Posts

I like the idea of building my own Emacs config, so I set Doom aside and (re)built my own configuration (mostly) from scratch.

Deleting things I don’t really need is liberating.

A roll of HP5 through the Olympus Stylus Epic.

It’s been nearly a month using Ghost, so it was time to switch back to Hugo.

Some former Nik Software people are building a new tool for managing photo libraries. It’s called Aspect. I’m a sucker for any photo-related software, so I installed the beta and spent yesterday testing it. I took some notes after using it for a day. First impressions were good. I like the ideas behind Aspect. It relies on the underlying file system, so it’s reasonably transparent. It organizes things for me based on dates and events. I can control the structure. I can even change it later, and Aspect will move things around to match. ...

Every note-taking app handles file attachments differently. Most of them do it poorly. What I’ve found surprising is that I actually like what Org mode does with attachments. I might be the only one who does. The way I have Emacs configured, dragging a file into an open buffer window will prompt me with a few options, the one I use being “Attach file”. This then copies the file into a subfolder of whatever directory is configured as the org-attach-directory. This subfolder is named based on any ID property set in the Org file. This means I end up with a directory tree that looks like this: ...

All I want is Letterboxd for books. LibraryThing is the Craigslist of book trackers. Goodreads is icky. TheStoryGraph has a layout I don’t get along with. Bookwrym is decent, but doesn’t feel that great. Plus, I don’t care if my reading list is “federated”. I asked about this on Mastodon, and @johnke responded, suggesting Hardcover, which I’d never heard of. It was a good suggestion. I imported all of my books from TheStoryGraph, which I’d previously imported from Goodreads, and I was off and running. Here’s what it looks like: ...

How to export a note with images from Tinderbox and end up with a fully self-contained HTML archive.

I bought a nice Nikon FE2, but I don’t love it enough to keep it.

At the beginning of 2024, I had grand plans to Reduce & Simplify. I was also determined to use what I have. I’ve done neither of those things. It’s November. I tried for a while. Or rather, I tried a bunch of different times, which had the effect of making everything less simple. Instead of limiting the number of tools I use, I switched from one to another (in an honest but misguided effort to make things simpler). The result has not been the nice, clean, simple set of tools I had hoped for. Instead of having few dependencies and requiring little maintenance, my stuff is spread everywhere and littered with neediness. ...

I had fun today exploring my options for a browser-based workflow.

I wanted to add an :ID: property to several hundred files, but only if one didn’t already exist. I cheated and asked ChatGPT for help. It helped.

How I added a subtle link to edit the current page or post in Ghost.

There is no built-in method in Ghost for floating an image and having text flow around it. It’s a significant omission, and one which they say is “too hard” and have no plans to change. OK fine, I’ll do it myself. I found a reasonable solution in this post on the forums. Here’s how I’m using it. Add the following to the header in the code injection area: /* small images to float but not look stupid on mobile */ @media (min-width: 40rem) { .float-left-half figure, .float-left-two-thirds figure { float: left; margin: 8px 20px 6px 0; } .float-right-half figure, .float-right-two-thirds figure { float: right; margin: 8px 0 6px 20px; } .float-left-half figure, .float-right-half figure { max-width: 50%; } @media (min-width: 64em) { .float-left-two-thirds figure, .float-right-two-thirds figure { max-width: 67%; } } } Then, in a post or page, I add an HTML block before the image card I want to float (e.g to the right). ...

The Canon AE-1 Program was my first real camera. Unfortunately, I no longer own that original from 1982, so I bought another one in 2013. It’s not a great camera, but it works. I like to put a roll through it now and then.

I spent the morning of the election with my daughter and grandson. It was a nice way to spend part of an otherwise anxiety-filled day.

OK, it’s happening again. Hugo broke my site for the second time in two updates. I got mad (again) and decided it was time for us to break up. I dusted off the version of the blog that I’d built using Eleventy and started working on getting everything updated. Except it didn’t work. I don’t know what I was missing or what had changed since I stopped using it, but things were broken. I then decided that I would start fresh with Eleventy’s base blog repo. That was also a mistake. After several hours, I had built an ugly blog, without some of the features I’d wanted. I gave up. ...

I’ve been back in Doom Emacs for a few days. This is how it’s going.

I am experimenting with using Org-roam again for my notes.

I sure wish Hugo would stop deprecating things. This time it’s site.Social. My theme uses that in a couple of files, and the theme’s author is busy and doesn’t always have time to fix things right away. They now want site.Params.Social so I’ve temporarily fixed the problem myself by editing two files. In twitter_cards.html: {{ with site.Social.twitter -}} # becomes {{ with .Site.Params.Social.twitter -}} And in opengraph.html: {{- with site.Social.facebook_admin }} # becomes {{- with .Site.Params.Social.facebook_admin }} At least now the error is gone and the site builds. I’ll need to keep an eye on the PaperMod repo for a real fix. ...