I’m just coming off a week using Obsidian. Obsidian is really good and powerful and easy to use and extensible and probably the correct answer to the question, “Where should I keep my notes?”.

I love Obsidian for a minute because of what it does and the fact that it’s not whatever I’d been using previously. It’s refreshing and finding new plugins to play with is good fun. But it’s janky. Why don’t more people complain about it being janky? It’s just blech to actually live in. It feels weird and loose and sloppy to me.

I don’t enjoy using Obsidian. At all. It sparks zero joy.

The whole Kondo-ian “Sparks Joy” thing is cliche by now, but it’s a useful guage for measuring the long-term viability of a thing.

So, what software sparks joy for me? Here are a few recent examples.

Tinderbox has been sparking joy for me since the early 2000s. It’s a powerful outlining, concept mapping, note taking, timelining, researching, and publishing tool. Its author is thoughtful, helpful, and continues to improve Tinderbox in meaningful ways. The community is smart, very helpful, and spends its time solving real problems rather than competing in the PKM influencer space.

TiddlyWiki is weird and fun and clever and I’ve dumped nearly 4,000 notes in my public wiki at wiki.baty.net. It is a single HTML file that runs in a browser. It has a weird but powerful internal scripting language. It’s a sort of Quine in that it uses itself to make itself. I often consider other tools for creating this sort of knowledgebase, but TiddlyWiki is too fun so I continue pouring stuff into it.

Emacs is of course something I dig probably more than anything. What’s not to like? It’s free, old-school, infinitely extensible, wildly powerful, and as nerdy as it gets. I have ten years worth of my “stuff” in Emacs (mostly as Org-mode files). I can make Emacs do anything. And writing Org files in Emacs is such a pleasure. The text feels “tight”, you know? Not like Obsidian. I’m writing this post in Emacs in markdown-mode and holy cow it’s a nice way to write. I sometimes try to stop using Emacs because I get “tool-sick”, but it rarely lasts more than a week. So much joy.

Those are the top 3 joy-sparking apps at the moment. Others include Curio, BBEdit, Things, CleanShot, and certainly more that I’m forgetting.

Software can be so much fun. Too much, maybe, as it becomes a distraction and constant cause of churn in my brain. But fun is fun and joy is joy and what could be wrong with that?

Mike Hall's daily notes resonate with me again with a post (mostly) about futzing with stuff. It's like he's in my head when he writes about "keeping the futz monkey off my back."

I'm in my version of a similar place. For example, yesterday I posted to or updated four different websites. Each of them managed using different and unconventional software. There's Tinderbox, TiddlyWiki, and Kirby CMS. Another is just static HTML/CSS. They all depend on a pile of custom templates, scripts, and sloppily-documented setup. They work, but what if they don't? I'm not always in the mood for fixing things that break when I touch them wrong.

Those four sites are run on two different servers, one Ubuntu and one OpenBSD. I had this idea of moving all of my stuff to the OpenBSD instance, but I spent hours trying to get Kirby/PHP running under the built-in httpd server and failed. Caddy is so much simpler, and I'm familiar with it, so I'm this close to dumping the BSD box and pulling everything back to Ubuntu.

Always choosing the clever option makes for so much extra work. Too much.

Speaking of clever, Emacs and Org-mode are super clever. Maybe too clever for my own good. I probably spend three or four hours a week futzing with my Emacs setup. It's fun, though, right? Yes, it can be fun, but it's also unnecessary. I mean, it's for notes, right? I could use anything for that, but of course I've chosen the clever option again.

The draw of Emacs is that I have convinced myself that since I can do nearly everything in Emacs, the time spent making it look and act just the way I like it is worth the effort. Maybe it is, but it's still a lot of time spent.

It's not entirely Emacs' fault. I could move everything to, say, Obsidian and then I'd just futz with that instead. But maybe not as much? I don't know. Sometimes I switch tools because I've convinced myself that I'm actually simplifying things. This is a convenient lie. On the other hand, the Futz Factor of even something as tweakable as Obsidian is a lot lower than that of Emacs, so I try it (or Logseq, or NotePlan, etc.) every few weeks or months. It never lasts, even though one of those is probably the correct answer. Or would be if I actually enjoyed using any of them for more than a few days.

Ideally, I'd use tools with the lowest possible futz factor, but the futz monkey is a sneaky bastard, so the best I can hope for is something with an acceptable blend of simplicity and futzability.

Right now maintaining multiple blogs is not the right amount. Neither is Emacs. I don't have the energy to figure out why CTRL-e doesn't do what it's supposed to in Emacs. I don't feel like running different servers with different operating systems and web servers. I don't feel like futzing with all that all day, which is what I've been doing for some time now.

So, you'll probably see me writing exclusively here at baty.net and putting notes about stuff into the wiki and THAT'S IT! I'll move sites from OpenBSD back to the Ubuntu server. I may even fire up Obsidian again. It sounds a lot like futzing, but I've convinced myself that it's the best way to avoid futzing. Take that, you stupid monkey!

For some reason I've been thinking about installing Lightroom again. Of course earlier this year I decided that I was only going to use Capture One and I completely uninstalled everything from Adobe.

I prefer Capture One "sessions" to its catalogs because cataloging in C1 has always felt janky and slow to me. Sessions are great at the point of ingest and initial edits, but become cumbersome later when just wanting to peruse my library.

Lightroom (new Desktop, not Classic) is better at catalogs. It also creates automatic People albums and groups things nicely by date, etc. It feels faster and is much simpler than C1. They recently added the ability to edit local files and only sending selected images to their cloud library. This is super nice.

In a fit of either boredom or frustration I subscribed to and re-installed Lightroom. It's very nice, and one of the presets I use for people photos is still my favorite and I haven't been able to recreate it in C1.

But, Lightroom is not Capture One. Its UI is not at all customizable, its export options are limited, tethering isn't a thing, there are no layers, the "Edit with..." menu only allows Photoshop, etc. etc. Besides, I get images I prefer, faster with C1 than with anything I've used.

What about the catalog problem, then? The thing I get weary of in C1 is the difficulty of working with the archives using sessions, so I've decided to give C1 catalogs another try.

After one hour, I've uninstalled Lightroom again. A new record. That was close!

But here's something to think about. C1 just layed off a bunch of staff and their customer practices and messaging are horrible. Plus, they seem to be more and more focused on professional photographers, one of which I am not. So basically I may be forced to change my mind again later.

I'm on a Mutt kick again lately. One thing I've never loved about Mutt is that searching large archives can be slow. I'm used to the nearly instantaneous response when using Notmuch for search. To help with this, I've switched to using NeoMutt, which has some nice built-in support for Notmuch.

Here is the relevant portion of my .muttrc file.

set nm_db_limit = 5000
set nm_default_url = "notmuch:///Users/jbaty/Mail"
set nm_open_timeout = 5
set virtual_spool_file = yes
set nm_query_window_enable=yes
set nm_query_window_duration=2
set nm_query_window_timebase="month" # or "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year"
set nm_query_window_or_terms="tag:unread and tag:flagged"
# read entire thread of the current message
bind index,pager + entire-thread
# generate virtual folder from query
bind index,pager \cf vfolder-from-query
bind index < vfolder-window-backward
bind index > vfolder-window-forward

Another fun thing in NeoMutt is that it has incorporated virtual-folders, so I can do things like this:

virtual-mailboxes "Flagged" "notmuch://?query=tag:flagged"
virtual-mailboxes "Today" "notmuch://?query=date:today"

So far it works a treat. Searches are so fast in Notmuch! I like that I can limit the initial results to a specific time window (via nm_query_window_timebase). I use "month". Then, I can page through a month of results at a time using < and >.

Mutt is "...a small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operating systems". I first used Mutt sometime around 2002 and continued using it on and off for a decade or more. Eventually I moved on to easier ways of handling email.

Recently, for whatever reason, I dusted off my old .muttrc file and pointed it at my ~/Mail directory and it all came rushing back. I've been using Mutt exclusively for email again for the past few weeks and it remains fast, light, and fun to use.

So now that I'm in a terminal for email, I tend to want to stay in a terminal, so I also dusted off my config for Taskwarrior so that I can manage my todos on the command line.

Then came Vimwiki for notes. Although once I started futzing with using terminal apps for notes, I learned about nb which is a "CLI and local web plain text note‑taking, bookmarking, and archiving with linking, tagging, filtering, search, Git versioning & syncing, Pandoc conversion, + more, in a single portable script." Well hell yes, right?!

I need to figure out how to balance my use of command line apps with a modern, comfortable process. Mutt has this Halo effect of making me want to use command line apps in a terminal for everything. I end up stuck typing things like "task add 'take out the trash'" or "task edit 82" and "nb 'My Notes On Mutt'" in a terminal. It's fun and fast and cool, but it's also a little cumbersome and not at all pretty.

I'm sure fatigue will set in at some point, but I'm having a ball in the meantime.

I really like the Hobonichi Techo notebook/planners. I've had one sitting on my desk since 2013. The trouble is, I haven't been using it much.

I normally start out the year with a flurry of sketches and planning and logging. Even though that tapers off after a few months, it's always been worth it. This year, though, I've hardly even done that. Most days the page remains blank. The only thing I've actively been using it for this year has been habit tracking.

There are a couple things contributing to the lack of use. First, I'm trying to "Reduce & Simplify". This means that having fewer notebooks is ideal. It's nice not having to decide where to write things. Second, even though the Techo is a great paper planner, I'm less interested in analog planning lately. I've been doing all my paper-based writing/logging in a (Leuchtturm) notebook/journal, but I'm using digital tools and calendars for planning.

If I ever decide to go all-in on paper, or if I'm more often away from my computer, the Techo will be the first thing I pull back off the shelf, but for now, I have no real use for it, so it's retired.

I'm really into paper-based tools lately. This is often a reaction to over-thinking my (digital) note-taking process. And oh my have I been over-thinking that process lately.

Using paper is more work, but it's worth it. Here are a few random thoughts I've had about it recently.

Paper's immutability is something you'd think one would put into the "Cons" column, but I find it to be its greatest feature. I'm fickle and uncertain and my digital notes suffer because of it. When I write something in a (paper) notebook, there it is, forever. I can scribble it out or copy it onto later pages, but I can't change my mind and move it somewhere else based on whatever "system" I decide upon that day. It'll always be right in that spot, in that notebook. I love this.

I love jotting quotes and observations onto index cards. I leave these cards lying about or pinned to my bulletin board. They remain visible at all times and that means they are actually seen. Too often, when I take a digital note of some kind it ends up buried in a folder or app and never seen again. I understand that it doesn't have to be this way, but for me, it is.

Have you ever tried flipping through pages on a Kindle? No? Right, because you can't. Or at least it's not worth the effort. I'm forgetful, and being able to quickly thumb back and answer things like, "Wait, who's kid is that again?" is necessary for me to enjoy reading books.

I keep paper journals/scrapbooks in large Moleskine notebooks. I print photos and glue or tape them onto pages then I write on and around them. I doodle in them. Doing this on an iPad with Pencil is cool, but unsatisfying. I like imperfections. I like not being able to Command-Z my way out of everything. I like pulling old ones off the self and flipping through them.

Anyway, digital tools are great and all, but I often prefer paper.

I was surprised to find a new release today by Saxon, the early eighties' stalwarts of British heavy metal. It's good!

I bought my copy on [Bandcamp]( https://hellfireanddamnation.bandcamp.com/album/hell-fire-and-damnation text: Bandcamp).

I used to have a bookmarklet that would take selected text on a web page and generate a quoted block and link in markup suitable for use in TiddlyWiki.

Arc Browser doesn't support bookmarklets for some strange reason, so I (finally) converted my bookmarklet to a Chrome extension using this tool.

I put a zipped copy here:

copy-quoted-text-for-tiddlywiki.zip

Unzip it, click the "Load unpacked" button on Arc/Chrome's Extensions page and select the folder. No guarantees that it'll work for you, but you're welcome to it.

15 YEARS OF IMPRISONMENT, FIVE DAYS OF VENGEANCE

With no clue how he came to be imprisoned, drugged and tortured for 15 years, a desperate businessman seeks revenge on his captors.

OldBoy remains as powerful, beautiful, and unsettling as the first time.

The default error (e.g. 404) pages in OpenBSD's built-in web server are super basic. I can live with that, but what I can't live with is that they use Comic Sans. I kid you not.

I don't know if it's supposed to be a joke, but it's not funny.

If you do a search for "httpd custom 404 page" you'll find a lot of responses claiming that changing error pages can't be done without patching httpd and recompiling. Well I'm not doing that!

On about page 4 of search results I found this post explaining how to do it. Turns out it's now possible with a simple config change:

Just add something like errdocs "/errdocs" in httpd.conf. Then put a file named err.html file in /var/www/errdocs with the generic error message or create one for each error code, e.g. 404.html.

I could have just read the man page httpd.conf(5) and saved myself a lot of trouble.

We're back on Hugo for baty.net.

For the past few months, I've been learning how to create a blog using Kirby CMS and it's been a blast. Kirby is pleasant, easy, and fun to use. I'm glad I did it.

I won't bother you with a 2,000-word rationalization piece about switching. I just felt like using Hugo again, so here we are.

I missed my nice Emacs-based publishing workflow. I missed "normal" YAML front matter. I missed having a completely static website. Who knows where we'll be in a month, but today we're using Hugo. I went back to the PaperMod theme. I don't love how boring it is, but it's clean, feature-rich, frequently updated, and easy to customize.

People make fun of me for switching platforms so often. That's fine. It's what I do. I like to play with blogs and blogging tools.

I dug through my list of subscriptions yesterday and made a few changes.

First, a couple of smaller changes. I canceled Photomator and Photo Scan. Photomator is great, and I may come to regret losing it. But for now, I don't shoot much with my phone and if I really need to edit an image, I can send it to Affinity. Photo Scan is too expensive and I can just use Google's version.

This one is big. As mentioned, I canceled Capture One. I've used C1 for years, but having both Lightroom and Capture One available forced unnecessary decisions each time I'd unload an SD card. My head knows that Lightroom is more than capable, but my heart still loves the power and flexibility of Capture One. I worry that I'll waffle on this one, but for now, it's just Lightroom.

Another long-time subscription for me has been the Qobuz music service. Qobuz used to be one of a very few services offering high res streaming, but I used it mostly because of it's seamless integration with Roon. However, I already have a Spotify subscription and also Apple Music through Apple One. Music is important to me, but I find that I'm either actively listening, which usually means vinyl, or it's just on in the background, for which any streaming service is fine. So Qobuz is gone and my Roon server only serves my local music library.

Saved myself $35/month. Time will tell if it's worth it.

I canceled my Capture One subscription this morning, before it renewed for $180 for another year.

I hadn't planned to do this. The plan was to cancel my Lightroom subscription ($10/month) and run with C1 for the year. Capture One has more to offer, and I like the files I get from it better than from Lightroom. So what happened?

When canceling the Lightroom subscription, I was informed that there would be an early-termination fee of $49. I'd forgotten that the $10/month subscription was subsidized by agreeing to pay for a year. They just charge me monthly. That was disappointing.

So, canceling Adobe and renewing Capture One was going to cost me $229 today. That bugged me, so I reviewed my decision to go with C1. If I'm honest, my photo processing needs are modest. I like the option for doing all sorts of fancy things, but mostly it's a little contrast, white balance, crop, and export. LR does those things just fine.

LATER: Of course an hour after posting this, C1 offered me 30% off to re-subscribe, so I did. Then I canceled my Adobe subscription. So, the opposite of the above is what happened.