☀️ Clear +5°F

The Leica SL2-S was sold this morning. I was this close to withdrawing it. Too late now, I guess.

I wrote this back in December. Guess what I’m struggling with today:

Today I’m thinking that Logseq offers the best friction to value ratio, while still being local-first and plain text. It’s dead-simple to add notes and offers nice backlinks and graphing. The graph is unnecessary but is a free byproduct, so why not? It beats Roam for privacy, cost, and attitude. It beats TiddlyWiki for ease of use and usefulness outside of the app. Plus, the files are in Org format. What’s not to like?

I’ll give up my AirTags due to people abusing them as soon as you give up your guns for the same reason.

Say what you like about the internet, but for a certain class of underemployed male, life has become warmer, and more hygienic.

Nick Hornby, More Baths Less Talking

I’m supposed to be working on my resume but all I’ve done so far is tinker with some LaTeX templates.

I wonder if I’ll ever find a balance between Emacs, Curio, Tinderbox, and DEVONthink. Probably not. I could always just switch to Linux and that problem goes away.

☁️ Overcast +17°F

Good morning. It’s 6:30 am and I’ve been up since 3:30. I’m hungry.

Weird day. The Leica SL2-S is for sale and I ordered an M10-R (again). Yes, I know, I just got rid of an M10-R a month ago. What can I say, I missed it. I’ve also decided to focus my energy (and $$$) around the M system. Supporting two different systems was expensive and kind of exhausting. The problem is that just putting the SL2-S in the box makes me want to keep it. Still for sale, though.

I continue to enjoy Leica’s M cameras because they are wildly uncomplicated. Unlike everything else:

People who have a strong aptitude for geeky features and endless complexity simply don't see why they should be denied every possible option. And people who don't like endless features and complexity are shamed, in a sense, into accepting what the geeks are happy with, the assumption being that if they don't learn all the ins-and-outs of their cameras then it's their own fault.

☁️ Overcast +32°F

Capture One, Lightroom, Capture One, Lightroom, Darktable, Capture One, Lightroom….

One thing I’m sure I don’t need is more apps.

Remember when I said that committing to using only a single (Mac) machine was the greatest thing I’ve done for my mental health in a long time? I do, but I’ve still spent the last week or more unravelling that by trying to go all-in with Linux. I just can’t. Not yet. What I have learned, though, is that when I decide the time is right, I’ll be able to switch without too much grief.

This typewriter doesn’t get enough use, but makes a nice prop at least.

OK, I’ve had enough. No more waffling right now. I’ve deleted Capture One completely. I’ve deleted (baby) Lightroom completely. I’ve shut down the ThinkPad and put it in the closet. My photos will be edited on macOS using Lightroom Classic.

☀️ Clear +27°F

My Linux experiment continues, now that I’ve figured out how to process the Q2M files in Darktable. Printing sucks, I can tell you that. But, there’s something about using Linux that makes me feel free. I’m not beholden to anyone. No single entity can suddenly pull the rug out from under me. That’s comforting, somehow. Everything is mine to do with as I please. This is both a blessing and a curse.

I just bought a decked-out MacBook Pro (M1 Pro Max) and yet I’m writing this on a 2015 ThinkPad.

I got so tired of logging books that I just stopped reading. There, fixed!

Navel gazing as high art.

I read various Leica forums pretty regularly. I’ve learned which threads to avoid. For example: Is the M10 the last “Real” Leica?. Oh FFS.

Things I want to do are strange, simple, and unprofitable

Paul Ford

Too many of us spend way too much time trying to save a handful of keystrokes.

I wouldn’t need better window management if I didn’t have so many windows to manage.

Virtue signaling with Listening to some Neal Young on Apple Music this morning.

“Is this hotel pager friendly? I’m not gettin' a sig on my beeper.”

I must admit that a compelling reason to switch to Linux is that I could stop paying attention to Apple-related news and speculation, which is everywhere and has become boring as hell.

🌫 Haze +24°F

People who are learning are more interesting than those who claim to know.

Darktable can’t deal with the Q2 Monochrom…no lens correction. It needs lens correction. Unless I’m missing something, this is a deal-breaker. UPDATE: I found that choosing the Q2/Summilux combination seems to work. I’ve configured Darktable to automatically apply the setting, even though the UI yells that “Camera Not Found!”.

I’m happy to do just about anything that doesn’t involve “working on my resume”.

Hosting my static sites on a simple VPS means I never need worry about going over some “build minutes” limitation.

I started putting financial transactions in Ledger again. Dodged a bullet and put it away quickly.

☁️ Overcast +16°F

Great, this website and https://rudimentarylathe.wiki were affected by the recent mass-revocation by Let’s Encrypt. I needed to delete the existing certificates and force Caddy to renew them. (They live in /var/lib/caddy/.local/share). Sorry for the interruption. I’m not sure why I didn’t receive the email from them warning me to renew ahead of time.

I tried for 3 days to get my photo processing and management system workable on Linux. I failed. This is such a big part of my computing requirement that I’m afraid all-in Linux will have to wait.

The failure of wikis is that once the rush of getting everything written down is over, we often lose interest in maintaining it, so the information becomes out of date, rendering the whole thing nearly useless.

This is really nice: Rapid Photo Downloader for Linux.

☁️ Overcast +5°F

I plugged in the Mac yesterday so I could actually enjoy working with photos. What I’m finding is that I, again, miss using i3 and workspaces the way they’re set up in Regolith. I’ve been trying some combinations of Rectangle and Divvy and Better Touch Tool to see what I can get, but nothing works as smoothly and consistently. I’m about to plug in the ThinkPad for the day. Weird.

OK, there. Back on Linux. It feels good, but at the same time, feels janky. Linux thinks right, but the implementation is often spotty. So help me if I can’t figure out how to consistently copy and paste between Emacs, a terminal, and the rest of the system, I’ll throw the whole thing out a window.

Nice article about one person’s journey into Leica. Lovely photos accompanying the article, too: Leica Journey: Unexpected and Educational | fcracer

I’ve been tinkering with ideas for my next career, and re-learning Ruby on Rails was on the short list.

I’ve long admired DHH and Rails and Basecamp (the company and the product). I shipped my first Rails app in 2007. I envied the way they ran the company and how open they were about it. I lapped up all their books. I even agreed with the way they handled the whole “no political discussions” fiasco. I used to feel like he, although cocky and arrogant, was right more than he was wrong about most things.

But after reading DHH’s newsletter lately, I think I’m out.

His latest, Spotify must be afraid of canceling Rogan, right? Right?!, was the final straw for me. It wasn’t just the inane title, but that he keeps showing that he doesn’t understand the argument and insisting that “both-sides”-ism is always OK.

Neal Young doesn’t want to share a platform with Rogan. Not because Rogan “hosts guests with divergent views” because he hosts guests with demonstrably incorrect and dangerous views…and seems to agree with them. DHH apparently doesn’t understand science, either. Not really.

Anyway, I don’t want to argue with him. And I don’t want to argue about him. But, he makes me want to not use his products. Which is a shame because I think Rails is still a valid, viable, and valuable option. I just wanted to vent a little about my disappointment with someone who used to inspire me.

Maybe he’ll calm down and get over this latest mood, or at least stop writing so much while feeling the way he seems to feel. I hope so.

☀️ Clear +15°F

Got new eyeglasses yesterday. The prescription changed a bit from my previous pair. They work great, but I feel a little woozy while getting used to them.

There is a nicely-configured Thelio Mira in my shopping cart. I came close to pulling the trigger yesterday, but a clear head prevailed. So far. I know me. In 2 weeks I’ll be back on my Mac and the old ThinkPad I’m typing this on will be packed up and in the closet until next time I get the Linux itch. My thinking with the Thelio is that in order to get the full Linux experience, I should work on a faster, modern machine. There could be something to that, but mostly it’s just an excuse to buy a new toy. I’m going to sit on it for a month or two and if I still think I could switch to Linux, I’ll buy something nice to run it on.

Suddenly, Emacs is running slowly on the ThinkPad. Could it be that I need a faster machine?

It’s hard to virtue signal while using a paper notebook. (But mentioning using paper notebooks works great.)

If I could make just one photo like this one by Vivian Maier, I’d be happy:

After a morning of watching videos on Darktable I learn that it supports neither the SL2-S or the Q2 Monochrom. Too bad, because it’s not as terrible as I remember. Rawtherapee works better, but I kind of hate using it. I’m back to feeling like iOS and macOS are the only options for seriously editing my photos.

☁️ Overcast +13°F

Back on Linux this morning. I missed i3 yesterday. So far, as long as I’m not doing photo-related stuff, Regolith is working great.

My laptop is somehow (barely) picking up a local radio station and feeding it to my speakers and it’s freaking me out a little.

I’ve gotta say, I really dislike the look of the (very trendy) Cinestill Tungsten-balanced film.

I’ve been experimenting with adding highlights to text in my daily posts. The idea is that it makes scanning easier. I pick out the important parts of each entry and add a <mark> HTML tag. Then I style the region like so:

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mark {
  background: rgba(255, 255, 0, 0.3);
}

Recently, there’s been a change in org that broke my markup when exporting from ox-hugo. Here’s the comment by kaushalmodi:

Issue #540

This was a recent breaking change that fixed an inconsistency in ox-hugo (compared to ox-html). If we want to export verbatim HTML, it needs to be in .. or in an HTML export block

His suggestion to use a macro was excellent, so I did that. At the top of my posts.org file, is this:

#+macro: mark @@html:<mark>$1</mark>@@

When I want to <mark> some text, I add the macro inline, like so:

I would like to {{{mark(mark this text)}}} so that it is highlighted

But who has time to add all that markup by hand? To make it easier, I created the following function:

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(defun jab/markregion ()
  "Add a 'mark' macro to the current region (for Hugo)"
  (interactive)
  (if (region-active-p)
      (progn
        (goto-char (region-end))
        (insert ")}}}")
        (goto-char (region-beginning))
        (insert "{{{mark("))))

Now, I select a region and run M-x jab/markregion. I may create a keybinding for it, too, but for now this is fast and easy.

⛅️ Partly cloudy +9°F

Good morning!

I’ve decided to work on my Mac today, after a few days on Linux. Apple people tend to complain a lot about the sorry state of macOS, but coming back after time away is a stark reminder of the sheer level of refinement in macOS. It’s just…nice.

The Thelio Mira from System76 is tempting. I’d like to try a modern, powerful desktop machine running Linux. I mean, how else can I do a fair comparison with my MBP? 😜. So far I’ve avoided the temptation, because, I just bought a top-spec’d MacBook Pro, remember? If it weren’t for wanting to edit photos with good software, I’d be much more tempted.

Living down a rabbit hole of photo editing processes, techniques, and software does nothing to improve my photography, so I’m backing off a bit and putting everything in baby Lightroom for a while.

I’ve changed tagging for financially-related items in my Org daybook to “:money:” because I’m tired of trying to decide/remember between :finances:, :finance:, and :financial:. Now it’s just :money:

Just for fun, and as a fallback for 1Password, I’ve started using Pass: The Standard Unix Password Manager again. It’s been years. I started with a fresh .password-store/ and will fill it as needed.

☁ Overcast +17°F

Installed the Timimi plugin for Firefox again on the ThinkPad. I’ve not been using the wiki for daily notes, but I do like having it for, well, a wiki. Since I’m using Firefox on Linux, Timimi is the simplest option for saving TiddlyWiki files.

I moved a lot of my synced files on the Mac out of iCloud Files. This was mainly due to wanting them available on Linux, but also because iCloud has been flaky lately. I’m always surprised how well Syncthing works, and how easy it is to install. Previously, I’d configured it once and it ran and ran and I’d forget it was there. You know, like Dropbox used to. So far, this time it was even easier to set up and has been running without issue.

I’m thinking I’ll reserve using my micro.blog for posting images. Mostly.

Pretty happy with Org-roam. Every day I get closer to calling it and living there for my notes.

☁️ Overcast +18°F

Alice and I went for our walk at 3:15 am. It’s getting ridiculous. I went back to bed when we got home and now it’s 6:00 am and that feels much more reasonable. I’ve been running on five hours sleep a night for a while now and I don’t think it’s good for me. I’m not 20 years old.

Interesting new Emacs package: nobiot/org-remark: Highlight and annotate any text file with using Org mode

I can’t believe I still have to look up how to remove a git submodule every time:

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git submodule deinit -f themes/daily-jane
rm -rf .git/modules/themes/daily-jane/
git rm -f themes/daily-jane/

Listening to music on Linux. The opposite of using Roon:

A week or so ago I removed the analytics (Plausible.io) script from this site and, to my amazement, I don’t miss it. I didn’t expect that. I’ve never been obsessed with site views/stats. Curious, but not obsessed. Now I’m not even that curious. However, I do like to keep an eye on overall traffic and things like 404s, so I’ve re-installed GoAccess on the server so I can pop in as needed and review. GoAccess processes the server logs directly, so no need for embedded/tracking scripts.

🌨 Light snow, mist +18°F

I’m having thoughts about my computing environment…Deep Thoughts™. I’m (almost) seriously considing Linux on the desktop and iPad Pro/Mini for mobile. WHAT!? I’ll probably get over this in an hour, but right now it’s top of mind and feels reasonable. It’s before 7:00 am so, no, I’ve not been drinking. What’s going to ruin this is not limitations with Linux, but limitations in iOS.

Against my better judgement, I spent the first half of yesterday continuing to try Regolith Linux. Honestly, on the big monitor, with a decent mouse and keyboard, I could see a path to Linux full-time when it comes to general computing. This hit home after I’d switched back to my MacBook Pro and after a few minutes thought, “Well, this kind of sucks.” I was referring to window management on macOS, and the fact that there isn’t any. It’s all manual and I noticed that I spend a lot of time micro-manging windows. I immediately missed the Workspaces and i3 setup in Regolith. Didn’t expect that! I started to feel that after a couple more days, I would be able to have windows placed right where I want them, but without actually needing to put them there. That would be cool.

And on Linux I have my beloved Emacs and a decent web browser. I have a nice terminal. I have competent file management. I have control.

What I don’t have is a good way to handle photos. Photo management and editing on Linux is where things start to fall apart. The tools are better than I remember, but they’re no match for Capture One, Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. It’s not even close, really. I like Darktable and Shotwell and Rawtherapee well enough, and they get the job done, but they’re still too janky to live with all the time. In fact, I feel that way about much of Linux; it gets the job done, but there are a lot of rough edges that take the joy out of it. But just imagine if I could sand those smooth.

I woke this morning unable to stop thinking about all this. And wondering. I’m writing this while sitting at the ThinkPad plugged into the big screen and learning and swearing, but feeling pretty good. This is currently classified as an “experiment”.

☀️ Clear +16°F

Didn’t I just say I wasn’t going to do this?

☁️ Overcast +13°F

It’s 4:00 am and we’re back from our walk. I think this is a new morning record. Now what?

Thinking maybe this today:

I love how the KEF LSX speakers sound, a lot, but they don’t work consistently with Roon. This makes me feel less badly about Leaving Roon. I’m now either using AirPlay or a stereo mini cable.

I had no idea that Cake covered War Pigs. Awesome.

Spending half my day yesterday installing Regolith Linux on an old ThinkPad was fun, but useless. I should stop wasting my time like that.

For a time, I thought I’d stick with my Mac on the desktop and use Linux for my portable workstation. Linux is fun to tinker with. There are dozens of variations try. It’s got the right philosophy about how things should work and how computing should be. I like having it around, but I don’t like using it so much.

For years I’ve used a desktop Mac and a MacBook. Weary of dealing with maintaining two machines and worrying about sync, configuration, etc., I recently consolidated my computers down to one Mac. It’s so much better having only one machine. I now realize just how much time I’d spent managing everything. It was a lot. Moving to a single-computer setup has been the most productive and satisfying change I’ve made in years.

And yet there I was, installing Regolith because Paul Ford mentioned it on Twitter.

I know no one cares but Regolith on Ubuntu + nord theme is a nice way to do a tiling window manager without plowing through a pile of Arch wiki pages where no one will tell you the default modifier key because you should set that yourself.

That’s all it took. I thought, “Hey, that looks neat, I should throw it on the old ThinkPad!” So I did. And Paul was right. It was nice.

I’m infatuated with tiling window managers, and Regolith takes a neat approach to merging i3 and “regular” Ubuntu. I plugged it into my 32" monitor, where a window manager shines. I thought, “I could learn to live like this.”

But, after a few hours, all of the little inconsistencies begin to show. I start to miss the little quality-of-life touches that I take for granted on macOS. I once again need to concern myself with sync. And oh, the new MacBook Pro M1 Pro Max is a glorious piece of hardware (and software). Unmatched, as far as I know.

One day I may go all-in on Linux. That’s the only way it could work for me. That day is not today, so I need to stop spending too much time thinking it might be.

⛅️ Partly cloudy +16°F

Good morning. It’s 4:03 am and I’m already finished walking with Alice. I don’t make coffee until 5:00 am so I’ve got an hour of nothing to do but chat with all of you. Hi! 👋.

I don’t understand the need for “writing prompts”. Unless writing is your job, or you’re working on a book, if you don’t feel like writing, maybe just don’t write and stop worrying about it?

Paul Ford’s “scratchy mouth feel” describes how I feel about a lot of things:

Chrome simply started to get a weird, scratchy "mouth feel"; I feel the same way about Chrome as I do about quinoa in a salad.

I still can’t stop thinking about Linux. Or playing with it, for that matter.

Is it unreasonable to want a life using software that doesn’t try to upsell me every three seconds?

I’ve been thinking about killing Roon and moving to Apple Music. But I have a lifetime license to Roon, so that’s weird. The trouble is that Roon doesn’t work for me unless it’s also connected to Qobuz, which costs me $15/month.

Currently, I pay for Qobuz, Spotify, and Apple Music. That’s nuts. Qobuz is fine, but it’s no longer the only decent Hi-Res option in town. I’ve never liked Spotify, but I have family that lives there. I have an Apple One family account, so I’m already paying for everyone to have Music.

Apple Music is not a great app and it’s not the smartest streaming service, but I get it with the rest of the Apple One subscription, so that’s where I’m headed.

I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and wean everyone from Spotify. And I’m going to have to wean myself from the wonders of Roon, for streaming, at least. Roon still works great with my local music library.

So, I’m not actually leaving Roon. I’m leaving Qobuz, but the effect will be similar.

☁️ Overcast +41°F

Good morning. It’s 4:50 am and I’m probably going to install Regolith today on the old ThinkPad. I swore I was done tinkering with Linux but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I’ve had to remove my plausible.io analytics scripts due to very slow loading.

I’m writing this using Emacs in a fresh Regolith install runnin on my old ThinkPad. About to try a deployment from here as well. If you can read this, I’ve successfully wasted an entire morning.

☁️ Overcast +28°F

I’m not even going to mention that this site is once again built using Hugo. You’ll just have to figure it out on your own this time.

After spending way too much time trying to get blockquotes with citations to look right, I’m considering just using Quotebacks here. Like this:

Quotebacks makes it easy to reference content and create dialogue with other sites by turning snippets of text into elegant, self-contained blockquote components.

At least I’m using a local copy of quoteback.js so that’s one fewer remote dependency I guess.

I’ve added a Changelog to track updates to the way this site works or looks.

Found this photo of my parents. Halloween, 1971.

I wandered through national news today and was forcefully reminded that the bad guys continue to win. It’s taking what little wind I have left out of my sails.

Comparing Static Site Hosts; Which Is The Best Host For A Static Site? | Kev Quirk demonstrates the disappointing performance I’ve had using Cloudflare Pages. Right now this site is back to a bunch of files running on a VPS under Caddy.

Nope. Not even considering trying it. No way. Regolith 1.6

☀️ Clear +19°F

What do I get in return for all the time and thought I put into taking notes? I mean, I put a lot of thought into it. What’s in it for me? For example, I’ve been meticulously recording my meals since December. I can tell you how many times I ate fast food or had pancakes for breakfast. Big whoop! There is almost zero lingering value in doing it other than that it’s neat. Is “neat” enough to justify the effort it took to set up the logging process and the ongoing effort of recording every meal? It’s fun to set up, but if I’m honest, it’s not useful. I don’t need more excuses to play with my note-taking tools. I should stop doing it.

It doesn’t need to replace everything else to win. It just needs to exist.

SL had the same reaction as me when to trying to use an iPad as a mobile computer:

The experience sucked. Replacing a general purpose computer with a jacked-up surveillance sensor package is not my idea of solving the problem of mobile computing.

How I Switched To Plan 9

All wireless things stop working eventually. Usually before their expiration dates.

It’s so prevalent that it mostly goes unnoticed, but the entire internet is a cacophony of people and companies yelling, “Please engage with me!”

I would like pricing pressure for software to go up, but for subscriptions to go down. I’ll happily pay $250 for a great app, but don’t want to pay more than $12/year for a read-it-later service or newsletter or magazine. The number of apps I need is rather low. The number services, news, and entertainment options I need approaches infinity and I just don’t have the budget for that.

☁️ Overcast +32°F

Writing about blogging with Tinderbox, in Tinderbox, over at my Tinderbox-generated blog. But also, mentioning it over here, in Org mode, using Emacs to generate a hugo-built blog. I’m fun, right?

🌫 Mist +31°F

Logseq is for those who don’t know Emacs. Hell, just about everything is for people who don’t know Emacs.

I’m afraid to commit to anything because what if I end up wasting my life on it? So instead, I waste my life doing nothing.

Spending a bit of time in the darkroom today. I caught up on my contact sheets so far. There was a roll of Fuji Superia in the Nikon F-100 so I fired off a bunch of flash shots to finish the roll. I’m going to process it in my old C-41 chemistry and hope for the best because I don’t want to mix up a fresh batch.

Take that, dark mode nerds!

It’s hard giving up Emacs for writing and publishing. Correction, it’s impossible. I’ll probably continue to create a trickle of posts here, simply because I enjoy the environment so much.

What if I used this for personal journaling? I could publish a local website with all my deepest thoughts and Feelings.

Altogether, America has too much venting and not enough inventing

Derek Thompson, A Simple Plan to Solve All of America’s Problems

As part of my 2022 Daybook project, I’ll be rebuilding this site using Tinderbox. Same URL, but the RSS feed will move to index.xml.

⛅️ Partly cloudy +23°F

Unpacking: a zen puzzle game about unpacking a life (via Alex) looks like something I’d enjoy.

I cut my blogging teeth wanting to be Rageboy. We lost Chris Locke this week. Here’s Doc Searls.

Funny that Alex mentions Tinderbox, since I’ve been keeping up with my Tinderbox Daybook for a week or so. And I also posted again to notes.baty.net, which is built using Tinderbox, just for fun. The scary part is that I started thinking about combining the notes blog and my daybook into one giant Tinderbox document for 2022. How cool would it be to have all my stuff in one place (that’s not Emacs)? It solves the related problem of public vs private notes. Using Tinderbox makes it easy to publish only what I want, where I want. I can also pull in parts of private outlines and notes into the published areas. Hmmm.

That does it. I’m creating a brand new Tinderbox document with the intention of combining my Daybook and Blog documents for 2022. This will work nicely as a way to avoid doing anything actually useful today. I may never actually use it, but building it should be fun.