I've added a search page. It uses Pagefind. It turns out I'd already begun work on this with the original site. The clue was a commented-out line in my Makefile:
index:
npx -y pagefind --site ${SITE_DIR}
All I needed to do was create a search page and add a snippet:
To manually build the index, I render the site and then index it. using npx -y pagefind --site _site. I do this as part of the deploy recipe in the Makefile.
That was easy enough. I'll fart around with the indexing a bit, but otherwise it works really well right out of the box.
I just realized that there's no way to search this blog. I wonder if I can use the same tooling as the Hugo blog. This doesn't seem like fun.
An admission: I've been using TheBrain again/still, Like I did late last year. Its value increases over time. Whenever I put something in it, I can always find it later, and quickly. It may be weird and expensive and proprietary and have limited export options, but it's still the app I've found most effective for things that benefit from context and long-term linking.
I'll be spending the afternoon getting things set up for my grandson's 1st birthday party tomorrow. There are tents and tables and chairs and decorations and food and who knows what else.
My problem is that I love different software for different reasons. I love Tinderbox, Emacs, and TiddlyWiki equally for taking notes. Today I've been testing The Archive again, because it does certain things really well. Sometimes I use all of them in a single day. It's not an effective or efficient way of working, but my love of wonderful software makes it difficult for me to avoid the behavior.
If you’re going to blow a massive sum on one huge thing, why not a thing that people who don’t know you personally can experience and evaluate and maybe even enjoy? Better “Megalopolis” than a yacht, or a Vermeer locked away in a New York townhouse.
The Why of Crazy Stupid Tech - I'm skeptical of their lack of skepticism. Seems like more tech-bro utopianism to me, no matter how much they downplay it.
I thought that as soon as I sat my butt down at this computer after four days away that I would have all sorts of things lined up to talk about, but nothing much comes to mind. It's 11:30 AM, so maybe later?
The best way I've found of preventing photos from looking too digital is to make them with film.
Sometimes I defend people from pile-ons, even when they deserve the pile-on. I feel like too many people wake up and think, "Who can I decide is bad, today?" and that's just no way to be. So, if you point out that someone did something horrible (and by "horrible", you usually mean "something I don't agree with") and I say "But maybe they just...", it's not always because I agree with what they've supposedly done, but rather to point out that there might be more to it. We're complicated. Situations are complicated. You don't know everything about it, so maybe back off a smidge and consider that.
I used to look forward to "advances" in the technology I use. Those days are gone. Sometimes I think this is because I'm older now. I don't think that's it, though. The changes that happen now are not meant to make my life better. They're meant to make someone else's life better. Maybe they always were, but I doubt it.
When I started this blog in 2000, I mostly posted links to articles I enjoyed. In recent years I've stopped linking to things and I don't know why. Maybe I should include a section in these daily posts with links to things I found interesting that day. Noodlin' on it.
How about we collectively stop apologizing for how often we write on our blogs or what we write about on our blogs. Newsletters, too, while we're at it.
I like the new message/alert summaries on my Apple devices. I just used ChatGPT to help me write some emacs lisp for my blogging workflow. DEVONthink can now use AI to intelligently rename files. I use that all the time. Complaints about social and environmental impact of AI use are justified, but it's probably time to stop suggesting that LLMs aren't useful.
Never apologize or make excuses for not commenting on a topic or event or anything. You don't owe "the world" your opinion.
Let's see if this works. I've added some basic opengraph tags.
I've gone from not caring as much about the things I used to care about, to not caring about much of anything at all. Moving 100 or so blog posts from Hugo to Eleventy is a brain-dead way to pass time while feeling like I'm Doing Something™.
You may have noticed that I've changed blogging tools again. After being mad at Hugo for a few days, I dusted off the old version I'd built using Eleventy.
As fast, flexible, and powerful Hugo is, I cannot seem to get along with its templating system. Even after years of use, it seems obtuse to me.
So let's give Eleventy a shot. I don't love JavaScript either, but at least it makes sense.
There's lots to do here, still. I moved over all of the blog posts, but so far have only moved a handful of the "daily" posts. It's tedious, and after many hours, I'm taking a break. It would have been so much faster if I'd not used Hugo's "bundles" features or custom short codes. Oh well. I'll get to the rest eventually.
I don't have the OpenGraph stuff in place yet. And the markup is old and janky, but it works for now.
Eleventy is still a bit of a mystery to me, so I hope nothing goes drastically wrong with it, as I'm unlikely to be able to fix things. For now, though, it's a relief from the even more mysterious Hugo.
Why not Kirby again? Good question. I started down that road, but realized that Kirby's quirks are confusing to me as well. More importantly, I wanted a fully statically-rendered blog. No PHP or server-side anything this time.
It bugs me that I'll be in New Orleans next weekend, and I don't have any plans around cameras. I'll probably bring the little GRIII and that's it. I'm not interested in lugging the SL2 everywhere. Nor do I feel like dealing with the hasseles of traveling with film. I'm disappointed in myself over this.
Well, once again a Hugo upgrade broke rendering of the site. Apparently, they've decided to enforce a specific date format or formats in the front matter. Fortunately, I only had a few old posts with a "bad" format, so fixing things wasn't difficult. Still, using Hugo is not my favorite part about publishing this blog. I will do my best to calm down and not do anything rash, even though I'm tempted to do something rash.
Autoplaying video ads should be a jailable offense. At the very least I should be able to come to your house and kick you in the crotch.
I'm more likely to go back to using Roam Research than I am to Obsidian. Weird, huh?
What would it take to move back to Kirby?
After having a bit of a hissy fit this morning about Hugo, I almost moved this blog back to Kirby CMS. Almost. Since then, I've taken a deep breath, stepped back, and thought about what it would take to make me move back from Hugo to Kirby.
How can I have URLs like /YYYY/MM/post-slug without complex routing that I don't understand? The connection between content location and URL is too tight, IMO.
New posts/journals should go where they belong, without code changes. I still have to update the blueprint YAML every month to e.g. change from "2024/09" to "2024/10" otherwise new posts and journal entries go in the wrong folder. I don't know how to fix this.
Better deployments (code vs content). I would like a better way to manage content vs code changes.
Can I just list all the posts in the panel? Currently, I have to view the current month's post, then navigate "up" in order to just see a simple list of posts. I'm sure there's an easy way to handle this, so why don't I know how?
Most of all, it would take a stronger desire to build everything myself. It often feels like Kirby makes the hard things easy and the easy things hard. I'm not in the mood for that right now, so I will probably tough it out with Hugo for a bit longer. As nice as Kirby's panel can be for managing content, I'm more likely to jump back to Blot or Ghost, to be honest.
Yesterday I did that thing where I wanted to use something other than Emacs and Org Mode, so I re-installed Obsidian and launched both Tinderbox and SilverBullet. Then, I wrote some notes in all of them. It was so darn nice having somewhere new to work. It lasted a few hours, after which I copied all of those notes into the appropriate .org documents and properly scolded myself for straying again. Everything else is inferior to Emacs, but sometimes I just need a break.
"Oscillation creates Isolation" is a new phrase I just made up.
I dusted off my old Kirby blog after reading Kev's post this morning. I'm not falling for it, Kev! Kirby is really nice, and tempting, but I've forgotten how it works and I don't love the idea of learning it over again right now.
A phrase that bugs me is, "You have to wonder..." when what they really mean is "I wonder..." or more likely, "I think this but am too chickenshit to come right out and say it." It's a bit like "I'm just asking questions!"
There's nothing on my schedule today and that is totally fine with me. It's not just fine, it's preferred.
I made some small (5"x7") prints in the darkroom this morning. I sometimes feel that the small prints aren't "worth it", but they're cheap and easy to make, so I keep doing it. I guess at the exposure and only reprint if I'm way off. Otherwise, as my dad says, "Good enough for who it's for". And I'm always happy I have them later.
Latest roll (HP5) from the Leica MP. Nothing much here to speak of, although I did use a manual flash on some of the indoor shots. I kind of like flash photos. They look like photos, you know?
Lincoln looking upMy dad and Lincoln. Testing manual flash.Funny faceWhite sneakers are white
Is it too early to begin speculation about the iPhone 17?[1]
Two buffers I always have open in Emacs are: the current journal entry here on baty.net, and my personal journal (org-journal). I type the same kinds of things in both places. Which one I choose depends on my mood.
I hate when I run out of feeds to read and so just sit here staring at the screen. Running out of feeds isn't the problem, fyi.
Every notification ping holds the possibility we have merit.
...
we strain our moral character to cosplay a life of plenty.
I just dropped in and scrolled through the feed on LinkedIn. If LinkedIn is the game I'm forced to play, then I forfeit.
So many people seem to travel around looking only for red flags. Maybe they should spend more time looking for green lights.
A few weeks ago, my Dad's Apple Watch (Series 3) died, so I gave him my Series 7, since I was hardly ever wearing it anyway. Then last week I started reading "Younger Next Year" and all they talk about is doing aerobic workouts six days a week and closely monitoring my heart rate. Lacking an available heart rate monitor, I ordered a new Series 10 Apple Watch. I had to. HAD TO.
Speaking of "Younger Next Year", they're doing a good job of convincing me that what I've been doing is not helping. By "what I've been doing," of course I mean, "Almost nothing". I really hate exercise, but I also really want to be healthy when I'm 80, assuming I live that long. So, I've worked out 4 days in a row so far, which might be a record for me.
Social media is umatched as a method of letting me know what and whom I'm supposed to be mad at right now.
My Org mode capture templates are acting funky. Things aren't going where they're supposed to. e.g. my Daybook entries are going into the wrong part of the datetree. I've changed nothing relevant that I know of. I hate this.
I would still exist if I deleted my Instagram account.
-- Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Would you? Would any of us?
I don't want the things I create to be nothing more than something to scroll past. But maybe that's better than having noone see them at all.
Yesterday, I tried talking my dad through authenticating the Bally Sports app on his Apple TV. It involved going to a web page on his phone, logging in, and entering a code. It was the worst experience possible. Have you ever tried editing a long URL on an iPhone? Have you ever tried helping an 82-year-old do it over the phone? Technology is terrible. All he wanted to do was watch the ball game.
"Today's video is about [something something] and I'm going to tell you all about it. OK, let's jump right in!"
::45-second overwrought intro video::
"OK, like I said, in today's video we're going to..."
Sometimes I hate YouTube.
I broke down and bought a Blackstone Griddle. Today, I made my first smash burger. I'm happy now.
I think I'll (reluctantly) stop using Capture One and go back to Lightroom. I was using Lightroom for a while because it's good and keeps getting better, but I get the best results from and prefer using C1. However, it has become so slow as to be unusable. It can take 3 or 4 seconds to update the preview after moving a slider, which is maddening. I've done all the recommended things to improve performance, but nothing helps. Lightroom updates immediately. Plus Lightroom syncs, has modern features that non-professionals use, and is relatively inexpensive.
I'll go on record saying that I prefer pre-recorded events. I suffer from some kind of empathetic anxiety around live events. I spend the whole time thinking, "Don't screw up, don't screw up". It's also why I prefer movies to plays, probably.
When I post regularly and to only one blog, my traffic numbers go up. This is pretty consistent. It's an interesting data point, but I'm not doing this for visitor numbers, so I'll continue to be inconsistent and scattered about.
At some point during my latest round of build-emacs-config-from-scratch, I must have missed part of my Dired settings.
I want Dired to only show the file name rather than all the file attributes, and I want folders displayed first. Instead, now I see all file details and folders are sorted alphabetically right along with files. Like this:
Dired by default
The first thing was to sort so that folders show first. I figured it would be as simple as adding the --group-directories-first switch to dired-listing-switches but nope. The default ls binary in macOS doesn't handle that option. To get it, I needed to install the "coreutils" package via Homebrew (brew install coreutils).
coreutils prefixes binaries that have the same name as a macOS counterpart with "g", so their version of ls is actually gls. Rather than depend on shell aliases that sometimes don't seem to get picked up correctly in Emacs, I found a handy snippet of lisp and modified it like so:
I added that to the package configuration for Dired and it worked like a charm.
Next was to get rid of all the extra information shown by default in directory listings. 99% of the time I don't care about permissions, ownership, or file sizes. I just want the file names. Dired has a built-in function for this: dired-hide-details-mode. To make sure this gets run for every new Dired buffer, I added a hook:
:hook
(dired-mode . dired-hide-details-mode)
Now it looks how I like it:
Dired with my config
I can always toggle the file details back on by pressing (.
FWIW, here's my entire dired configuration:
;; Dired
(use-package dired
:ensure nil ;; built-in
:defer t
:hook
(dired-mode . dired-hide-details-mode)
:config
(setq dired-dwim-target t) ;; do what I mean
(setq dired-recursive-copies 'always) ;; don't ask when copying directories
(setq dired-create-destination-dirs 'ask)
(setq dired-clean-confirm-killing-deleted-buffers nil)
(setq dired-make-directory-clickable t)
(setq dired-mouse-drag-files t)
(setq dired-kill-when-opening-new-dired-buffer t) ;; Tidy up open buffers by default
(when (eq system-type 'darwin)
(let ((gls (executable-find "gls")))
(when gls
(setq dired-use-ls-dired t
insert-directory-program gls
dired-listing-switches "-aBhl --group-directories-first")))))
The smartest thing for me to do would be to double down on using Org Mode for all of my notes and be done with it. I re-installed Logseq last week but haven't launched it. Today, I downloaded Standard Notes but didn't even install it. See? I'm getting better!
Whenever I read posts raving about Emacs, they focus too much on "efficiently editing text". I barely care about that and they shouldn't either. Actual editing comprises about 5% of writing[1]. Making that tiny slice 20% more efficient adds almost nothing, if you're looking at the big picture. Efficient editing is fun though, so I'll give you that.
I used Emacs to create this file and now I'm editing it using iA Writer. As much as I love Emacs, I don't necessarily need to spend all day, every day in there, you know? I also wanted to check out the iA Writer update because they now use a sensible UI for navigating folders. The old way made me ditch iA Writer, as much as I love the actual editor.
I took a week or so off social media but have been unable to maintain my distance. The trick is to limit myself to checking the feed a couple times a day. There's so much great stuff out there, so I don't want to leave completely, but I have to stop reaching for it every time there's a lull in my thoughts.
Posts here are no longer being automatically syndicated to Mastodon via EchoFeed. I want to control when they show up on Mastodon, and that may be different than when I publish them here.
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