Posts

Journal blog post format changes. Mimestream for email. Arq backup problems. Tweaking the PaperMod theme.

I love Blot. It’s just right.

Oh goody, another “Why I’m leaving social media post”! Feel free to skip this one. We’ve all read many like it.

Generative AI, social media, blog comments

Om on the Leica Q3. Unsubscribing from finger-pointers.

The other day I wrote this:

I’ve been head over heels in love with Arc for a long time now. So far, the only thing I don’t like about it is that there is no support for bookmarklets.

I recently found my original Fujifilm X100 in a box in our storage unit. I have such fond memories of the camera, so I knew I would enjoy using it, even today.

I restarted my Micro.blog this morning. I was feeling lonely all by myself here at baty.net, so I thought I’d revisit some old friends. I expect this will affect the types of things I post here in my daily notes, but I don’t know in what way, yet.

I go through periods during which I don’t feel much like making “art” with my cameras. This is normal, but lately I haven’t felt like taking photographs at all.

Mike Hall wrote about friends, a personal CRM for the command line. It’s a ruby gem that does most of the things I was trying to do using Emacs.

While doing some spring cleaning this week, I ran into a box of old cameras that I had marked “To Sell” but forgot about. The box had an old Olympus digital and a bunch of beat-up OM-2n film cameras and accessories. This was neat, but what I was most exited about were two cameras in particular: An original Fujifilm X100 and an Olympus Stylus Epic.

“I’m like, are we in a fucking movie right now, or what? The fuck, man?… Shit, what the fuck? I’m lost. I don’t know.”

I usually prefer reading my email using Mu4e in Emacs, but the Vim (“Evil”) keybindings have been broken since upgrading to 1.10.x. (See this PR for background). This added so much friction that I went back to Mail.app and Notmuch. Recent changes in evil-collection have fixed the issue but weren’t available yet when updating Doom. The fix for now was to (unpin! evil-collection) in packages.el. Much better!

I try to name all of my files using the file’s creation date as a prefix. For example:

Since I use DEVONthink Pro (DTP) to index and store my notes and documents, I sometimes revisit the idea of using it to create notes.

Twitter was the place I liked to be from 2006 until 2022. Or more accurately, it was the place I liked to be from 2006 until around 2015. After that, it was the place I felt I needed to be. Still, I managed to curate my Twitter feed well enough to avoid most of the awful bits. I’m a CIS white male, which made it easier of course.

It’s happening again. My love of powerful, complex software has overrun my ability to avoid tinkering.

I replaced our flaky sprinkler system controller this weekend. All by myself.

I decided that a single-player Mastodon instance isn’t ideal. It’s overkill for one person, and it’s lonely! The #local feed is just me shouting to myself. That’s no fun. What’s the point in having a giant Rails app with all sorts of moderation tools, user management, and monthy costs if it’s just me? That’s what I thought, so I’ve moved.

You may have noticed that once again things have changed around here. This time, it’s due to switching from WordPress to Blot. We’ve been around this block before, but lemme ‘splain1.

I’ve seen a number of thoughts similar to this from Shane Parrish:

At the end of each month, I convert my Org-journal entries into a nice PDF, print it, and put it into a binder.

This is not a review, but I wanted to jot down some notes after a few days in a new app that I’m enjoying very much: Wavelength Messenger. You might like to read John Gruber’s post for details.

I’ve tried so many “read-later” services that I can’t remember half of them. They’re all basically the same: visit a website, click a button, and the article is saved to a list somewhere with all the other articles I’ve saved. Some newer services get fancy with recommendations, UI improvements, social integration, etc. but they all just gather a list of articles that I almost never end up reading. But, you know, just in case, right?

I brought a Hasselblad 60 megapixel medium format digital camera to Africa with me. I took photos side by side with my film camera. The digital camera’s images were sharper. They had more detail in both the shadows and the highlights. The digital camera made photographing very, very easy.

It’s always surprising to me how many frames I don’t screw up when using the meterless M3.

I’m wondering if I should become more like everyone else. Should I post “5 Tips to improve your workflow right now!” articles on Medium? Should I be “super excited” to humblebrag about myself on LinkedIn? Should I fire up my Instagram account and splash gaudy “stories” all over it throughout the day? Should I buy some neon background lights and work on an unnecessary 90-second musical intro to my upstart YouTube channel?

Update: I think Org-roam is the right answer for most people, but I could not resist the simplicity and lack of dependencies of Denote, so I am back in Denote as of June, 2023.

When I started building a new index card note box, I followed Scott Schepard’s lead and used the Wikipedia Academic Disciplines as the overarching structure. I’ve come to dislike that system. It’s too dependent on hierarchy, and one I don’t really follow. So, this morning, when trying to install a new note about Libertarianism (topical!), I became frustrated and renumbered everything.

UPDATE: I’ve had trouble getting GoAccess to parse the logs consistently after changing the date format.

Ten years ago, Steven Johnson wrote The Spark File, in which he describes his process for keeping track of hunches, ideas, etc. in a single text file.

I’ve been tracking an issue with the way backlinks are displayed that affects my use of Org-roam. Someone (hwiorn) finally discovered a workaround when using Doom Emacs: delete the compiled version of org-roam-utils. Like this:

I’ve been a Flickr user since 2004 and a SmugMug user for nearly as long. For some reason, I prefer looking at my photos via online galleries rather than, say, my Photos library, and both Flickr and SmugMug have helped me do that.

The Leica SL2 felt inevitable. After an almost accidental run with the Panasonic S5, which I didn’t enjoy at all, I tried going back to the Fuji system. I’ve always liked Fujifilm cameras and their classic control layout. I purchased a new X-T5 and a few nice lenses late last year, but it didn’t grow on me. The X-T5 is a great camera and I had nothing to complain about. Except it just didn’t give me The Feels. Not the way, say, a Leica does.

Reading notes for ‘Why People Photograph’ In a recent post, My Antinet and Barthes’ “Camera Lucida”, I wrote about having shelves filled with books that I remember nothing about. Seems like a waste, no?

Long story, short, I sold my precious Leica M6 (Classic). I could no longer justify having two modern Leica M cameras, so I decided to keep the beautiful MP and pass the M6 on to someone else. I’m sure I’ll regret this. (It’s the second time the camera has been sold, but the previous buyer returned it, for spurious reasons). Onward!

Today I learned that I can use tags in Org files as a filter for org-refile-targets. My refile targets are mapped to org-agenda-files but limit them to only top-level headings in order to keep the list under control. Once in a while, though, I would like to make a more deeply nested heading available for refiling. I can do this by using (:tag . "refile"). Who knew?!

There are always cameras loaded with film scattered around my house. I don’t go out much, so sometimes I’ll pick up a camera and take a random photo just for the feel of it and to use up some film. These photos are almost always one of three things: Myself, my dog, or my desk/workspace.

I know that film photography and Emacs are completely unrelated, but I have been thinking about both of them quite a lot recently.

I’m tired of computers. I spent hours today rummaging around my notes and trying to figure out if I should write some new thing in Emacs or Obsidian or Tinderbox or what? It’s confusing and frustrating, and I need a break.

Somehow, for reasons unknown, I’ve rebuilt daily.baty.net using Eleventy.

The first book I read with my Antinet in mind was “Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography” by Roland Barthes. I’m not doing a book review here, but I wanted to say a few things about the process of reading with the goal “installing” notes into my Antinet.

I keep a simplified version of a Bullet Journal in paper notebooks. I write in it every day. In it, I write tasks, log meals, write journal entries, copy quotes, etc. This way of working fits my brain, and I see no future in which I’m not doing some version of it.

I can never decide which blog post format I should use on my home page(s). Should I use full posts so that all of the content is available by simply scrolling? Should I shorten each post to just a title and a short summary, making it look more consistent and easier to scan? Or maybe I should only include a list of titles, and let people dig in based on that.

I remain incapable of consolidating my blogs, social media, etc.

You all remember Evernote, right? For years (beginning in the late 2000s), Evernote was the note-taking tool for many of us. Then, they got weird, started selling merchandise and branded scanners, and made odd tangental mobile apps for some reason. Evernote seemed to have lost focus.

Am I overthinking it? Of course I’m overthinking it.

This has been a tumultuous week for me, photography-wise. Early in the week, I made this silver gelatin darkroom print of a 35mm frame of HP5 film.

I took the MP on my walk and was determined to shoot an entire roll. It was overcast, dreary, and the path I walk is pretty boring, but I did my best and made it through the roll.

I like the way prints look with a small black border around the image, like this:

The first roll of 2023. Shot in the Leica MP with the 35mm Summilux. Also, the first roll scanned using the new Epson V850.

If it behooves you, instead of thinking any more about Twitter—hit us with some PDFs, some incomprehensible sociology, a fact about your town, some poetry no one cares about, political theory that will never land, obscure social history, climate links, math things, some tech so obscure 20 people use it. We want your inner noise. Just push the gas on your own ephemeralism and launch us into the future.

In the beginning, there were blogs, and they were the original social web. We built community. We found our people. We wrote personally. We wrote frequently. We self-policed, and we linked to each other so that newbies could discover new and good blogs.

I tried, I really did. The Wise Old Internet guided me into changing my film scanning process from a dedicated flatbed scanner to using a mirrorless digital camera setup. I did everything right. I bought good equipment and the right software.

I collect a lot of “stuff” on my computer. I’m one of those lazy people who just drop most of it onto my Desktop and assume I’ll figure out what to do with it later. The problem is, I rarely actually figure out what to do with most of it.

AI continues to enthrall everyone. Here’s DHH on AI creativity vs humans:

There are some great tools for bringing web content into Markdown files, but few that offer the same utility for Org-mode (Orgdown) files.

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:

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’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.

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’ve been testing the hot new Tana app for the past week, and I’m exhausted.

In mastodon technology Shutdown, Ash Furrow writes:

The more notes I put into Org-roam, the more I want to put there.

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.

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.

I use Notmuch in Emacs for managing my email. It’s fast, powerful, and (once used to it) easy to use.

Here a few from a recent roll using the Leica M3 and the Leica 50mm Summilux-M ASPH.

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.

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.

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.

Note Pagefind is no longer used on this site, due to a theme change.

I dug out the big Linhof today and made a few self-portraits.

As much as I, ehem, LoveIt, the theme’s very theme-specific magic felt like trouble waiting to happen. And honestly, I was bored with it, so I went looking for something new.

Here are few from the latest roll of HP5 through the Leica MP. This is notable because it’s the first roll scanned using a digital camera.

When I was a kid I kept a small, fresh-water aquarium. It was fun, but I always knew that the really cool fish lived in salt water. Fast forward 40 years or so and I’ve finally put together a salt-water “reef” aquarium. I’ve started small because there seems to be quite a percentage of people who bail on them within the first year or so. I want to be sure it sticks before spending tons of money and going all-in. I went with the “beginner” BioCube 32. I set the tank up the first week of June. Added “live” rock and sand. “Aquascaping” the aquarium was fun. I think I have a configuration that looks nice and also leaves plenty of nooks and crannies for critters to hide in. I added a powerhead pump for better flow, and waited. I had to buy water!

Sometimes I notice the Leica M10-R sitting forlornly on my desk and I’m reminded that I don’t deserve it. A camera like that should be used, and used a lot. Mine mostly sits around waiting for me to take another selfie or photo of my dog. That’s a lot of money tied up in what most people do (and often better) with their phones.

I rage-quit Emacs this morning. By that, I don’t mean that I hit C-x C-c really hard, although I did do that. I mean I stopped using Emacs.

I was struggling with some recent tweaks to this blog’s theme, and while poking around I discovered that the LoveIt theme was once again being developed. I had moved to the CodeIt theme after LoveIt looked to be abandoned back in 2020. The author had simply seemed to disappear. And then, a month ago, there was this post.

The quote from Robert Greene that I posted yesterday has thrown me a little:

There was a roll languishing in the OM-2n so I finished it during my walk today. I really need to find some new subjects.

You’ll notice that I highlight short phrases in many of my daily post entries here. I think this makes it easier to scan things later. The HTML markup for this is just a styled <mark> tag wrapping the text to be highlighted.

UPDATE June 09, 2022: This post was copied and pasted from the original WordPress post. Meta! :) I’m typing this post in the WordPress editor. I don’t enjoy writing here unless I’m adding an image gallery or some other fancy embedded content. It just feels off. “So write in MarsEdit or Ulysses or something instead,” you implore.

For years, I’ve kept a paper notebook at hand. I always have a Moleskine-style bullet journal or a Field Notes pocket notebook or a Hobonichi Techo nearby. Sometimes all three.

I just sold my wonderful Leica Q2 Monochrom. This was the second time I’ve owned a Q2M and the second time I’ve sold one.

Long story short, I have successfully rationalized the purchase of a new iPad Pro and keyboard.

A week ago I did that thing where I blow up my system because I noticed I’d been doing that other thing where I spend all my time tweaking everything.

I’ve been using the Happy Hacking Professional 2 Keyboard since 2018. After a long search and many different dead ends, I’d found the keyboard for me. I still think the HHKB is nearly perfect, but there’s one problem.

I’ve had a pair of Apple’s AirPods Max for almost exactly one year. The headphones

I’ve used Zengobi’s Curio for many years when I needed a visual system for managing projects and associated files. In a recent version, Curio gained a Journal feature. It’s fairly rudimentary compared to dedicated journal apps, but I recently started testing it as a way to create a sort of scrapbook each day. It works pretty well for that. I export a PDF of the day’s entry, print it, and put it in a binder.

Had brunch at my parent’s yesterday to celebrate Mother’s Day. It was nice. My mom has been suffering from pain in her leg for a few weeks, but the combination of new meds and time seems to have helped quite a lot. I took the Leica Q2 Monochrom and made a few snaps. Here are my favorites from the day.

I have some pretty nice things. I’m fortunate and have more “stuff” than I could ever need. And yet, it seems as if I’m always buying something new. It’s just that I like to try new things, whether it’s tools, software, gadgets, or what have you. I want to see what different things feel like to have and use.

I’ve kept a list of books I’ve read as a plain text (well, technically, Markdown) file for years. I wrote about it here. The public version is rendered using Github Pages at books.baty.net. This is fine, but at some point last year I also started logging books in an Org mode file, just to see how it felt. It felt pretty good!

My Epson V750 Pro, purchased in 2009, has scanned thousands of rolls of film, slides, and prints. After making strange grinding noises recently, it has finally ground to a halt.

Org-roam is “A plain-text personal knowledge management system” using Emacs and Org-mode and I put nearly all my notes in there. While it’s easy to find notes in org-roam based on filename, there’s no obvious way to search the contents of notes. Weird, right?

The last time I rewatched “The West Wing” I was once again impressed by how good people were at their jobs. How productive everyone was. I wondered how I could be that productive.