I recently read Joe McNally’s book, The Real Deal: Field Notes from the Life of a Working Photographer. While I found his anecdotes occasionally interesting, I didn’t really enjoy the book. I think this was because I don’t much care for McNally’s photographs. Here’s one of his portraits. Photo by Joe McNally There’s no question that McNally is a talented photographer with a powerful work ethic and serious technical skills. His portraits, however, leave me uninspired. You know the style. Creatively lit with a handful of Speedlights, carefully arranged backgrounds or sets, wardrobe and makeup people, etc. The kinds of photos that get a shit ton of likes. This style is not for me. ...

Now that I’ve moved my blog back to a static site generated with Hugo, I noticed that I was writing both my Daily notes and my blog posts in side-by-side Emacs buffers. It got me thinking about consolidating my sites even further. ...

I had lunch with my parents recently and took a few photos with both my film and digital cameras. I shot about the same number of photos with each camera, with close to the same number of “keepers”. Which do I prefer? ...

Here we are, running the show as a static blog, using Hugo. But why!? I suppose because I was bored and because it’s fun. ...

I’m an impressionable young man, and when I notice someone on The Internet raving about something, I want to feel that way, too. I often order whatever that thing is, only to be disappointed. For example, here are a few of the pens I bought after being told how remarkable they are. They’re not that remarkable.

I normally don’t like the high-speed films but I’m trying to use what’s in my fridge, so here’s a few from a roll of Kodak T-MAX P3200 shot at 1600 and processed in HC-100. Zazette ...

I’m trying something new. I’ve become a pretty heavy user of Org-roam for personal notes. I put nearly everything there now; technical notes, contact information, project notes, vendor info, etc. These notes are all nicely linked and backlinked and live in my main ~/org directory so I can easily find things right within Emacs. A portion of these notes might be useful to other people. So I’m exporting the shareable notes from Org-roam as Hugo-compatible Markdown files. This turned out to be surprisingly easy. You can see the results at https://notes.baty.net and the details of how it works makes a good example. ...

I want my per-line code comments to line up nicely, so I’ll often add a bunch of spaces by hand to make things just so. I realized that, being Emacs, there must be an easier way to handle this. Of course there is. Two minutes of searching revealed a short bit of lisp that does the job nicely: ;; Align comments in marked region ;; Via https://stackoverflow.com/a/20278032 (defun jab/align-comments (beginning end) "Align comments within marked region." (interactive "*r") (let (indent-tabs-mode align-to-tab-stop) (align-regexp beginning end (concat "\\(\\s-*\\)" (regexp-quote comment-start))))) Here’s an example of what I was working on, with horribly un-aligned comments. ...

As usual, this roll contained a few self-portraits, a few of Alice, and a few of “stuff”. My favorites are the ones taken in my dad’s garage. Alice. (Leica MP. HP5 Plus. 90mm Elmarit-M) Dad’s workbench (Leica MP. HP5 Plus. 50mm Summilux-M) Self-portrait (Leica MP. HP5 Plus. 90mm Elmarit-M) Wall in dad’s garage (Leica MP. HP5 Plus. 50mm Summilux-M) ...

When I drag and drop an image into Emacs, I want the attached file to end up in ./img/YYYY/. This is how I tried configuring org-download in my setup (I use Doom Emacs): (setq org-download-method 'directory org-download-image-dir (concat "img/" (format-time-string "%Y") "/") org-download-image-org-width 600 org-download-heading-lvl 1) For some reason, org-download-method was being reset from 'directory to 'attach after loading, and this broke things. I thought maybe I needed to set the variables after org-download was loaded, so I did this: ...

I’ve settled on WordPress for this blog. (“settled” is a fluid word for me, but let’s assume I mean it for now). However, I prefer to do most of my writing in Emacs and Org mode. To help with this, I’ve configured org2blog and I’m writing this post with it. I’m using org2blog pretty much right out of the box. Just a single blog configuration with the following tweaks: <div class="org-src-container"><pre id="nil" class="src src-emacs-lisp"><span style="color: #4078f2;">(</span><span style="color: #e45649;">setq</span> <span style="color: #6a1868;">org2blog/wp-track-posts</span> <span style="color: #a626a4;">(</span><span style="color: #b751b6;">list</span> <span style="color: #50a14f;">"~/org/baty.net/.org2blog.org"</span> <span style="color: #50a14f;">"wordpress"</span><span style="color: #a626a4;">)</span><span style="color: #4078f2;">)</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">(</span><span style="color: #e45649;">setq</span> <span style="color: #6a1868;">org2blog/wp-default-categories</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">'</span><span style="color: #a626a4;">(</span><span style="color: #50a14f;">"Misc"</span><span style="color: #a626a4;">)</span><span style="color: #4078f2;">)</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">(</span><span style="color: #e45649;">setq</span> <span style="color: #6a1868;">org2blog/wp-default-tags</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">'</span><span style="color: #a626a4;">(</span><span style="color: #50a14f;">""</span><span style="color: #a626a4;">)</span><span style="color: #4078f2;">)</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">(</span><span style="color: #e45649;">setq</span> <span style="color: #6a1868;">org2blog/wp-show-post-in-browser</span> <span style="color: #4078f2;">'</span><span style="color: #986801;">ask</span><span style="color: #4078f2;">)</span></pre></div></code></pre> I haven’t figured out how to use authinfo.gpg for logging in automatically yet, so for now I’m typing my password in each new emacs session. ...

I’m feeling twitchy about owning the Leica M10-R. The M10-R is an astonishingly good camera. World-beating build quality, timeless design, and a fantastic 40-megapixel sensor, all in a small, beautiful package. Still available new in 2022 for an eye-watering $8,995 (I bought mine used), the M10-R is also a ridiculously expensive camera. Buying one is a big deal and a significant investment. I am fortunate enough to also own Leica M film cameras, and being able to share lenses between those and the M10-R is very handy. And OMG those Leica lenses! The control layout and handling are the same as well. It’s like having both a digital and film platform for using 70 years of tiny, wonderful Leica lenses. I can carry a full film and digital arsenal with 2 bodies and lenses in a tiny bag. ...

My wife bought an awful, kitschy plastic lamp and set it on one of the floor speakers. I, of course, balked. That was a week ago and somehow the lamp is still there. I hate the lamp, but I don’t mind the light that it throws against the wall, and my wife loves it and thinks “it’s adorable”. Who am I to judge? I took a photo of it. It’s just another boring snapshot by a film photographer looking for excuses to finish the roll. It’s exposed the way I intended and it’s composed nicely, but it’s not a great photo. I love it anyway. ...

TiddlyWiki is a single static HTML file. It does not generate an RSS feed of new entries. It doesn’t generate anything. I treat my wiki at wiki.baty.net more like a blog than a wiki, so not having an RSS feed feels like an omission. Most of the time I consider this to be a feature. I like that I can write any old nonsense and it doesn’t actively go out and bother anyone. It’s my little secret, that you can read if you want. ...

I hate making fiber-based silver gelatin prints in the darkroom. But I love having them to hold and to hang. Fiber-based papers have this deep, magical sheen, and the surface is smooth yet has a distinct, subtle texture that is missing from resin-coated (RC) papers. Compared to RC papers, fiber-based paper takes twice as long to process. It requires additional washing and optional toning steps. It eats up fixer and takes more trays than I have comfortable room for. It must be washed for up to an hour. And then there’s the curling, so I have to press the prints under heavy books for a few days before I can do anything with them ...

Derek Sivers suggests, in a much-linked-to post, that all your stuff should be in plain text files, and I (almost) agree with him. Most of my notes are in some form of plain text format, but not for the reasons Sivers lists. My notes are in plain text because I prefer editors that use plain text by default. I suggest you use the tools and formats that are most useful to you now. If that’s plain text, then great. ...

There are things that I dislike about shooting film, but processing isn’t one of them. I actually enjoy it. I shoot a roll or two of film each week and process it in my bathroom darkroom. Developing black and white film is quite simple. I have gotten to a point where the process is muscle memory. I shoot mostly the same type of film (HP5 Plus) and develop it in HC-110. I know the dilutions and I know the time, temperature, and agitation schedule. ...

My dad called me from Florida and said that one of his neighbors had died and left a bunch of camera stuff to be given away or sold. He mentioned there was “some old Kodak” and wondered if I was interested in it. I said “Sure, why not” and he said he’d send me a box with the camera and some other stuff that came in the box. The Retina Way The box arrived yesterday and I was thrilled to find a working Kodak Retina IIIC inside. I didn’t know much about the Retinas except they were around for many years and were very high quality cameras, which isn’t something Kodak is known for. ...

TL;DR: daily.baty.net. You see, I have a nice wiki, and for a couple of years, I have written a new entry in it (nearly) every day. These “daily notes” have been interspersed and interlinked with the rest of the wiki’s content. It works, but I don’t love it. Writing in TiddlyWiki is fine. It’s super easy, but it’s also a little clunky, which quickly becomes friction. And the experience for visitors is weird if you’re not familiar with TiddlyWiki. Also, there’s no RSS feed. I sometimes consider this a feature, because it’s nice writing freely and knowing it’s not “going anywhere”. On the other hand, if I were someone wanting to follow along with me, I’d want a damn RSS feed. ...

One valid criticism of using paper for notes is that searching through notebooks is rather difficult. With my poor handwriting, scanning for certain information in a wash of squiggly lines can be painfully slow. For a couple of months now I’ve been going back through my notes periodically and highlighting key words and phrases. I’ve found that if I emphasize the most relevant bit of each note, I can find most things fairly quickly. It also helps when simply perusing old notes. Usually, I want to skip anything “meta” like which pen I’m using or the regular “Why am I still using paper?” fluff. Zipping over the highlighted phrases makes quick work of it. ...