Posts

AI continues to enthrall everyone. Here’s DHH on AI creativity vs humans: Why shouldn’t the same be true of AI generated novels, plays, or movies? What realm of creative production does not benefit from the out-of-the-norm inferences that computers have already proven they can make within the bounds of chess and go to great effect? Is what we call human creativity all that different from a large language model anyway? A distillation of observations, inputs, mimetic tendencies, and a wetware random generator? ...

There are some great tools for bringing web content into Markdown files, but few that offer the same utility for Org-mode (Orgdown) files. For example, I use Markdownload extension all the time. It works great with nearly every site I use it on, but instead of Markdown, I’d prefer having Org syntax, so I’ve worked around it by creating a function1 which converts the current region from Markdown to Org. (defun jab/md-to-org-region (start end) "Convert region from markdown to org, replacing selection" (interactive "r") (shell-command-on-region start end "pandoc -f markdown -t org" t t)) I copy the Markdown from the Markdownload window, paste it into an Org buffer, and run the function. It’s not perfect, but until someone creates an “Orgdownload” extension, it’ll do. (Pretty please, will someone create an Orgdownload extension?) ...

I’m a latecomer to AI, but I just had my first real AI revelation moment while using OpenAI’s ChatGPT. I asked it an honest question that I had and got a complete, sensible, and correct answer. It’s like if Google had a brain, or if I asked an assistant to look something up for me and report back. Here’s part of the thread: Figure 1: Me, chatting with a computer about Emacs ...

I’ve recently switched from using Org-roam to using Denote for my notes. Org-roam is powerful and cool, but I prefer the more straightforward approach of Denote. I keep all my notes in Denote, including notes about current projects. For example, we’re planning to remodel our kitchen. This is a project and so I have a Denote file named “20221130T130143–kitchen-remodel-2023__house_project.org”. In this file, I keep a list of TODOs. In order to see these TODOs in my Org Agenda, I need to add the file to org-agenda-files. This can be done a few ways, but all are manual. I am forgetful, so I wanted a more automated way to keep my org-agenda-files up to date with Denote projects. ...

I’m overwhelmed by social media right now. Visiting Twitter just makes me anxious because it’s become an even bigger shit-show and all anyone can talk about is how much of a shit-show it is. And Mastodon is almost worse, since the only topics there right now seem to be the Twitter shit-show (but everyone calls it “birdsite” for whatever stupid reason) or how Mastodon is or isn’t confusing or is or isn’t racist or else over-explaining what the “fediverse” means to the future of the internet. ...

An update to my process for printing and reading long-form web articles

A fresh new theme always feels good

It seems I’ll never be able to decide where to publish my “Daily Notes” blog entries. I waffle between here on baty.net, the wiki, or my old blog dedicated to daily posts, daily.baty.net. I’m once again leaning toward writing them on the wiki, since they can be back/linked to/from my other notes about everything. It’s also super simple to create posts there. And, for some reason they don’t seem to disappear down-river like they do on normal blogs like this one. ...

I’ve been testing the hot new Tana app for the past week, and I’m exhausted. First, I don’t need a Zettelkasten. If you’re being honest, you probably don’t either. And yet, we spend hours or days learning the “proper” way to build one. Then we set up our new system, using paper or digital or both, roll up our sleeves, and waste time putting stuff into it. The worst part isn’t the putting of stuff into my PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system. The worst part is all of the tinkering around where to put stuff and how to classify/tag/organize it. ...

In mastodon technology Shutdown, Ash Furrow writes: I have sad news that I have decided to shut down the mastodon.technology instance. In accordance with the Mastodon Server Covenant, the server will be shut down no earlier than December 1, 2022. Ash Furrow I’ve been on the Mastodon.technology instance for nearly 5 years. It’s been great, but given the coming shutdown I needed to find a new instance. I almost gave up on the whole Fediverse. After all, I’ve been on Twitter for nearly 20 years already. Never had to move or change anything. That’s of course no guarantee, but you know. Plus, it’s Twitter. ...

The more notes I put into Org-roam, the more I want to put there. My Org-roam directory has always been in ~/org/roam, meaning that my database was limited to files I put in that directory. The rest of my org files have been in ~/org, so they’re out of “reach” of Org-roam. Sometimes, though, I wanted link from, say, my Daybook.org file to one of my Org-roam files, thereby making that daybook entry part of my org-roam database. ...

I splurged on a new Apple Studio Display for my home office. It’s only been 24 hours but I couldn’t be happier. I wish it wasn’t so expensive. Even the “base” model is too expensive. And no way I’m paying another $400 just so I can adjust the height. That pisses me off a little, but the display is gorgeous, so all is forgiven. Here’s why I bought one: My 32-inch LG was too big. I know that sounds crazy, but too much screen real estate is a distraction for me. I wanted 5k. Whenever I switched between the (4k) LG and my internal Retina MacBook Pro monitor, the difference when reading text was pronounced. Moving to the internal Retina display felt like putting on glasses. I wanted built-in speakers and camera. I keep the MBP in clamshell mode, so I needed to have extra speakers on my desk and didn’t like the clutter. The hardware is beautiful. I stare at my monitor nearly all day, every day. The Studio Display is simply nicer looking than anything else I’ve seen. This alone doesn’t justify the purchase, but it sure helps. I’ve taken the LG to my temporary office in our old building, so it’s not like it’s going to waste. The new Studio Display is a great upgrade, though. ...

I’m trying something with TiddlyWiki. My public wiki has over 3,000 entries. As much as I try keeping notes in my array of Org-mode files, I almost always find what I’m looking for in the wiki instead. I’ve also kept a local, private “Lab Notebook” wiki in TiddlyWiki. It competes with my Org-mode daybook and journals, though, so I’ve neglected it. It occurred to me that I’ve enjoyed using TiddlyWiki for public notes. However, I can’t only keep a public wiki, because not everything belongs “out there”. Just most of everything. That’s where the Lab Notebook comes in. ...

I use Notmuch in Emacs for managing my email. It’s fast, powerful, and (once used to it) easy to use. There are a few oddities I’ve learned to work around. The first is with deleting messages. The manual for Notmuch states: Notmuch does not support, nor ever will, the deleting of messages Notmuch manual I’m ok with this, since Notmuch provides a way to essentially bury deleted messages using tags. I don’t necessarily need to actually delete the message file. Any message tagged with +deleted is hidden from searches unless explicitly included. Ignored tags are set in ~/.notmuch-config like so: ...

Here a few from a recent roll using the Leica M3 and the Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH. Mom and Dad. Leica M3 Dad playing mini-golf on the Quest. Leica M3 Molly. Leica M3 Michigan Fucking State. Leica M3

Emacs can be ugly, but it doesn’t have to be. Above we have the highly-polished and thoughtful iA Writer on the left and Emacs on the right. I’m using Doom Emacs in “Zen” mode, which is basically a tweaked version of Writeroom-mode. My tweaks include using iA’s Quattro font as a variable-pitch font and a little spacing via line-spacing. (add-hook 'writeroom-mode-hook (lambda () (setq line-spacing 0.5))) iA Writer is wonderful for editing Markdown files. Might even be “nicer” overall than Emacs for that purpose. It’s just so smooth, you know? But, Emacs is Emacs and that’s tough to beat. I alternate between them. It helps that I’ve made them look similar. ...

Last week I decided that I’d like to write with a bit more discipline than what I’d been doing in the journal entries, so I fired up a new Ghost instance at RudimentaryLathe.org. ...

I attended our annual family reunion in Newaygo this weekend. It’s always great to see everyone. I shot a roll of HP5 with the MP and 35mm Summilux. Aunt Joan and Uncle Bob Playing cornhole Smiles all around My cousin Aaron Judy and Norma

Dired mode in Emacs is fantastic, but one little thing that annoyed me was that the directory listings show file ownership and permissions, taking up space with information I almost never care about. I started down a rabbit hole of figuring out how to hide those columns. I spent wasted an hour on my way to discovering that, of course, there’s a built-in way to do it: dired-hide-details-mode. Well, that was easy. ...

Note Pagefind is no longer used on this site, due to a theme change. I was made aware of Pagefind via a post by Bryce Wray. Pagefind is… Pagefind is a fully static search library that aims to perform well on large sites, while using as little of your users’ bandwidth as possible, and without hosting any infrastructure. Pagefind.app They had me at “…without hosting any infrastructure”. The theme I used to use included a nice search using Lunr. My new theme uses Algolia, which I don’t love because it involves a separate, commercial service and requires rebuilding and pushing an updated index to the Algolia service every time I post something. ...