Capture my thoughts? What thoughts?

I’ve carried one kind of paper notebook or another on my person for years. Moleskine, Field Notes, Travelers, you name it. The idea is to “capture my ideas and thoughts” while on the go. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really have many thoughts or ideas, on the go or otherwise. I can’t remember the last time I was walking or at the store or whatever and thought, “Oooh! That’s a brilliant idea, Jack! Thank goodness I have this notebook with me!” ...

October 2, 2025 Â· Jack Baty
My desktop running Omarchy

It's all upside-down (computer-wise)

i run arch btw

September 15, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

The Mylio conundrum

I’ve tried to make Mylio work a few times. Maybe this time it will.

August 28, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

Why do I keep trying Obsidian?

I know I won’t like Obsidian this time, either. Yet, I keep trying.

July 16, 2025 Â· Jack Baty
Double exposure self portrait

Duplication

Here are some (probably) unnecessary things I’ve been doing.

July 4, 2025 Â· Jack Baty
Diagram of computer layout

My updated computer setup

The new M4 MacBook Air arrived, and it changed how I have things set up around here.

June 29, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

Importing Org Journal to Day One

I wanted a different view into my org-journal history, so I imported it into Day One Plain text is great, but has limits. I’ve been journaling in plain text (.org) with org-journalsince 2018. It’s just a bunch of .org files in a folder. It’s great, and, you know, future-proof. Before Org-Journal, I used Day One for journaling as far back as 2011. Day One is pretty, powerful, and available everywhere. There are “on this day” and “today” features that I find useful. It integrates smoothly with the Photos app, and it stamps entries with the current location and weather conditions. Add fast sync on all devices with end-to-end encryption, and it makes for a darn nice journaling setup. ...

June 15, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

Hard Mode and status

Joan Westenberg, in The Cult of Hard Mode: Why Simplicity Offends Tech Elites: …hard mode is where status lives. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately. It hurts to hear it out loud. Read the article, but here are a few quotes that reminded me how far down the complexity rabbit holes I’ve traveled. And under it all is the same impulse: make it harder than it needs to be, so I can feel smarter than I am. ...

June 12, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

I've made things too complicated again

Remember my “Reduce and Simplify” goal for 2024? That was a good idea, eh?

May 7, 2025 Â· Jack Baty

Writing about tools

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

February 11, 2025 Â· Jack Baty
It's not as if I haven't been reminded of this every time I look up.

I have neither reduced, nor simplified

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. ...

November 13, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

My notes as text in one folder

I may have solved at least some of my problems caused by taking notes too many different apps. I moved all of them into ~/Documents/Notes, with subfolders per app. So… ├── Denote ├── Howm ├── Obsidian └── SilverBullet You’ll notice SilverBullet in there, my newest infatuation. But here’s the trick, I just point the default target for HoudahSpot searches at the enclosing Notes/ folder, and I can find most anything right away. You’ll note that this means I am restricted to apps that allow me to configure where notes are kept and that they’re kept in some form of plain text. That covers most of my tools. I had been using DEVONthink for this, but it’s been giving me trouble lately so I’m looking at simpler options. I’m digging it.

August 1, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Losing interest in organizing things

I’m tired of moving things around on my computers

June 10, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

QR codes and index cards?

How about I stick QR codes on index cards as a way to quickly find the original reference?

May 11, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Adding when I should be removing

Reducing complexity is never accomplished by adding complexity.

May 2, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Nuke & Pave - the half-hearted edition

A tactical, localized reset of my system(s)

March 3, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Whatever happened to my junk drawer?

I used to use Evernote as a junk drawer. Now what should I use?

March 3, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Additional backups

Derek Sivers posted about how he handles backups and it got me thinking about how I handle backups. I feel like I’m mostly covered. I use Backblaze on my MacBook Pro for continuous, off-site backups of both the internal SSD and the attached “Media” drive containing my photos, videos, etc. I clone “Media” to a separate external drive once a week. iCloud syncs my ~/Documents and ~/Desktop folders, so that should be covered. The headless Mac Mini is also using Backblaze. The Synology is synced nightly to Backblaze B2 storage. ...

February 28, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Software that sparks joy

I’m just coming off a week using Obsidian. Obsidian is really good and powerful and easy to use and extensible and probably the correct answer to the question, “Where should I keep my notes?”. I love Obsidian for a minute because of what it does and the fact that it’s not whatever I’d been using previously. It’s refreshing and finding new plugins to play with is good fun. But it’s janky. Why don’t more people complain about it being janky? It’s just blech to actually live in. It feels weird and loose and sloppy to me. ...

February 26, 2024 Â· Jack Baty

Fending off the Futz Monkey

When is trying to avoid futzing actually just more futzing?

February 20, 2024 Â· Jack Baty