government libraries, private libraries should stop carrying something of his or his administration's. It's not a "ban", it's just, "No, sorry, we don't have that one."

Speaking of...can't anyone stop that guy? Please?!

The other day, while bored, I shuffled around the house and burned through a roll of film, just for something to do. I took photos of random stuff that I use or see every day. The photos were boring af but, for some reason, because they're film I think they're kind of cool.

But are they? No, they're not. Film photography is fun, and the paraphernalia is awesome, but a boring photo is still a boring photo. Here's an egregious example. HP5 from the Nikon F100 on the left. Nikon Zf with an HP5 film recipe on the right.

I didn't spend time trying to get them to match. I just wanted to demonstrate how I sometimes trick myself into thinking film photos are somehow better, simply by virtue of them being film.

Honestly, I always prefer the photos on film, but that doesn't make them good.

The moral of the story here is that I should try making better photos, regardless of the medium.

I made a little Retrobatch script to overlay the date onto a photo. It's meant for the OpenGraph cover image on these daily posts. I don't normally include the photo in the posts themselves, but I did today. For some reason.

I'm feeling a little better this morning, but coffee still tastes like crap, which means it's not over yet.

Still doing journal posts both here and in the wiki, seemingly at random. I should figure this out. It's just that I sometimes like doing it one way, and sometimes the other way.

You are all a bunch of sick freaks.:

The worst part is how you enable each other. "Hey guys, just finished my basic home automation setup", and then you post a system diagram that looks like the blueprint for a nuclear reactor. Fourteen Docker containers just to manage a suite of 'internet of things connected shitware.

I enjoyed this :).

Heh, Dave noticed that I bought a new camera and now he's thinking about new cameras.

A friend of mine told me once that whenever I mentioned wanting something three times, he knew that I'd end up buying it. It's true. I've been circling the Zf for months. Another friend recently bought a Z8 and nice lenses (that I could borrow), and the FM2n has been growing on my. Nikon has been on my mind, and the only one I find interesting is the Zf.

My GAS usually flares up when I'm feeling bored or frustrated with photography. It happens a lot. This time it started with wanting to replace the SL2 with an M10-P. The M10-P still sells for around $5,000, so I was looking for something interesting, but less expensive. The Nikon fit the bill.

I hope Dave finds his version of it.

In a desperate attempt to spark some enthusiasm for photography, I bought a Nikon Zf. I know, this is not the best approach, but it's what I did so here we are. I'm jotting down a few quick thoughts and first impressions. (This isn't a review. Just notes to myself about the camera).

The Zf^[1] is meant to replace my Leica SL2. The SL2 is a terrific camera, but it's so big and heavy that I never take it anywhere. With the Zf being smaller and lighter, I figured it would make more sense as an "everyday carry" camera.

Except the Zf isn't really that small or light. It's about 200g lighter than the SL2. Put another way, it's a roll of nickels lighter. Or a Ricoh GRIII 😄. That may seem like a lot, but it isn't a night-and-day difference. Here are the two cameras, side-by-side.

As you can see, it's definitely smaller, but "smaller than huge" is still not small.

The Nikon is mostly metal, with cool brass knobs. I love real dials, which is why I chose this camera.

Except with the Zf the dials can lie. After a dozen YouTube videos and the Nikon manual, I can't for the life of me understand how Auto-ISO works. What I do know is some of the time, the number set on the ISO dial isn't the ISO the camera is going to use. As far as I can tell, sometimes it means Maximum ISO and sometimes it means Minimum ISO and sometimes it means the actual ISO. I kind of hate that. The easy solution is to leave it on "C" and just use the control dials like any other digital camera. But why buy the Zf, then? People who claim to understand Nikon's system say that it's better. I'm not yet one of those people. Plus, having both a PASM switch and manual dials is just weird.

The Zf looks great, especially from the front. There's a direct line between it and the early-80s FM2n. Here they are next to each other.

Nikon released only two lenses designed to match the Zf. I bought the 40mm f/2.0. Here it is on the camera:

See how nice it looks? Notice anything else? I do. I notice that it doesn't have an aperture ring. This might be the dumbest design choice they could have made. I mean, the plastic lens already feels like it came out of a Cracker Jack box, but the fact that it looks the part, but doesn't act the part is very disappointing.

Let's see, what else don't I like. The battery door feels cheap and flimsy. People rave about the metal construction and build quality of the Zf, but pick up the Leica and you'll quickly realize that they're not even in the same category, build-wise. The Nikon feels fine, but I've held Leicas, so comparisons are inevitable. The Nikon loses by a mile.

Whining aside, I'm starting to like the Zf. It focuses so fast! Even in low light. Noise has been a non-issue so far at higher ISOs. It beats the pants off the Leica in focusing and low-light performance.

I've been down with a cold since I got it, but I can't wait to try it with my toddler grandson, who never sits still.

The files look nice so far. 24MP is more than enough for me.

I can't wait to try some manual focus lenses on it. With the right adapter, it will provide focus confirmation and subject detection even with manual lenses. That's pretty cool.

Two days after getting the Zf, I thought I'd be returning it, but after just two more days, I'm now thinking I'll give it a bit longer to see if the things that bugged me on day one will turn out to be non-issues. I want to like the camera!

Once I'm feeling better and have had a chance to get used to everything, I'll report back.

Still a bit sick. Slept better, though. It's hard using a CPAP with a stuffy nose.

I'm in one of those moods where I don't feel like managing anything. It occurred to me that Emacs helps with this. Denote and Org Journal both manage the files for me. I just type. Org-attach handles my files for me. On the other hand, TiddlyWiki is Just One File, so there's that.

The thing I'm thinking about now is going back to Lightroom desktop for photos. I've been using Lightroom Classic because it's got everything, but it sure is janky compared to the new Lightroom. And with Ligthtroom I don't need to organize everything (although I probably would, anyway). Still thinking about it.

I'm a little under the weather, still. Today will consist of tinkering and reading, mostly.

I've removed these journal posts from the RSS feed for now. I like the feeling of writing without worrying about dumping all this crap into a bunch of unsuspecting RSS readers. Who knows, I may end up staying with the wiki for this. What will likely end up happening is that I'll keep doing both, depending on my mood that day. Details

Consistency is boring.

I don't feel like exercising or weighing myself today. I guess I'm not in the mood for expending any effort or being exposed to any more bad news right now.

Speaking of unnecessary federal budget items, how much are we spending to remove words like "Diversity" from thousands of documents? Trump is an idiot and a fucking menace.

I'm sorry, but what terrible things do conservatives(?) think that a trans person going into the "wrong" bathroom is going to accomplish? This irrational fear says more about the sickness of the GOP than it does trans people.

I have a love/hate relationship with everything.

Linus Torvalds (Mastodon):

I'm a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman's right to choose is very important, I think that "well regulated militia" means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn't care less if you decided to dress up in the "wrong" clothes or decided you'd rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with. And dammit, if that all makes me "woke", then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race.

Linus Torvalds

I've decided to exclude "Journal" posts from the RSS feed. Thing is, I like how it feels to write stuff here knowing that it's not "going anywhere". If something shows up that is particularly brilliant, I'll create a separate post. Since most things are decidedly not particularly brilliant, I'll feel better keeping it to myself (and the handful of loonies people who actually come and visit the website).

If there's an outcry, I'll put things back. Or maybe set up a separate feed just for the journal entries. I dunno.

UPDATE: OK, I did get a couple of emails asking for journal posts in the RSS feed. As a compromise, I've added a feed for just the journal posts: https://baty.net/journal/index.xml. It's a bit less convenient this way, but seems fair.

I wish I'd stop writing about the tools I use to write about the tools I use.