Daily.baty.net is running Kirby now

Iā€™ve migrated daily.baty.net to Kirby CMS. It has been a static site managed byĀ TinderboxĀ for a long time. I love Tinderbox, but now that baty.net is back on Hugo, I wanted a playground for learning more about Kirby, without moving the main blog back and forth between Hugo and Kirby. So, here we are. Your RSS feed is probably complaining right now. Sorry about that.

March 29, 2025 Ā· 66 words
Black and white photo of burlap wrapped around trees

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Yes, I changed blog platforms again. Itā€™s been like a week, so it seemed like weā€™re due for a change. :)

Partly cloudy 26.1 | Low 21.2, High 48.2 Ā· 86 words

A change to my everything.rss feed

For a while, I tried maintaining a combined RSS feed that included posts from all my sundry blogs. I kept it at /everything.rss. It was managed as part of my WordPress blog, and since Iā€™ve stopped using WordPress, Iā€™ve been redirecting /everything.rss to the feed for baty.net, which is either /feed or /index.xml, depending on my blog platform of the day. I think that instead of that, Iā€™ll piggyback off myĀ @batybotĀ account on Mastodon.social. I crosspost most stuff from my sites to @batybot viaĀ EchoFeedĀ already, and Mastodon offers an rss feed for each account. Mine isĀ https://mastodon.social/@batybot.rss.Ā ...

March 22, 2025 Ā· 150 words

Removing journal posts from the RSS feed

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

February 12, 2025 Ā· 130 words

Tuesday, February 04, 2025

Writing Desk (2025). Nikon FM2n. HP5 @800. Letā€™s test the idea of continuing with daily journal posts as separate ā€œthingsā€. Iā€™ve subscribed to a year of Wired Magazine. For $6/year, including the print edition(!), itā€™s a pretty good deal. ...

Partly cloudy 24.1 | Low 23.4, High 26.6 Ā· 66 words

Hello again, Hugo

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

February 3, 2025 Ā· 217 words

Floating images in Ghost

There is no built-in method inĀ GhostĀ for floating an image and having text flow around it. Itā€™s a significant omission, and one which they say is ā€œtoo hardā€ and have no plans to change. OK fine, Iā€™ll do it myself. I found a reasonable solution inĀ this postĀ on the forums. Hereā€™s how Iā€™m using it. Add the following to the header in the code injection area: /* small images to float but not look stupid on mobile */ @media (min-width: 40rem) { .float-left-half figure, .float-left-two-thirds figure { float: left; margin: 8px 20px 6px 0; } .float-right-half figure, .float-right-two-thirds figure { float: right; margin: 8px 0 6px 20px; } .float-left-half figure, .float-right-half figure { max-width: 50%; } @media (min-width: 64em) { .float-left-two-thirds figure, .float-right-two-thirds figure { max-width: 67%; } } } Then, in a post or page, I add an HTML block before the image card I want to float (e.g to the right). ...

November 8, 2024 Ā· 165 words

The pros and cons of moving back to Ghost

OK, itā€™s happening again. Hugo broke my site for the second time in two updates. I got mad (again) and decided it was time for us to break up. I dusted off the version of the blog that Iā€™d built using Eleventy and started working on getting everything updated. Except it didnā€™t work. I donā€™t know what I was missing or what had changed since I stopped using it, but things were broken. I then decided that I would start fresh with Eleventyā€™s base blog repo. That was also a mistake. After several hours, I had built an ugly blog, without some of the features Iā€™d wanted. I gave up. ...

November 6, 2024 Ā· 505 words
Self-portrait with M3 (2022)

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Weā€™re back on Hugo

Clear 37.0 | Low 36.5, High 59.7 Ā· 146 words

Eleventy

Iā€™m back to using Eleventy for my blog

October 2, 2024 Ā· 233 words

Adding Expires headers to Caddy

Improving site performance by adding Expires headers in my Caddy config.

September 9, 2024 Ā· 141 words

Micro.blog revisited

Back on Micro.blog after some time away.

August 27, 2024 Ā· 237 words

Who am I responsible to here?

Whenever I change blogging platforms or domain names or simply post to several places, I feel a twinge of guilt. How will my ā€œaudienceā€ feel about the changes? Does it confuse things? I sometimes get comments like, ā€œI have trouble finding things youā€™ve written because theyā€™re all over the place.ā€ I donā€™t get a lot of traffic, but itā€™s also not zero traffic, so I feel some responsibility. But why? I am not writing for money or influence or popularity. I write to better understand what Iā€™m thinking about, and sometimes share the result. I write so that I have a record of those things. I write, almost entirely, for me. ...

July 17, 2024 Ā· 198 words

Writing a blog using Tinderbox

TinderboxĀ is an unusual, powerful, quirky, and amazing piece of software. I donā€™t understand why more people donā€™t use it for everything. Maybe because it costs $298 and thatā€™s expensive by todayā€™s app store race-to-the-bottom pricing situation. Itā€™s worth every penny, though. Before Emacs came along, I putĀ everythingĀ into Tinderbox. These days, I use Tinderbox for specific projects that benefit from its unique features. I also maintain my blog atĀ daily.baty.netĀ with it. ...

June 15, 2024 Ā· 122 words

Small company blogging tools and the Lindy effect

There are times I donā€™t feel like blogging the hard way1. When that happens, I look to simple, hosted, CMS-based blogging tools. Recently, Iā€™ve been experimenting with Pika and Scribbles. I like both of them. They are both simple, clean, easy, and inexpensive. Choosing either of them for a blog would be fine. There is one thing that concerns me a little, and that is the hobby nature of these tools. I donā€™t mean to be dismissive by calling them ā€œhobbiesā€, but I canā€™t help but feel that these kinds of tools are always at risk of being abandoned when their authorsā€™ attention shifts to something new. ...

May 22, 2024 Ā· 227 words

A Nope page

In the spirit of /Now and /Uses and /Hello pages, Iā€™ve created a /Nope page. Itā€™s for keeping track of things I donā€™t like or want to do. Itā€™s a work in progress, but itā€™ll probably see more updates than my now page šŸ˜„

May 6, 2024 Ā· 44 words

Monday, January 15, 2024

Losing interest in everything. And some blog notes.

Low 6.1, High 13.5 - Light snow Ā· 439 words

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

After yesterdayā€™s Kirby->Hugo-Kirby debacle, Iā€™ve been thinking about why I spend so much time farting around with and on my blog. Fair question, and one I donā€™t really have an answer to. I guess itā€™s my little place on the internet and I like to have the furniture arranged just so. But ā€œjust soā€ changes all the time, so I keep trying new configurations. Itā€™s fun. Also useless, and nobody but me cares, but still. ...

Low 29.2, High 32.3 - Light snow Ā· 75 words

Tuesday, January 09, 2024

Have you ever been so enamoured with plain-text-static-html publishing that youā€™re willing to burn down a month of implementing a blog using Kirby CMS in order to go back to using Emacs and Markdown and Hugo? I have.

Low 30.5, High 33.9 - Heavy snow Ā· 38 words

Prose.sh

I donā€™t need a new blogging platform, but if I did, Iā€™d certainly be looking atĀ Prose.sh. Itā€™s blogging via sftp and rsync, which sounds awesome.

January 8, 2024 Ā· 26 words