Posts

We are born with hearts that want to leave a mark on the world. This ability is not lost, it is taken from us. Mike Monteiro, How to draw an orange

Currently, my blog has two types of posts, Journal and Post. Journal entries are comprised of things I collect or think about during each day. I post one per day. Posts are your typical blog post. Posts are (usually) a bit longer and are about a single topic. ...

AlphaSmart Neo 2 I started free writing again a couple weeks ago, but this time I’m doing it digitally, using the AlphaSmart Neo 2. I dove hard into “Morning Pages” after reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, but it didn’t last long. I mean, c’mon, there’s no way I can consistently write 3 lined pages, longhand, every morning. ...

I “settled” on using notmuch for my email, but now I’m reconsidering that decision. Notmuch is great, but using it forces me to have two email stores. One is IMAP (via Fastmail). The other is my local notmuch database. Mbsync keeps things kind of synced, but it’s really only a few flags. Notmuch doesn’t delete or move email on the server. This means I’m managing, for example, my Inbox, in two places. It’s not hard, but is it necessary? ...

The other day, while bored, I shuffled around the house and burned through a roll of film, just for something to do. I took photos of random stuff that I use or see every day. The photos were boring af but, for some reason, because they’re film I think they’re kind of cool. But are they? No, they’re not. Film photography is fun, and the paraphernalia is awesome, but a boring photo is still a boring photo. Here’s an egregious example. HP5 from the Nikon F100 on the left. Nikon Zf with an HP5 film recipe on the right. ...

You are all a bunch of sick freaks.: The worst part is how you enable each other. “Hey guys, just finished my basic home automation setup”, and then you post a system diagram that looks like the blueprint for a nuclear reactor. Fourteen Docker containers just to manage a suite of ‘internet of things connected shitware. I enjoyed this :).

Heh, Dave noticed that I bought a new camera and now he’s thinking about new cameras. ...

In a desperate attempt to spark some enthusiasm for photography, I bought a Nikon Zf. I know, this is not the best approach, but it’s what I did so here we are. I’m jotting down a few quick thoughts and first impressions. (This isn’t a review. Just notes to myself about the camera). Nikon Zf The Zf1 is meant to replace my Leica SL2. The SL2 is a terrific camera, but it’s so big and heavy that I never take it anywhere. With the Zf being smaller and lighter, I figured it would make more sense as an “everyday carry” camera. ...

Linus Torvalds (Mastodon): I’m a card-carrying atheist, I think a woman’s right to choose is very important, I think that “well regulated militia” means that guns should be carefully licensed and not just randomly given to any moron with a pulse, and I couldn’t care less if you decided to dress up in the “wrong” clothes or decided you’d rather live your life without feeling tied to whatever plumbing you were born with. And dammit, if that all makes me “woke”, then I think anybody who uses that word as a pejorative is a f*cking disgrace to the human race. ...

I’ve decided to exclude “Journal” posts from the RSS feed. Thing is, I like how it feels to write stuff here knowing that it’s not “going anywhere”. If something shows up that is particularly brilliant, I’ll create a separate post. Since most things are decidedly not particularly brilliant, I’ll feel better keeping it to myself (and the handful of loonies people who actually come and visit the website). If there’s an outcry, I’ll put things back. Or maybe set up a separate feed just for the journal entries. I dunno. ...

I wish I’d stop writing about the tools I use to write about the tools I use.

I was so bored today that I grabbed the first camera I saw with a partially used roll (the Nikon F100) and walked around the house snapping anything at all. One of the shelves in my office ...

I got big into TiddlyWiki around 2018, when I created my Rudimentary Lathe wiki. For a few years there, I put stuff into it daily. I sometimes drift away to something New/Shiny, but I always end up back in TiddlyWiki. Off the top of my head, here are a few things I like about TiddlyWiki: ...

Now that I’ve solved my Notmuch sync problems, I’m more inclined to move ahead with converting other content into emails and indexing them using Notmuch. I thought I’d start with my blog posts. ...

I hesitate to use org-goto in my Org mode files because I find the UI for it to be confusing. In a recent post, Streamlining Navigation in Org-Mode using an adapted org-goto, James Dyer makes some nifty improvements. The TL;DR is this: (setq org-goto-interface 'outline-path-completionp) (setq org-outline-path-complete-in-steps nil) Now, the target list is a simple completion window showing the entire outline.

You’ll notice that baty.net is back to using Hugo1. I really like Kirby, but every time I use a platform that’s not fully static, I get twitchy, and I got twitchy. I’m using a new theme, Anubis2, which I find to be easy to read and just the right amount of boring. It doesn’t have all the features of the PaperMod theme I was using, but it’s simpler, and simpler is what I was after. ...

When I have two Emacs windows split side-by-side in a frame, calling org-todo opened a full-width window at the bottom of the frame. This would be fine, but then when dismissing the selection window, it would wipe my previous window layout and I’d be left with a single giant window. I found this to work: (setq org-use-fast-todo-selection 'expert) The default, I think, is “auto”

Sometimes what looks like selfishness is really just self care.

I wasn’t planning to put journal posts here. I don’t like how they fill up the archives with a list of dates. Yet, here I am. ...

I’m happy using Fish for my shell. One thing I’d not gotten around to after switching is finding a good directory jumper. The original z doesn’t work well with Fish. I used to use fasd and autojump, but thought I’d look around for something new. For some reason, I’d never heard of zoxide: A smarter cd command. Combined with zoxide.fish: Tab completion and initialization for zoxide in fish shell, zoxide does the job nicely. ...