I've become a bit overwhelmed by text after using mostly CLI/TUI tools for the past few weeks. I need a break from looking at tedious walls of text all day, so instead of creating posts here using Markdown, I'm posting to my WordPress blog over at baty.blog for a while[1]. I needed a change of venue. Hope to see you there!
I don't know what I mean by "a while", so don't go too far. ↩︎
Some thoughts and observations around my feelings about using Linux vs macOS.
For the past week or so, I've been switching between Linux and macOS several times a day. I've been working towared full-time Linux for nearly a month, and planned to relegate the Mac to photo processing only. A sort of photo appliance. While doing that, though, I opened some of my favorite Mac-only apps, and immediately doubted the entire Linux experiment. Things would be much simpler if I used macOS for everything. Right?
I've spent decades with tools like Tinderbox and DEVONthink and BBEdit. It would be hard for me to give them up.
But something unexpected happened during all this. Switching to the Mac began to feel like a step backwards, experience-wise. (I told you it was unexpected). The Mac felt cumbersome. I felt as if I was spending most of my time on macOS moving and resizing windows. I'd end up with like 35 overlapping Finder windows for some reason. It felt chaotic, compared to the tidy window management of Hyprland.
I tried using AeroSpace on the Mac for a couple days, but it wasn't the same as Hyprland. There are other apps that try to emulate tiling, but none that I've tried felt satisfactory.
The other unexpected thing is that I'm starting to prefer certain Linux key bindings. With Caps Lock mapped to Control, Ctrl-c and Ctrl-v are actually easier to hit on my keyboard than Command-c and Command-v. I do miss the Emacs-bindings-everywhere on macOS, but what if I spend more time with Vim bindings wherever possible? Will I miss the other bindings as much?
I'm beginning to understand, and possibly even prefer, the Linux environment, but software is a different story.
Photo editing in Darktable is getting easier for me, but it's got nothing on the speed and ease of using Lightroom Classic or Capture One. This is why I planned to keep the Mac around, just for scanning and processing photos.
Another factor is that while many of my favorite Mac apps aren't available on Linux, nearly all of the Linux apps I'm interested in are available for macOS. It would seem like using a Mac would be a no-brainer, then. Except I can't kick the feeling that Linux suits me, somehow. Or at least it could, with a bit more experience.
I'm finding that I like how it feels to be using Linux[1]. It feels good knowing that it's all mine to do with as I please on whatever hardware I want. I like not thinking about whether Apple will course-correct any time soon.
So, where does that leave things? I'm not sure. If I'm to continue toward my goal of reducing & simplifying, running two operating systems is a bad idea, so I would like to pick one and stick with it. Knowing me, I'm not sure that's feasible.
One indication is that I switched to Linux in order to write this post, and it felt like a relief after being on macOS most of the day. That tells me something. Onward!
Unfortunately, Omarchy comes with some uncomfortable baggage that I'm choosing to live with, for now. No need to scold me. ↩︎
It's been the kind of day where using (or trying to use) Emacs frustrates me.
I've spent the past few weeks adapting my custom Emacs configuration to work on Linux. I was so confident that I would be moving to Linux that I ignored anything that might not work cross-platform. I should know better.
Today I was using my Mac and fired up Emacs and of course nothing worked. I spent nearly 2 hours futzing with it and I still don't know what's gone wrong. Reviewing Git commits hasn't narrowed it down, either. It's not the fact that I broke Emacs, it's more that I'm so capable of breaking Emacs at any time. I do it more than I care to. I'm not in the mood, ya know?
My mood today has been less than festive, so my problems with Emacs just made a bad thing worse, so I quit Emacs in a huff.
I installed the MiniMax configuration for NeoVim and I am typing this post using it. I didn't write a line of configuration and I didn't tweak a thing. It's working fine, for now.
MiniMax isn't as fancy as LazyVim, but it's also not as seizure-inducing by default. It strikes a nice balance between friendly and frenzied.
It's not like I'm switching permanently back to Vim, but when I'm mad at Emacs, this NeoVim setup is pretty nice. Sometimes Emacs and I get into a destructive relationship, and we take a little break. That's probably all this is.
For nearly two years I've been telling myself to Reduce & Simplify. For short periods, I've almost done that, but entropy takes over and I once again overcomplicate everything.
Could the problem be that I'm not sure what I mean by "Simple"?
One day, it feels simple to use only Emacs and a browser on Linux installed on boring hardware. The next day, simple means using the default Notes, Mail, and Reminders app on macOS. Then on another day, a notebook and pen are my definition of "simple". What happens is that I end up alternating between all of these so-called simple workflows, and I'm back to chaos.
Simple is "One camera, one lens". But which camera and which lens? If I change my mind every other day, it's no longer one camera, one lens. It's definitely not simple.
Maybe I'm incapable of simplifying. Maybe what I'm doing now is as simple as it gets. I hope not, because what I'm doing now is crazy-making.
What I'd think simplification looks like for me:
The problem might be that I want to be one kind of person, but I'm actually a different kind of person. They are incompatible.
Still, it's worth a try.
P.S. I'm typing this in NeoVim because maybe that's simpler than using Emacs? 🙄
When I started running the macOS 26 (Tahoe) betas, I didn't have strong feelings about Liquid Glass one way or the other.
I've been running Linux for a while now as daily driver, but since I was thinking that I may have to use macOS on the desktop, I've spent a lot of time using both Linux and macOS. Now I kind of hate Tahoe and Liquid Glass.
While getting my Mac Mini (M2 Pro) updated and configured, I was reminded how many times macOS pops up a dialog telling me something needs permissions for something. It feels like I'm constantly clicking "Allow". It happens so often that I no longer bother even reading the messages. I just click "Allow" and move on. Kind of defeats the purpose of the warnings, no?
Then I tried installing some apps that I've been enjoying on Linux, but macOS would deny me because they might be malware. Bite me, Apple. They're not malware and you know it. I can still force the issue and install the apps, but for how long?
I swore I wasn't going to weigh in on Liquid Glass because that would make me about the only person who hasn't. Except that the more I use it, the more it bugs me. Even with the 26.1 "Tinted" setting, it's awful. I'll list three things that bug me about Tahoe.
First, those Playskool-inspired rounded windows. Seriously, windows should be square on desktop computers. This isn't an iPad.
Second, side panels aren't really panels. They're like a separate element hovering over the side of my app window. Feels disjointed and I hate it.
Third, the whole Liquid Glass tansparency thing is wrong. The idea of "respecting my content" or whatever is fine, but don't do it by making parts of my content blurry and unusable while at the same time rendering important UI controls unreadable. If parts of "my content" are going to be illegible, then just hide those parts.
Anyway, many people have written about this in greater detail and more clearly than I, but I wanted to vent a little.
Using macOS was always about the software, hardware, and OS. Apple still makes great hardware, and app developers still make great software, but macOS no longer feels all that much better than alternatives. If I decide to stay with a Mac on the desktop, it'll be for the apps, in spite of macOS.
I'm trying to get everything running smoothly on the Linux machines. I really am. And I'm close, but I'm not there yet, and I'm not sure if I'll ever get there.
Many of the apps I use on macOS are also available on Linux. This is awesome. It's the ones I love, but need to leave behind that are causing all the trouble.
Most of the problems are around photo processing. I've spent many (many!) hours learning and testing Darktable for RAW processing. It's a powerful tool with a lot of clever ideas, some of which I actually prefer to its Mac counterparts. However, Darktable is not at all pleasant to use. Once the cleverness and new-shiny factors are past, I'm forced to live in a clumsy, awkward, unpleasant, unattractive environment. I miss Capture One dearly. Capture One gets me results I like quickly and easily. It's better.
Then there's scanning. I've spent years wrangling SilverFast to a point where I don't hate it. Recent updates have introduced the feature of scanning multiple (3, in my case) frames at once, making it much faster. I used to use Vuescan, and it's available on Linux, so I tried it. So so slow. And it does a pretty poor job with color film.
With digital camera scans, nothing beats Negative Lab Pro for doing inversions. NLP requires Lightroom Classic, so I'm kind of stuck there. I tried the Negadoctor feature of Darkroom and, while feasible, inversions are slow and tedious.
Photography is not just something I tinker with occasionally. It's my most enjoyable hobby. I don't think I want to suffer through it, just so I can use Linux.
There are several other apps that I seriously miss from macOS. BBEdit is still unbeatable for ease of use, stability, and capabilities when it comes to manipulating text. Tinderbox is one of a kind for outlining and notes. There's nothing on Linux comparable with OmniFocus for task management. And so on.
But the deal-breaking omission might be Messages. Everyone I communicate with regularly uses Apple Messages and Facetime, exclusively. I can't stand typing on my phone, so having to hear an alert, grab my phone, and fumble my way through a reply is maddening. Also, I can't quickly send people links or photos from where I am. How am I supposed to share that hilarious meme if it's so much effort?
On the other hand, I love using the Framework laptop when away from my desk. I like the keyboard better than the MacBook Air's. Knowing I can easily upgrade or fix things (inexpensively) for years is very compelling.
So all this to say that I may end up using a Mac on the desktop and Linux on the laptop. I swore I'd never do that again. Between sync, paths, configuration issues, filename case mismatches, and wildly different key bindings, using both is a royal pain in the ass.
This rambling post is just me working through all of this. I'm typing this post using BBEdit on the Mac Mini, and I gotta say that having the standard Emacs keybindings everywhere is a compelling case for macOS for me.
I'll keep you posted.
I started my CLI app only experiment at the end of October, meaning that it's been just over a week of nothing but CLI and TUI apps for nearly everything. How's it going?
Well, it's been fun. I suspected it would be, because I've been living in a terminal on and off for decades now. It's not as if terminal apps are new to me. Diving back into them has been a blast.
But here's the thing. Once the novelty wears off, it can become a bit tedious. I love being able to use the keyboard for everything. I just don't want to have to use the keyboard for everything all the time. Sometimes I want to kick back and mouse around for a while. I'm finding that this comes up more often than I expected.
Another drawback to everything-in-a-terminal is that everything looks the same. My email, my notes, my tasks, my files, everything. It's a bunch of similar rectangles and it can become kind of boring.
So, right now, I have mixed feelings about the whole enterprise, but I'm sticking with it for now. Today I'm going to see if I can get LazyVim to calm down and just let me write instead of trying to tell me how to write. (It's probably the whole LSP integration thing).
Speaking of jrnl, did I mention that I'm testing jrnl as my daily logging tool?
Since I'm sticking to CLI-based tools for the month, I needed a replacement for my Emacs "Daybook". My Daybook relies on all sorts of capture templates and snippets in Emacs. Since that's out, I figured I might try the One Big Text File (OBTF) approach.
By default, jrnl writes entries to one big text file, so it seemed suitable for this purpose.
It's only been a day or two, but I kind of dig using jrnl for the kinds of quick logging I normally do in Emacs. It automatically adds timestamped headings, handles @tags, uses human readable date entry (e.g. "last wednesday"), allows searching by tags or date range or content, and exports nicely to various other formats.
I might also include the entries I usually put into org-journal. I can't imagine jrnl taking org-journal's spot, but it's worth trying. I'll tag those entries as @journal and then I can export just those to markdown for conversion to PDF and printing, as one does.
I'm slowly learning how to customize Hyprland.
I've been playing with jrnl as a way to do a daily log. It's been successful enough that I wanted to streamline it a bit. What I wanted was to bind a key to opening my jrnl prompt in a floating terminal in whichever workspace I happen to be in.
Here's how I did it:
# Keybinding for floating centered terminal
bind = SUPER SHIFT, J, exec, alacritty --class floating-term -e jrnl --config-override editor ""
windowrulev2 = float, class:(floating-term)
windowrulev2 = center, class:(floating-term)
windowrulev2 = size 800 60%, class:(floating-term)
This gets me a conveniently sized and placed terminal window with jrnl waiting for me to type whatever I want. A simple CTRL-d and it creates the jrnl entry and the window goes away.
The jrnl --config-override editor "" bit forces jrnl to wait for stdin so I can just start typing.
It may be overkill, since I could just type jrnl in any terminal, but this is just a smidge more convenient.
Since I'm using only CLI and TUI apps in November, I needed to find a replacement for Mu4e in Emacs. As a long-time Mutt user, I assumed that's what I'd use. A couple people recommended that I try aerc instead.
I think I'll try something. I think I'll try using only CLI and TUI apps during the month of November.
I use Zen Browser on Linux. While playing around with LazyVim (I know, I know) I learned about Tridactyl which is a plugin that let's you manipulate Firefox (or Zen) using Vim-like key bindings.
It feels weird and I keep tripping over myself, but I feel like once I'm used to it, this is a great way to browse.
I spent all morning toying with a few different static blogging options that could replace Hugo.
Kev had generously sent me a head start on a Jekyll theme that mimics my WordPress theme at baty.blog. I installed Jekyll and (to my surprise) I didn't hit any Ruby walls. While it was a great head start, I realized how much work remained, and I'm still not sure I want to use Jekyll.
The worst thing about Hugo is the templating language. It's so weird to me. Weird enough that it prevents me from tweaking things the way I like. For kicks, I installed Zola, which I haven't played with in years. It's like a sensible version of Hugo (single binary, etc.). I failed to port the theme Kev gave me to Zola, so I installed a pre-existing theme, Tabi. I kind of like it, but it's not really what I'm looking for, and I don't think I want to learn enough about Zola to make it happen.
So it's 2:00 in the afternoon and I've got nothing but dead ends to show for my day. Still in Hugo for now. It's a beautiful day, so I think I'll go for a nice walk.
You know what site of mine works just the way I like it? daily.baty.net. I tend to forget that. The problem is usually that it's (currently) built using Kirby CMS and I kind of don't want to stay sharp with Kirby. Maybe I'll just use it as is until something breaks. If nothing ever breaks, I'm golden.
It’s weird how I spend a few days relaxing in WordPress, then I wake up one day and think, “Maybe I’ll generate my whole website with Org-mode and Emacs!” I probably won’t do that, but I sometimes consider it.
I don’t want photography be just another way to generate files to play with on the computer.
The temperature dipped to freezing for the first time this year. This usually means it's truly the end of summer. Blech.
At some point, for some reason, Zen changed the New Tab behavior when opening new tabs:
NEW TABS HAVE BEEN REMOVED, instead we are opting for opening the URL bar and then pressing enter to open a new tab (‘zen.urlbar.replace-newtab’ to false in about:config to revert)
https://zen-browser.app/release-notes/#1.7.5b Features section.
I don’t approve, so I found the setting to revert it using about:config…
zen.urlbar.replace-newtab = false
Much better.
Thing is, I prefer using an SSG for my blog, but I've been posting using WordPress over at baty.blog for a few reasons:
But still, I would rather use an SSG like Hugo.
Instead of switching to WordPress, I think I would be OK if I had a new theme. Something with the following attributes:
<!-- more --> or whatever for extra-long posts.Honestly, if I could find a theme that worked and looked like the Twenty Twenty Five theme but it was for, say, Jekyll, I'd consider switching to Jekyll. I just want to look at my blog and think, "Aah, that's nice". Currently, I don't.
I thought about firing up Claude Code and having it help me, but I really don't want to build and support my own theme.
I’m becoming a fan of this awkward kit. The F100 is such a sleeper and can be had relatively cheaply. I ended up with that weird-looking SB-20 flash as part of a local Facebook purchase. There might be something to this TTL flash, auto-focus, auto-exposure photography thing.
My therapist asked me why I thought it was a problem to have so many blogs/cameras/notebooks/etc. and I couldn’t give her a good answer. It often feels like a problem, but is it? Maybe not. Maybe I’m just having fun and that’s fine.
I’m using WordPress lately because it’s easy and I don’t have to think about anything but the typing. Images are easy to add and it can do fancy things when it needs to. Sure, it’s a bit bloated and janky, but if what I do most of the time is hit “New post” and write, who cares?
I swear to god if I see one more person accuse someone else of being “complicit” with one evil group or another because they happen to use a product that is somehow remotely tangental to that group I’m going to become complicit. Fuck off.
I have so many great cameras, and I have the free time to use them. Yet I've barely been taking any photographs. Why is that? I'd love to figure it out.
I wake up every day wondering who I'm going to be that day.
Both WordPress and Hugo have things to like about them, so I keep using both because I don't want to miss out on the good things about one when I decide to use the other. It's silly, but there we are.
I impulse ordered the new Pebble smartwatch as soon as it was announced. At the time, I was looking for excuses to stop wearing my Apple Watch, and this seemed as good as any.
The watch arrived yesterday. It’s very white :). There was no setup to speak of other than downloading the app so I can pick from thousands of faces. That should keep me busy for a while. I love e-paper screens.
I haven’t spent much time playing with everything, but I feel like we’ll get along fine. My only complaint is that there’s no way to rotate the display so that (as a lefty) I can comfortably use the watch on my right wrist.
The only thing I’ve done is to add a Timer app and assigned it to a long press of the middle button. Time, weather, notifications, and timers are my primary uses for a smartwatch, so I’m covered.