Posts

People make fun of me for frequently changing the way I do things. This is not undeserved. I like to try things. That’s me ¯_(ツ)_/¯. But as a counterpoint, sometimes I stick with things for a long time. Today’s example is shaving. I was so annoyed by the price of disposable blades for my razor that I started shopping for alternatives. What I found was safety razors, nice shaving cream, and a brush. I use a Merkur safety razor, Vulfix brush (Warning1), Taylor of Old Bond Street Almond shaving cream, and Shark double edge razor blades. I’ve been using this exact setup since 2005. ...

Whenever I review my recent photos, I am reminded that I prefer film. Film is fun, if sometimes frustrating, to shoot. Film cameras are cooler. And I love the results.

I do a lot of things that turn out, in hindsight, to have been a complete waste of time. Journaling in my paper notebook/scrapbook is not one of them.

Mike mentions disabling Alfred and going back to using Spotlight as an app launcher. I’ve been having similar thoughts. I use Raycast, and its latest release notes are mostly around features of the $8/month subscription version. I thought, there’s no way I’m paying monthly for what’s basically a glorified app launcher, which brought me back to thinking about Spotlight. My first app launcher was Quicksilver and it immediately became an intregal part of using a Mac. From there I moved to LaunchBar and then to Alfred before settling on Raycast. I still sometimes fire up LaunchBar because it’s great for navigating the filesystem. And it’s faster. ...

⚠️ This blog is no longer running Kirby, but I left this here just in case. I’ve recently whittled my servers at DigitalOcean down to a single 2GB instance running Caddy. When I started playing with Kirby, I tried getting it running there, but had issues with php-fpm and Caddy not playing well together, so I spun up a hosted instance at (link: https://fortrabbit.com/ text: Fortrabbit). Running Kirby doesn’t require a database or anything fancy, just a web server and PHP, and it bugged me that I couldn’t get it working, so yesterday I tried again, and finally figured it out. I’m writing this down so that I don’t lose it. ...

Now that baty.net is running on Kirby, I’m moving this content to a new domain: v13.baty.net

I spent the afternoon with my new grandson yesterday. His name is Lincoln. His middle name is Jack. She gave him my name and that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. Proud grandpa holding Lincoln The Kirby experiment continues. I did some work on it this morning. You might notice that the home page now shows a grid of recent posts under the latest Journal entry. Also, the Posts page shows a simple list of posts. No covers or anything. I found the cover images made the page too jarring or erratic or something. ...

How long do we all think my Kirby experiment will last? It’s a fair question.

The Kirby experiment has been fun, but I’m not sure I’ll finish anything useful.

I spent some of the morning writing a new function for generating posts in Hugo. Then, I spent the rest of the morning building out a scaffolding in Kirby. This can’t end well.

A lisp function for generating either Page Bundles or normal Markdown files when creating new Hugo posts.

How to fix URLs in RSS feeds when using relative paths in page bundles in Hugo

I’ve been having thoughts of more Linux. I’ve got MINT running on the little MacBook Air, but also glanced at the ThinkPad Carbon running Pop_OS that’s sitting on a shelf. It would be fun to play with, but then I remembered that the most productive move I’ve ever made was to stick with running one OS on one computer. Some day that may be Pop_OS on a Thinkpad, but right now it’s macOS on a MacBook Pro. ...

Blogging options. Where I’ve landed.

As much as I love Tinderbox, I’m wondering if it will continue to make sense long-term as a blogging engine. I get along great with most of Tinderbox’s features, but export is one that has eluded me for going on 20 years. I can muddle my way through, but it’s always a challenge. This blog’s export templates have become complex enough that I don’t want to touch anything, for fear of breaking something. The HTML/CSS is aging and janky, but the thought of updating it is daunting. I mean, look at this thing… ...

A few snapshots from our walk on the pier in Grand Haven this afternoon. The weather was beautiful and so was the waterfront.

Links should looks like link. Let’s bring back blue and purple.

I keep a lot of files in a lot of folders, but I’m inconsistent in how I organize them. This means I too frequently have trouble finding things, so I’ve made another attempt at fixing the problem. I’ve tried all the popular “systems”. From PARA to ACCESS to Johnny Decimal, but everything has felt either too prescriptive or too loose. And they all felt like I was living in someone else’s space. I don’t want to memorize or check the “rulebook” to figure out where I should put something. ...

While looking for a way to enable xmlrpc in this Siteground-hosted WordPress installation, I ran into this: RSS continues to struggle with maintaining traction, and this doesn’t help.

The notebooks I’m actively using right now. Seriously. We all know that I have too many blogs. What’s less obvious is that I use too many different notebooks. Here’s what’s currently in rotation: A yellow legal pad. It’s nice to just throw stuff on the top page without thinking. Leuchtturm 1917 A5 Notebook (lined). This is my sort-of bullet journal. I keep lists and notes here, mostly. Hobonichi Techo. This is my calendar/planner. I keep appointments and important dates here. I also try to jot down a quick summary of the day or a small drawing representing something that happened. Field Notes “Dime Novel” edition. I recently found this on a shelf and thought it too pretty to ignore. This is likely to become my next journal, even though I’ve cheated and started writing in it already. Midori MD Notebook (lined). This is only for journaling. I like the paper and the 7mm lines. Index cards. I can’t decide what goes on index cards, but I keep them everywhere, just in case. Usually, I write quotes on them so I can pin them to my bulletin board. I also have maintained a half-assed Zettelkasten on the cards, but that’s mostly died on the vine. Is this too many? I don’t know. Some days it feels like a huge mess and I worry that I’m writing something in the “wrong” place. Other days, it’s perfect and I like having the options. ...