Posts

Here are a few images from the first roll I ran through the Olympus OM-2n after having it overhauled by John Hermanson. The camera feels very good. ...

Fish shell welcome message showing weather conditions For some reason, I always want to know the weather conditions. I barely go outdoors, but I still like to know what’s happening. I have a few shell scripts that kick out some version of the weather. Here’s the one I use most: #!/bin/sh # Jack Baty, 2023 (https://baty.net) # Grab and parse weather info using WeatherAPI.com jq=/opt/homebrew/bin/jq # Save the response to temporary file # TODO: shouldn't this just be a variable or something instead? weatherfile=`mktemp` curl -s "https://api.weatherapi.com/v1/forecast.json?key=[SNIP]&q=49301&days=1&aqi=no&alerts=no" > $weatherfile now=`${jq} -r .current.condition.text ${weatherfile}` temp=`${jq} -r .current.temp_f ${weatherfile}` condition=`${jq} -r .forecast.forecastday[0].day.condition.text ${weatherfile}` high=`${jq} -r .forecast.forecastday[0].day.maxtemp_f ${weatherfile}` low=`${jq} -r .forecast.forecastday[0].day.mintemp_f ${weatherfile}` echo "${now} ${temp} | Low ${low}, High ${high}" Right now, this returns: Light snow 21.9 | Low 20.1, High 26.4 ...

Using GoAccess to process my web server logs is going fine. It’s nice not paying for an analytics service, but it’s definitely a messier process. I wrote a little about Filtering server logs for use with GoAccess recently, but have since tweaked things a little. One thing I found annoying was that GoAccess reports requests separated by HTTP protocol. So HTTP2 and HTTP1.1 requests are counted separately. Not what I wanted, so I discovered --http-protocol no and --http-method no. I’m always going to want this, so I added the following to /etc/goaccess/goaccess.config ...

I was tagged by Kev Quirk to complete a “Blog Questions Challenge”, so here we go. The questions are: Why did you start blogging in the first place? What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before? How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog? When do you feel most inspired to write? Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft? What’s your favourite post on your blog? Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature? ...

Back when I regularly maintained a “Spark file1”, I wrote the following on Aug. 26, 2012: Do something with a 3D Printer Me, in 2012 Today, I can finally cross that one off the list. It’s Benchy! The Bambu Lab A1 arrived yesterday, so I did what everyone does and printed the little “Benchy” tugboat. The A1 only came with 20g of filament, and of course I forgot to order more with the printer, so the starter filament is all I had to work with. It’s so cute, though!l. k ...

Ghostty is a new, platform-native terminal app from Mitchell Hashimoto. I’ve been alternating between Ghostty and Apple’s Terminal for about a week. I like Ghostty. It feels nice right out of the box. Configuration is done via a simple text file, but almost no configuration is necessary. Sensible defaults always make a good first impression, and Ghostty makes a really good first impression. Most of the early reviews I’ve read begin with raves about how fast Ghostty is. Is it that fast, though? It’s pretty fast, actually, but it’s not noticeably faster on my Mac than Apple’s Terminal. I keep comparing the two, and I find no meaningful difference in speed for anything I do with a terminal. It’s not slower than Terminal, certainly, but I suspect that all this talk about speed is partially because we like new things and because everyone else says it’s fast. We’re an impressionable lot 😀. ...

One of the things that frustrated me about Kirby last year was handling code/template changes vs content changes. I complained about it here. Ideally, since Kirby is a PHP CMS, I would do everything directly on the server. What I’ve done more often instead, is to run a full copy locally and rsync the final product (code, blueprints, content, images, etc.) to the production instance. Content is kept in plain text files, so both code and content changes need to be kept in sync. ...

It’s the same old story. I don’t know whether I want to use one or multiple notebooks. Or even if I want to use paper notebooks at all. Here are some random thoughts about my intended notebook use for 2025. Each year for the past 13 years I have ordered a Hobonichi Techo. Some years, I write in one nearly every day. Other years, I fill the first few pages, then it remains mostly blank for the rest of the year. This morning, I (optimistically, as always) set mine up for 2025. ...

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

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.