The thing about BOGO (Buy One, Get One free) is that I end up buying something I don't need, just so I can get a second thing I don't need.

I'm (half-heartedly) considering canceling every streaming option I have. Maybe then I'll stop endlessly scrolling through trailers while never actually watching any movies.

Haven't felt like blogging much. Every time I think of something to "say", I shrug and think, "Not worth it." I hope this doesn't trigger a platform change or anything. I was just getting comfy here :)

I wish I would find something better to do.

Certain software tools click with me. TiddlyWiki, Emacs, BBEdit, and OmniFocus are the ones that I am thinking of right now. I love them all.

I write here nearly every day, but what's it for?

Speaking of clicking with software, I do not click with Obsidian. After seeing another new error when using Emacs this morning, I thought I'd move some stuff into Obsidian, hoping that maybe this time it would stick. It didn't. The whole experiment lasted about 3 hours. Sometimes I just want things to be easier for a minute, which things like Obsidian, Bear, etc. are good for, but I don't know if I'll every leave Emacs.

I noticed that the "cover" images for my posts aren't showing up when reading my feed in Elfeed. It's because I use absolute URLs without a hostname. Other readers, like NetNewsWire, prepend the hostname automatically. I don't think I'll fix it yet, because using full URLs makes me twitchy, because I'm me and I move things.

I've been re-discovering TiddlyWiki. My wiki (wiki.baty.net) contains nearly 4,000 "tiddlers", beginning in 2018. There is so much stuff in there that I search it almost daily. I've drifted away from using it for new stuff, probably because I'm all-in Emacs for notes (howm, specifically) and I've been publishing my daily notes at either baty.net or daily.baty.net. Now, though, I'm remembering how great TiddlyWiki is for exactly the sort of things I want to record and share. So, I'll be spending more time there for a bit.

Remember when I used wttr.in to pull in the forecast in ascii?

      \   /     Clear
       .-.      +13(12) °C     
    ― (   ) ―   ↗ 12 km/h      
       `-’      16 km          
      /   \     0.0 mm      

If I were to let someone else manage my blog, I'd probably go with Pika. Not that I'm considering it :). Anyway, there's no search, yet, which makes Pika a non-starter for me.

List a two-word phrase that is destroying the world: "Private Equity"

It's unanimous, people prefer the one post/day journal format here on baty.net. "All in one place is best" seems to be the consensus. I'll try.

BSAG » Exploring desktop linux: Part 3

I'm watching this closely. She seems to be getting on well so far. The only way I could use Linux would be to only use Linux. Switching between Linux and macOS is crazy-making.

I did, though set up Neovim and LazyVim yesterday, just for kicks. I might be experiencing a mild case of Emacs Fatigue.

Some weird things about my behavior that I noticed today. First, I might like Safari more than Arc, which is a complete surprise. I used Safari for a few weeks, then switched back to Arc last week. Today, I switched back to Safari. It's just...less, somehow. Second, I prefer OmniFocus to Things. Another surprise. Things is just so nice, you know? But OmniFocus does a few more little things that I miss when I'm using Things. Third, I've plunged back into my TiddlyWiki wiki again. This was triggered by how much I like using howm in Emacs. Howm is a lot like TiddlyWiki in some ways. Anyway, I was reminded how much fun TiddlyWiki is, so I've dusted it off and started putting stuff there again. Told you they were weird.

I removed the "Open to Work" label from my LinkedIn profile. Not because I'm not open to work, but because I truly can't stand being anywhere near LinkedIn. The type of people who would hire me are just as likely to find me elsewhere.

Do people prefer these once/day combined posts, or would they rather see them individually (as seen on daily.baty.net)? I feel like most of the individual notes aren't useful enough to justify their own slot in someone's RSS reader. On the other hand, it's nice being able to link directly to any of them.

If I could stop bringing new things in, I wouldn't have to worry about where to put them.

While scrolling through the Books I’ve Read, I realized that I don't remember the first thing about most of them. There are a few standouts, of course, but for the most part reading feels like temporary entertainment. I hope some of it is absorbed and becomes a useful part of my brain, but it doesn't seem like that's happening.

I'd almost forgotten that I re-subscribed to Medium a few months ago. After visiting the home page this morning and reading one vapid headline after another, I canceled my membership. I'm sure there's valuable content there, but it's hiding behind clickbait and I don't feel like wading through it.

I wish I cared more about having something to say than I do about the mechanisms around saying it.

Does every sentence I write need to start with "I"?

Writing full-on blog posts hasn't interested me as much, lately. I don't mind rambling on in these daily notes, but I haven't felt like putting enough coherent sentences together for real posts.

One way to avoid the Reply Guys on social media is to stop making broad, sweeping, controversial statements in the first place. And don't you dare reply and accuse me of victim blaming.

If they had fed the language machines a diet of cupcake recipes, history might have gone another way.

"Moonbound", Robin Sloan.

My Applications folder is a toybox, but it should be a toolbox.

I posted a little over on daily.baty.net today. I shouldn't do that, because it undermines my dream of having One True Blog™. Some days, though, I find it impossible to resist.

Links for October 16, 2024

• Pluralistic: You should be using an RSS reader

Dan Milnor: Adobe Max Day One

The tools remind me that story is king.

I see a lot of criticism of Tesla's new taxi design. Specifically, everyone seems confused that it's a 2-seater. Ridiculous! Now, while I'm critical of everything Tesla, I haven't seen anyone asking how many passengers the typical cab ride accommodates. Is it 2, maybe? It could be that Tesla did the research. Anyway If I need more room on a specific trip, I can alway call an UberX.

The latest Lightroom update includes Smart Albums, finally. I keep giving up on Lightroom and going back to Capture One, but C1 can be very laggy and it's driving me nuts. Lightroom is fast, and the library/sync is really nice, and improving all the time. I'm so confused.

But I wish Generative Remove was never invented. It's too easy and too tempting.

Is it just me, or does it seem like the entire FOSS movement is crumbling?

I often analyze tools before I actually need them. That's silly, and a waste of energy. It leads to a pile of software that I don't need, but also a bunch of opinions about them that aren't really valid.

It would be nice if I could hold a thought for more than 30 seconds. My brain is so scattered and unpredictable that it makes it difficult to get anything done. So far this morning I must've opened every app, note, and website that I know of. I don't know what I'm hoping to find, but so far I've failed and wasted way too much time.

Here's an example. I was about to write something about watching The Substance last night, so I went to Letterboxd to grab a link to my review. By the time I switched back to this document, I'd forgotten what I was going to write. Not a clue, so I wrote this instead.

I'm trying that thing again where I mark a region of text in each entry. The idea is to emphasize the important bits so that it's easier to scan the page. I'm not convinced it helps, which is why I waffle about it.

While I was unloading the party supplies at the rental place, a woman came out and said, "I just wanted to meet the guy with the cool name." I asked her what she thought was cool about it. She stood straight, lowered her voice, and said, "Jack Baty! It just sounds cool. It sounds like you're either a cool fisherman who lives by himself on an island, or a movie star." I thanked her and left without telling her which one I am.

I'm all for people ragging on DHH, because DHH has revealed himself to be kind of an awful person. Didn't anyone ever tell Matt that one should never wrestle with a pig?

I've added a search page here. Some notes: Searching baty.net

We celebrated my grandson's 1st birthday yesterday. He's so great.

There were 75 people there to help celebrate. Everyone had fun. We ate, played games, and watched Lincoln open gifts (with mom's help). The weather was beautiful, but then it started to thunder, so we took down the tent and put everything away. Shortly after that, it began to pour, so that was a wrap. Perfect timing, actually.

I don't know anyone who thought that LLMs do "formal reasoning", so snickering about the new research is something you can do, but you shouldn't expect responses other than, "Duh!"

I left my desk yesterday with all my favorite, long-term apps running: Tinderbox, TheBrain, Emacs, DEVONthink, etc.. This morning, I did my weekly computer cleanup, rebooted, and now I'm only running a terminal, Emacs, and Safari. It won't last, because I love software too much, but this is how I wish I worked.

My advice, to those using WordPress or other Automattic tools, is to let the current drama play out for a while. Everyone jumping ship now might end up regretting it if things work themselves out. If you feel you must jump in and hate on Matt, though, go for it I guess. We'll probably end up feeling like the whole thing was a tempest in a teacup in six months, anyway.

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.

Links for October 11, 2024

• Getting my daily news from a dot matrix printer - Andrew Schmelyun - I really really want something like this.
• Cabel Sasser · Videos · XOXO - "Appreciate Everything Endlessly" is such great advice and I should heed it more often. I cried a little bit.

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.

"Megalopolis" and "Joker: Folie à Deux"; or, The Virtue of Burning Money

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.

Right!

Links for October 10, 2024

• Rescued Tiny Kitten Grows Up Believing He’s a Big Dog | Day 1 to 60 - YouTube - Possibly the sweetest, cutest thing my eyes have ever seen. (h/t Merlin Mann)
• ‘I Applied to 2,843 Roles’: The Rise of AI-Powered Job Application Bots - Screw it, I give up. I guess I'm retired now.
• 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.
• Letterboxd besties - I have no besties, I guess.

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 whole WordPress thing is boring as f*ck.

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.

Links for October 4, 2024.

• Remind me later – The Secret Knots. What technology is like today. A comic.
• Brooke DiDonato - Surreal photography. Great colors and fun ideas.
• Why Is Yellowstone National Park Such a Crowded Mess? - I would love to see Yellowstone National Park, but I don't think I'll bother.
• 11 damning details in Jack Smith’s new brief in the Trump election case - POLITICO - JFC.

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™.

Today

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.