Posts

Sometimes one really needs to go out of their way to borrow trouble.

My family and friends have always told me, “Oh, you definitely have ADHD.” I’m not inclined to diagnosis shopping, so I’ve just assumed that’s what it was and ignored it. Recently, though, my disinterest in mostly everything and lack of focus has been worse, and it’s affected my mood and my overall well-being. I decided to see if there was anything to be done about it. I spent four hours at an intake screening for ADHD. Two hours of interview and two hours of testing. The person running the tests said that the doctor wanted to “include a few additional tests, so it might take a little longer.” Fine with me. ...

The appeal of cynicism is that it makes you sound smart without asking for a whole lot of independent thought. It’s easier to tear down than build up, to assume the worst than to evaluate evidence, to sneer than to engage, to smirk rather than smile. Source: Joan Westenberg, Why Cynicism is Just Moral Cowardice We could use less of it.

I’m trying. I really am. I’ve spent a while getting my head around Darktable and digiKam. That’s no small feat, honestly. What weird software. It’s capable, but getting to where I was with Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and sometimes Capture One has been elusive. There are manuals, blog posts, and Youtube videos to consume, but, given the nature of Darktable, everyone tells me to do things differently. There are a dozen ways to accomplish every task. Which one’s best? Who knows!? ...

That’s not entirely fair. Wallace’s most famous book, Infinite Jest—1,079 pages and weighing 3.15 pounds (in the hardcover first edition)—is challenging. But Wallace wrote many other things, and some of them are quite accessible. Source: Ted Gioia, Where to Start in Reading David Foster Wallace I hope that reading and talking about DFW makes a comeback. For a while there, Book Social Media was (rightfully) aligned against sound-smart lit-bros who wouldn’t shut up about Infinite Jest. I may have been one of them, because I loved (and still love) that book, so shut up. ...

TL;DR It’s a love/hate thing, with love in the lead. Here are a few thoughts on how things are going so far. I’m still using Omarchy. I really like the tiling window setup with Hyprland. I sometimes paint myself into a corner, but mostly it makes window management fast and efficient. Workspaces on Linux are so nice. Everything on Omarchy can be done via keyboard. Once I got used to the bindings, this has made getting around, launching apps, moving windows, etc. convenient. I’m not against using a mouse, but It’s nice not to have to. ...

I’ve carried one kind of paper notebook or another on my person for years. Moleskine, Field Notes, Travelers, you name it. The idea is to “capture my ideas and thoughts” while on the go. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really have many thoughts or ideas, on the go or otherwise. I can’t remember the last time I was walking or at the store or whatever and thought, “Oooh! That’s a brilliant idea, Jack! Thank goodness I have this notebook with me!” ...

tanrax/org-social: Org Social is a decentralized social network that runs on an Org Mode file over HTTP. You can create posts, interact with groups, make replies, mention other users, create polls, or personalize your profile. All this without registration, without databases… Just you and your Org Mode file. It’s a ton of fun for us emacs nerds. Follow mine here: https://jackbaty.com/social.org

I’m feeling like a break from all this SSG-ness. I’ll see you at my WordPress blog at baty.blog for now.

How I’m pulling my Fastmail calendar entries into Emacs diary entries.

So many options. So little patience.

⚠️ Note that this doesn’t work properly. There’s a “nil” at the end. Howm has a handy menu for viewing tasks and notes. One thing I wanted to add was my Emacs diary entries for the current date. This took 3 things: First, I created a function for inserting the day’s entries from Emacs diary in the current buffer. (defun my/insert-diary-entries-for-today () "Insert diary entries for today at point." (interactive) (let ((diary-list-entries-hook nil) (diary-display-function 'ignore)) (let ((diary-entries (diary-list-entries (calendar-current-date) 1))) (if diary-entries (dolist (entry diary-entries) (insert (cadr entry) "\n")) (message "No diary entries for today"))))) (and by “I” I mean Claude, mostly) ...

It makes no difference what software I use.

I had better be right about this.

this is a question, not a manual

I got a new keyboard.

I got a different new cassette deck and it’s pretty neat. Weird, but neat.

i run arch btw

Remember that time I was trying Linux “for real” and even created a blog to write about it? It was more an excuse to play with the clever BSSG blogging engine, but still. Well, I’m doing it again. This time with Omarchy, so I dusted off the BSSG blog and pushed a quick update. But, but, Omarchy! | Jack Tries Linux. Don’t expect much. This usually lasts about 3 days before fizzling out, but it’s always a fun-but-frustrating 3 days.

New old stereo gear is wonderful