For years, I’ve kept a paper notebook at hand. I always have a Moleskine-style bullet journal or a Field Notes pocket notebook or a Hobonichi Techo nearby. Sometimes all three. Lately, I’ve been feeling hampered by keeping my journal on paper. My handwriting is terrible unless I write very slowly and deliberately. I worry that personal journaling suffers from too-slow, overly-deliberate writing. I spend too much time deciding between and playing with various writing instruments. I love my fountain pens, but I’m left-handed, and fountain pens are not ideal. The ink and paper must be just right, and that’s hard to arrange. ...

I just sold my wonderful Leica Q2 Monochrom. This was the second time I’ve owned a Q2M and the second time I’ve sold one. The Q2M is a nearly perfect walk-around, everyday camera for someone who wants to focus purely on making black and white images. That describes me perfectly, for a while. I love B&W photographs and the Q2M makes them as good or better than anything available. I love how using a B&W-only sensor forces me to think in tones, shades, and lighting. ...

Long story short, I have successfully rationalized the purchase of a new iPad Pro and keyboard. After a week or more of non-stop tinkering with nearly every bit of software on my Mac, I had a fit and decided to switch things up. I now have an iPad Pro (11-inch) with Smart Keyboard. The idea is that the software I use on iOS is less prone to tweaking. Plus, I’m not always futzing with shell aliases and other CLI tools just for fun. I’m not tempted by a 32-inch screen peppered with windows just begging me to play with them. I’m still thinking Reset to Defaults. ...

A week ago I did that thing where I blow up my system because I noticed I’d been doing that other thing where I spend all my time tweaking everything. I’m calling it an experiment, and I’m naming it “Reset to Defaults”. The idea is to revert to stock macOS apps where feasible, or simple and established apps otherwise, and avoid tools that lend themselves to constant tweaking. This hurts because tweaking is what I spend much of my time doing. I enjoy it! But, it’s a distraction and I should do less of it. To this end, I’ve restructured task management, blogging, journaling, note-taking, photo editing, file management, etc. ...

I’ve been using the Happy Hacking Professional 2 Keyboard since 2018. After a long search and many different dead ends, I’d found the keyboard for me. I still think the HHKB is nearly perfect, but there’s one problem. ...

I’ve had a pair of Apple’s AirPods Max for almost exactly one year. The headphones look nice and sound very good, but I don’t enjoy using them. I’ve been thinking about why that is, and came up with the following list. There’s no Off button. I hate this. I don’t use them every day, and if I don’t remember to either plug them in or put them in the case (for “low power mode” or whatever it is), the batteries are often dead when I go to use them. ...

I’ve used Zengobi’s Curio for many years when I needed a visual system for managing projects and associated files. In a recent version, Curio gained a Journal feature. It’s fairly rudimentary compared to dedicated journal apps, but I recently started testing it as a way to create a sort of scrapbook each day. It works pretty well for that. I export a PDF of the day’s entry, print it, and put it in a binder. ...

Had brunch at my parent’s yesterday to celebrate Mother’s Day. It was nice. My mom has been suffering from pain in her leg for a few weeks, but the combination of new meds and time seems to have helped quite a lot. I took the Leica Q2 Monochrom and made a few snaps. Here are my favorites from the day. Mom. Leica Q2 Monochrom Mom and Dad. Leica Q2 Monochrom ...

I have some pretty nice things. I’m fortunate and have more “stuff” than I could ever need. And yet, it seems as if I’m always buying something new. It’s just that I like to try new things, whether it’s tools, software, gadgets, or what have you. I want to see what different things feel like to have and use. My Dad’s Garage - 2022 The photo above is from my dad’s garage, taken this year. I took it because I’m always amazed at how little it changes. My dad rarely buys anything new. He just uses what he has. ...

I’ve kept a list of books I’ve read as a plain text (well, technically, Markdown) file for years. I wrote about it here. The public version is rendered using Github Pages at books.baty.net. This is fine, but at some point last year I also started logging books in an Org mode file, just to see how it felt. It felt pretty good! ...

My Epson V750 Pro, purchased in 2009, has scanned thousands of rolls of film, slides, and prints. After making strange grinding noises recently, it has finally ground to a halt. ...

Org-roam is “A plain-text personal knowledge management system” using Emacs and Org-mode and I put nearly all my notes in there. While it’s easy to find notes in org-roam based on filename, there’s no obvious way to search the contents of notes. Weird, right? ...

The last time I rewatched “The West Wing” I was once again impressed by how good people were at their jobs. How productive everyone was. I wondered how I could be that productive. ...

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 Alt text here 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. ...

Pens 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. ...