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.

But, and there’s always a “but”, my use of the camera is mostly while hanging around with family or out at dinner, etc. As an everyday carry camera, I am often asked by family members if they could “see the color version” and they are disappointed when I tell them there is no such thing. After a while, I start to feel like I want the option to shoot black and white, but not always.

I also have a beautiful M10-R which is always just begging to be used. The decision about which camera to bring is crazy-making for me, so I now have fewer choices, which I am telling myself is a good thing.

My “kit” now consists of the Leica M10-R and Leica MP. It’s great being able to use the same lenses on both film and digital bodies. And there really is nothing that compares with an M.

The biggest gap this leaves is that I still need something for casual carry. Something with auto-focus and macro capabilities that I can shoot one-handed. The M cameras leave me without any of that and I often miss it. For now, I’m filling that gap with the little Ricoh GRIII. It’s a great, tiny, easily-pocketable camera that should do just fine.

I’ll miss the Q2M, but for now, I’m going to work with what I have, and what I have is pretty great. But don’t be surprised if a future post discusses something entirely different.

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.

I just want to read and write. Maybe doodle a little. And I want to do it digitally and on paper. Hence, the “hybrid” idea.

So I have a limited-capacity device alongside my paper notebooks and index cards. I took over the unused upstairs bedroom (which used to by my office anyway) and cleaned out everything I don’t need. This is the first iteration. I’d like to keep it minimal so I’m not adding things until I feel I need them.

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.

Yesterday I wrote that I no longer wanted to talk about my process. Yet, here I am talking about my process. I’m doing it because this is what helps me sort things out and remember how they were sorted. So, what the hell, let’s make it a blog post.

Here’s what I’m trying.

Apple Reminders for task management. Reminders has gotten much better recently. There’s smart lists, tags, the works. It’s a very capable app and integrates with everything, so I’m trying it. This change has the highest chance of failure, because I don’t like Reminders. I don’t like how it feels or how it handles notes or how I need to click in a certain area to select things or that it adds a new reminder every time I simply click in an empty space below the list. Anyway, we’ll see. There’s a 50% chance I’ll be back in Things and a 25% chance I’ll be back in Org mode for my tasks.

Apple Notes for notes. What?! That’s right, I’m writing all my “evergreen” notes in Apple’s venerable Notes app. I have to say, Notes is really nice, once one lets go of “IT MUST BE MARKDOWN” or whatever. It doesn’t have to be Markdown, btw, if you’re not converting your writing to HTML or some other format. I have zero fear of lock-in and there are various methods of saving notes as text or other formats. I’m trying to get over wringing my hands about all that.

Day One for personal journaling. I have 3,671 entries in Day One going back to 2011. Each of them has location and weather info, along with date and time. Many have photos or other images. I can filter and export them any way I see fit, to text, Markdown, PDF, or HTML. I can order a nice printed book from any selection of entries. I can journal on my iPhone or iPad. I can hook it into other tools using the CLI if I want. And I spend almost no time tweaking it. I just type and save. Day One was my default journaling app for years and I’m going to try it again for a while.

WordPress for blogging. I know, I know, we’ve all been around this block before. But using a CMS that does everything, pretty easily, and without much fuss is what I’m looking for right now, so WordPress it is.

Of course there are always a bunch of supporting players, and I’m evaluating how I use those too. For now, this feels like I’m using the tools that I would use if I didn’t think too hard about tooling. Let’s see what happens this time.

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.

The problem is that having to access the Function layer (for arrow keys, etc.) using my pinky is causing discomfort in my hand. On the one hand (pun!), I'm good at using the function key to access the arrow keys. They are close by so it's actually faster and easier than on keyboards with dedicated arrow keys. This took me a long time to realize, but now that I'm used to it, other keyboards feel less efficient. But, on the other hand (again!), I don't enjoy the pain in my hand.

I'm going to reset for a bit and give the pinky a break. I'm taking the lazy way out and just using the Apple Magic Keyboard. The Apple keyboards are fine, and as a bonus, the layout matches the MacBook Pro keyboard so switching is less jarring. Still, it's a shame.

Here's my setup today. (Notice my poor HHKB cowering in the shadows.)

UPDATE: (24 hours later). I'd rather suffer the pain than not use the HHKB. It's back on my desk this morning.

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.

They feel unstable on my head. I can't figure out what it is about the way the AirPods Max fit, but I find that I'm always aware of them on my head and am constantly adjusting them. Maybe it's because of my giant head, but they aren't as comfortable as they should be.

They steal audio from the AppleTV. Occasionally, when my wife is doing a workout using the AppleTV in the next room, I'll put on the AirPods, and they steal audio from the TV instead of connecting to my Mac, which is right in front of me. I haven't been able to figure out why this happens, but it bugs both of us.

I can't stand the clicking sound they make when moving them around. If the AirPods are folded flat, they bang together when I pick them up and move them around. The sound is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Why is nobody talking about this?

The "case" is stupid. Who approved that thing?

I wish I enjoyed them more. Spatial audio is nice, and the noise canceling works great. They sound really good, too. However, and as much as I hate wires, I find myself plugging in the Sennheiser HD 650s most of the time instead. The 650s fit perfectly, sound even better, don't need charging, and never do anything wrong.

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.

While farting around with Curio exports, I tried exporting a few entries as HTML and was surprised how much fidelity is maintained when exporting. For giggles, I uploaded a few days’ exports to a web server. I had a crazy idea that this could be a daily blog. Here is my test site.

It’s neat, right? I slap images, notes, cards, mindmaps, lists, anything on the day’s entry, and it ends up as a web page.

While a fun experiment, I don’t think it makes sense long-term, since the resulting web pages are a mess on mobile, offer no accessibility, and managing navigation, etc. is a pain. Still, it’s a neat trick and I may throw pages out there every once in a while, just for fun.

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.

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.

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.

Recently, I have been striving to be more like my dad. Whenever I start looking for some new thing to help me do some old thing, I say to myself, "Use what you have!" It's working pretty well. I have not purchased anything new if I already have something similar that will do the job. No gadgets, cameras, pens, notebooks, computers, etc. I already have all those things, and they work great.

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 books.org file is just an outline with some custom properties. An entry looks like this:

** DONE Leonardo da Vinci
CLOSED: [2022-04-11 Mon 11:10]
:PROPERTIES:
:author:  Walter Isaacson
:year:    2017
:name:    Leonardo da Vinci
:url:     https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34684622-leonardo-da-vinci
:pages:   600
:rating:  *****
:END:

The outline looks like this:

That's fine, but doesn't show much information other than a short title. That's where Org's Column View comes in. Column view shows a summary of a set of headings in a customizable view. The setup for mine is this:

#+columns: %50ITEM(Title) %author(Author) %pages(Pages){+} %8rating

This sets columns, widths, titles, and even a total of the number of pages (via the {+} flag). Then, I have a block which generates and saves the column view for me. Here's that block.

#+BEGIN: columnview :hlines 1 :id global :skip-empty-rows t :indent t :match "-noexport"
#+END

Pressing C-c C-c on that block header generates a nice table view of my book attributes. Here's what the file looks like, including the column block:

I like it. It's like a little plain-text database.

I probably won’t bother backfilling it with earlier entries, but I plan to keep it updated from now on. I haven’t yet created any fancy org-mode “Capture templates” because let’s be honest, I don’t finish enough books to benefit from that kind of automation. I simply copy and paste an earlier entry and modify that. Maybe I’ll do something smarter at some point, just for fun.

Org mode is pretty great and can do just about anything.

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.

Here are the last images it was able to scan from the most recent roll (2022-Roll-066)...

So now what? I guess I need a new scanner. I have a PrimeFilm XAs but it's 35mm only and can be quite fidgety to use. And it only does 35mm. I need to scan 35mm, 120, and 4x5 negatives.

I am trying to decide between two options: A new flatbed Epson V850, or a digital camera scanning setup. I already have most of the doo-dads needed for digital camera scanning. I just don't have a feasible digital camera and macro lens up to the task.

I'm leaning toward the Epson V850 flatbed because I'm used to the workflow and, although expensive, it would be cheaper than buying a new camera setup. On the other hand, I can use the new camera as, you know, a camera too, which would be nice.

It's just that I tried scanning with a digital camera before (Fuji X-T3) and didn't like what it did to the grain. I don't know that a higher-resolution camera and better macro lens would fix it.

What I might do is rent something like a Nikon Z7 and one of their macro lenses for a week and see if I like the results. The Nikon Z is probably what I'd look at if I were interested in a new mirrorless kit for general photography anyway.

I'll let you know how it goes.

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?

I could use the default projectile search, but my org-roam files live within my main ~/org directory, so the results are littered with all my other org documents. I'd prefer to only search in ~/org/roam

I use a simple lisp function to help with this. It uses consult-ripgrep:

(defun jab/search-roam ()
 "Run consult-ripgrep on the org roam directory"
 (interactive)
 (consult-ripgrep org-roam-directory nil))

I added a keybinding for it to my other org-roam bindings:

(map!
 "\C-c n f" 'org-roam-node-find
 "s-u" 'org-roam-node-find
 "\C-c n i" 'org-roam-node-insert
 "\C-c n t" 'org-roam-dailies-goto-today
 "\C-c n d" 'org-roam-dailies-capture-today
 "\C-c n c" 'org-roam-capture
 "\C-c n s" 'jab/search-roam               ;; <-- my new keybinding
 "\C-c n l" 'org-roam-buffer-toggle)

Now, with a quick C-s n s I can search my org-roam files using the blazingly fast ripgrep.

If there's a better way to do this, I'm all ears.

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 noticed that the entire process used by the staff seemed to be carrying around folders full of paper and barking things like "Get me the file on senator Jones and the notes from our briefing!" Within minutes they would be perusing a bunch of photos and papers scattered about a desk and they'd develop a plan right then and there. Awesome!

So, I started organizing all of my projects in manilla folders. One folder per project. I called it the "West Wing Productivity System". I'd print meeting notes, mindmaps, emails, etc and put them in the appropriate folder. I kept a single summary sheet clipped to the inside with contact information, summary info, budgets, etc.

Whenever I needed to work on a project, I'd grab the folder, spread its contents across my desk, and get to work. It was nice knowing where everything was. It was nice being able to see everything at once, if necessary. (I had a big desk).

On the other hand, it was a pain when I needed to share something with colleagues. Search kind of sucked. And if I happened to be at home without the proper folder in my bag I was screwed.

It was fun for a while, but this was nearly 10 years ago. I still use folders, just not quite so deliberately. Just for the hell of it, I've brought back the system for some of my home projects. There's not a lot of risk and I get to shuffle papers around again like I'm Josh's assistant or something.

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.

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, Judith Joy Ross, on the other hand, makes deeply moving, personal portraits while wandering around with an 8x10 view camera. I wasn't familiar with her work until recently. I mean, just look at these...

Simply fantastic work. I just ordered her new book: Judith Joy Ross: Photographs 1978–2015.

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.

The challenge was that I didn't want to simply shuffle the daily posts in with the "regular" posts. I wanted a "Daily" section. But, I also wanted today's Daily post to show on the home page, since that's where the action is.

I'm the first to admit the Hugo's templating system is a complete mystery to me. I've been using Hugo for years and I still don't know what gets rendered where or how. I mostly just throw stuff at the wall until something sticks.

After several hours of Google and wild guesses, I've gotten it close enough to publish. You're soaking in it. The home page shows the most recent post in the /daily/ folder. Then at baty.net/daily/ I show a reverse-chronological list of daily posts.

I've added a couple of tweaks. The list of Daily posts differs from the home page in that I display the full posts and not just the "summary". That was surprisingly difficult to wrangle.

I have a new attribute in the front matter, weather, which is displayed on daily posts. This lets me display the weather differently from the posts' content. The cool feature here is that I'm adding the weather attribute automatically when creating new posts. I create posts using YASnippet, which can call custom functions at the time of expansion. Here's my "daily" snippet:

  # -*- mode: snippet -*-
  # name: Hugo Daily Post
  # key: daily
  # uuid: daily
  # --
  *** TODO ${1:title} :@Daily:
  :PROPERTIES:
  :EXPORT_HUGO_BUNDLE: `(format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d-%A")`
  :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: index
  :EXPORT_HUGO_SLUG: `(format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d")`
  :EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER: :weather "`(jab/insert-weather)`"
  :END:

  $0

Note the :EXPORT_HUGO_CUSTOM_FRONT_MATTER: :weather "`(jab/insert-weather)`" property. I have a custom function called jab/insert-weather which calls the wttr service and outputs the current weather conditions. Surrounding the function with backticks causes the function to be evaluated while the snippet is expanded. Neat! Note that I also dynamically generate the filenames based on the current date.

This all means that, in my posts.org file, I can type daily and hit tab, enter the title, and I'm ready to publish.

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 I'm showing one of each, digital and film, of my favorite from the visit.

I prefer the film image. I manipulated the digital shot in Silver Efex Pro and added a bit of grain to try and get the look I like, but I still prefer the film image.

The difference might be partially due to using the 50mm Summilux on the MP. It's my favorite lens. The digital shot was with the 35mm Summilux. Also a great lens, but lacks that certain "something" of the 50.

I don't think the lens difference explains it, though. A large part of what makes me prefer film photos is just knowing they're film photos. That means something to me, and influences how I respond to an image. One could probably use a decent HP5 preset on that image in Lightroom and I wouldn't be able to tell it from a film photo in a blind test, but I don't view my images that way. I know how they were made, and it matters.

Additionally, I can make beautiful silver gelatin prints of the film photo in my darkroom. That's important, too.

I'll probably always shoot both film and digital, but more often than not I prefer the results I get from film.

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.

Also because while tinkering with my notes.baty.net site I was reminded that I like the "CodeIt" theme that it uses. I thought I'd see how it felt to create a blog from scratch using my version of that theme. Turns out it felt pretty good, so here we are.

I grew tired of pushing against the weight of WordPress. The inconvenience of maintaining a static blog seemed like a fair trade. The past couple of days, I have found myself happier dealing with the inconvenience.

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.

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’m sure there are a dozen ways to do this, but this seems to work quite well.