I’ve rejiggered the Ghost blog I was using for this site into a dedicated photography blog. There’s a lot of cruft scattered about, and I’m using the default theme for now, but it’s a start. The idea is that it will help me focus on photography, which is something I want to do, but haven’t been doing. Sometimes I need a nudge, so baty.photo is a nudge. See Why do I need a separate site for photography? for a bit more detail. ...
Ongoing issues with choosing to journal using fountain pens.
The other day, I converted my entire TiddlyWiki into an Obsidian vault, just to see if I could. Since I still spend most of my time in Emacs, I thought it would be nice to search the vault from there. The post, From Obsidian to Emacs, by Mike Hostetler, mentioned using the Xeft package, so I thought I’d try it. Here’s my config: (use-package xeft :ensure t :defer t :config (setq xeft-recursive t) (setq xeft-database "~/.deft.db") (setq xeft-directory "/Users/jbaty/Documents/Notes/Vault/") (setq xeft-ignore-extension '("png" "jpg" "jpeg")) (setq xeft-extensions '("md")) (setq xeft-title-function #'file-name-nondirectory)) Xeft relies on Xapian for searches, so a module needs to be downloaded or built locally. I didn’t have any luck with the downloaded version, so I deleted the package, started over, and had it compile locally. The trick there was entering the prefix “/opt/homebrew” during installation, since I’d already installed Xapian using Homebrew. ...
Creating a new blog post for Hugo couldn’t be simpler. One simply creates a new Markdown file in the correct folder, making sure it contains the proper YAML front matter, and…OK, it’s not that simple. Normally I use a small lisp function in Emacs for creating posts, but that doesn’t help me on days that I don’t feel like using Emacs1. Another option would be to use the built-in hugo commands, but for some reason I never think of that. Probably because it requires that I cd to the right place and tell it what to name the file. ...
If he’s a bit manic for you, here’s part of the transcript that I’ve reformatted a bit: ...if you're a progressive, don't do this. Don't go on to the internet and go, "Hey fellow progressives, like maybe we should consider having, you know, a little - just just chill out a bit and have a bit of humility and realise that not everyone's had the opportunity to read the books we've read and not everyone's, you know, learned the lessons that you've learned. Maybe we should apply the Principle of Charity and not assume that anyone who disagrees with us has a nefarious intent and try and hear the best version of the argument, not the worst. And maybe we just need to-" They go, “Don’t you police my tone, you straight white male! Check your privilege!” ...
org-mouse is a built-in package for Org mode that lets one do some handy things using the mouse in Org files. Things like checking checkboxes and toggling subtrees. (use-package org-mouse :after org) Or just (require 'org-mouse) Clicking in [ ] Do this thing to complete it is easier than navigating to the line and hitting C-c C-c for each item. There’s no shame in using a mouse, even in Emacs. I sometimes prefer to sit back, grab the mouse, and click things. ...
I know I won’t like Obsidian this time, either. Yet, I keep trying.
What if I used Glass for my film roll posts, instead?
I like to have Make and Model information available in film scans, and use exiftool for this. I have a lisp function in Emacs that does this, but sometimes I’d like to do it from a terminal instead. So I asked Claude for help. The result was camera-exif-tui. It’s a tiny Go app that launches a TUI that allows me to select a make/model and a folder full of image files. It calls exiftool and updates the images with the selected camera info. ...
Here are some (probably) unnecessary things I’ve been doing.
The new M4 MacBook Air arrived, and it changed how I have things set up around here.
It seems I’ve finally actually “Reduced & Simplified” something.
I wanted a different view into my org-journal history, so I imported it into Day One Plain text is great, but has limits. I’ve been journaling in plain text (.org) with org-journalsince 2018. It’s just a bunch of .org files in a folder. It’s great, and, you know, future-proof. Before Org-Journal, I used Day One for journaling as far back as 2011. Day One is pretty, powerful, and available everywhere. There are “on this day” and “today” features that I find useful. It integrates smoothly with the Photos app, and it stamps entries with the current location and weather conditions. Add fast sync on all devices with end-to-end encryption, and it makes for a darn nice journaling setup. ...
Baty.net is going to move back to Ghost, I think. Y’all will I’m sure get a chuckle out of it and I’m happy for you. :) I’ve noticed that when running both Ghost and Hugo blogs, when I want to post something, my default is to reach for Ghost. It’s just easier overall. Plus, I can have that sweet, sweet @jack@baty.net Fediverse handle that I loved but didn’t want tied to my blogging platform. ...
Joan Westenberg, in The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites: …hard mode is where status lives. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately. It hurts to hear it out loud. Read the article, but here are a few quotes that reminded me how far down the complexity rabbit holes I’ve traveled. And under it all is the same impulse: make it harder than it needs to be, so I can feel smarter than I am. ...
When a simple app “cleanup” on my Mac Mini went way WAY too far.
At $10/month, SetApp is a good deal, especially if you use more than a handful of the included Apps. I’ve been a subscriber since early on. I have two Macs, so the subscription is $15/month. Still a good deal, but I did the math and realized that I could purchase most of the apps I use outright for less than a 1-year SetApp subscription for a single Mac. This wasn’t always the case. For a while there, I had a couple dozen apps installed. My goal this past year has been to whittle that down to the essentials. Here’s what I ended up with as of this morning. ...
I wrote the following in 2021 but can’t find where I posted it, and I’m feeling it again, so I’m recording it here It feels like everyone (or at least those in my bubble) is consumed by the “how” of note-taking. Tools, workflows, processes, backlinks, and on and on. Obsidian? Roam? Paper? It’s fun to explore and interesting to read about and there is no end of things to distract myself with. ...
The past week has been weird for me, blog-wise. Normally, I fire up a daily post every morning because I want to. I then keep my eyes peeled for interesting things to post about. I like posting stuff on the blog. Lately, though, I haven’t felt like it. Examples? After many years of wanting a Rolleiflex, I bought one a couple weeks ago. I’m excited about it and I have thoughts about it, so why haven’t I posted anything? ...
As of Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM, all of my sites (including this one) are being served using Caddy on a FreeBSD server from Vultr. Yesterday everything was on an Ubuntu server at Hetzner. I would have prefered to stay at Hetzner, but they don’t seem to offer FreeBSD. Why have I done this? I don’t really know. Many years ago (early 2000s), I ran FreeBSD for all our client’s servers. We only moved to Linux because “that’s where everyone was headed” at the time. I’d always liked FreeBSD, so I wanted to try it again. ...