Medium Posts

How I’m using Lightroom

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 11 Jun 2024 16:17:57 +0000

I left Capture One for LrC partly because Capture One’s catalog features feel weak compared to LrC. LrC has everything and does it all pretty well. Its ecosystem is unmatched. Capture One is powerful and awesome, but the company is leaning hard into its Professional Photographer In a Studio market. I’m not one of those. C1 is also rather expensive. Instead, I’ve been using LrC with a single catalog containing every image I have. It works fine, and for $10/month I get both versions of Lightroom on the desktop, the mobile app, and Photoshop. Yes, it’s a subscription, but one that is hard to beat.

So why bother switching to the new Lightroom? Fair question. It’s mostly because I want to use Lightroom. It’s just nicer in most ways. It looks good, it’s clean, it’s faster, and (regardless of claims otherwise by Adobe), it’s the future.

Earlier attempts to switch failed. This is because Lightroom has always depended 100% on cloud storage. That bothers me just enough that I get turned off by it and go back to something that’s local-first. Well, recent versions of Lightroom let me edit files directly from folders on disk, just the way I like it. This is even nicer than LrC because there’s no need to import anything first. Just browse to the folder and start editing.

Once I’m done culling and editing, I select the “keepers” and press “Upload NN photos to cloud”. This does just what it says. From that point on, I abandon the local file and continue any edits using the cloud version. It’s nice being able to import photos from a card at my desk, do some basic culling, then move to the couch with an iPad or laptop and take it from there. My original files are where I left them, untouched, in nice, tidy, organized folders.

I still export any photos with significant edits to my “ Digital Print Archive”, just in case. This is a nice way of working.

Originally published at https://baty.net on June 11, 2024.

Losing interest in organizing things

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 12:17:15 +0000

Putting everything where it belongs has always been a pleasure for me. “Mise en place” and all that. I find comfort in knowing that a thing is where it should be and that I know where that is.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed that I dread deciding where that place should be. I’ve started to avoid my Monday morning routine of reviewing various inboxes and moving their contents into proper folders. The whole process has lost its luster.

I spent a few days recently reorganizing everything using the Johnny Decimal system. This was fun and helpful, but now I don’t feel like dealing with it. The JD numbers only seem to get in the way. I’m not using it properly, probably, but any new file without an obvious place to go ends up sitting on my Desktop or wherever while I avoid dealing with it.

It came to a head this morning when I was cleaning out my DEVONthink inboxes. There were maybe 30 files that had nowhere to go. I couldn’t decide where to put them. After staring at them for too long, I gave up and came here to whine about it.

To add a note in any of the above apps, I just type the note. Tagging and linking are available, but optional. Bear and TiddlyWiki don’t create a new file at all. Howm creates one but I don’t have to care where it is or what it’s called. I’ve grown to like this way of working. Bear has taught me to that using tags might be good enough.

With local LLMs getting faster and easier, I suspect that manually organizing files will be come less important. Let technology do it! 😁

I’m tired of organizing things. As someone who has always espoused the meticulous use of folders and consistent file names, I’m starting to feel like dumping everything together with a handful of tags and calling it good.

previously, previously

Originally published at https://baty.net on June 10, 2024.

Out with the HHKB. In with the REALFORCE?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 15:52:54 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I think the HHKB might be the greatest keyboard ever made. If all the other keyboards had the same, or nearly the same, layout, I might never consider switching to anything else. But the HHKB has a non-standard layout. This introduces a bit of friction when moving between my desktop Mac and the MacBook Pro. I do this several times every day.

The other fancy keyboard I own and love is the original REALFORCE K2. The K2 has a normal layout, function keys, and arrow keys. It also has my beloved Topre switches.

Occasionally, I drag out the K2 and see if it makes my life easier. The short answer is that, yes, it does. The Delete key is where it belongs. The Tilde key isn’t at the top right(!). I can jump between the K2, the MBP, and iPad keyboards with no jarring layout surprises.

REALFORCE and HHKB keyboards

I’ve tried this before and failed each time. However, I’ve been using the K2 for a couple of weeks with no strong urge to stop. It’s the longest I’ve gone without the HHKB in years.

That said, I’m typing this on the HHKB. You know, just for the nostalgia of it. It was a mistake, because now I’m reminded how perfect the HHKB is. Maybe I’ll just have to adapt to life with two different keyboard layouts.

I promised myself I’d stick with the R2 for as long as I could. It’s possible that it’s been that long already.

Originally published at https://baty.net on June 4, 2024.

Speed is my enemy

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 02 Jun 2024 14:15:28 +0000

My handwriting isn’t pretty. It’s not even always legible. I’ve realized that this is because, when writing by hand in a paper notebook, I start writing one of the letters from later in the word, before finishing the one I’m on. This means I spend half my time compensating for mistakes.

Another problem with speed is that it makes me clumsy. I knock things over and spill things. I believe this is because my brain has already moved on to the next thing before completing what it’s currently doing. It’s quite frustrating.

When I deliberately try to think and move more slowly, things happen faster. That sounds like a contradiction, but not having to rewrite words or clean up spills makes everything move along at a more consistent pace. And I don’t swear as much.

I struggle to slow down, though. If I stop paying attention, the clumsiness returns. Meditation helps. A pattern I’ve noticed is that the more consistently I meditate, the more my brain is able to align itself with what my body is doing. Sounds weird, but ever since I started paying attention to the way speed affects my abilities, things have improved.

Originally published at https://baty.net on June 2, 2024.

The gravitational pull of Emacs

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 12:09:52 +0000

I want things to be simple and without distraction. I want to avoid futzing all the time. To this end, I often try to move away from using Emacs for everything. Emacs is not simple, no matter how hard I try to force it to be simple.

So I pull out the usual inventory of simple writing and note-taking apps, trying to make them fit. Telling myself that this is better for me.

I spend time actually using all those beautiful and simple apps. I love them, and the whole thing starts out with feelings of excitement and relief from the urge to tweak things in Emacs. Everything seems easier. My pinky is relieved. Futzing is reduced to nearly zero.

However, it’s not long before I begin to miss the things I’d spent years building for myself in Emacs. I miss Org-mode. I miss Dired and Magit and Howm and Denote. I miss the ridiculously flexible and powerful export features. I miss using something that feels like it was made just for me. Something free and that I have complete control over.

I soon forget about all the time I’d wasted spent futzing with init.el or writing little lisp functions to do some silly and likely unnecessary thing that I love.

Then I’ll find myself needing to open an old .org file. I launch Emacs, and I’m suddenly faced with my familiar, comfortable editor. After getting what I need from that .org file, I open my org-agenda just to see what I might have missed. Then I clean up my ~/Desktop folder quickly using Dired. You know, while I’m there.

It occurs to me that I might have been premature in moving away from Emacs 😆. I can feel it happening again: the return. I create a new org-journal entry, just for the hell of it. These entries usually begin with something like, “Uh oh! What I’m I even doing back here?!” It feels familiar. Feels like home.

One hardly notices the feeling of being sucked back into using Emacs. It just happens. It’s like gravity. And you’re simply there again.

Originally published at https://baty.net on June 1, 2024.

A Remarkable Tablet

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You’ll find a paper notebook near me most of the time. Writing on paper helps me remember things better than typing notes into an app on a computer. Because I’m a visual thinker, writing on paper helps me find things later. I tend to remember, spacially, where I write things; as in, “It’s in the lower left corner toward the front.”

I thought Apple’s iPad and Pencil would be ideal for taking notes. They aren’t. The combination of iPad and Pencil is an amazing bit of technology, but using an iPad as a notebook sucks. Writing on an iPad feels like using a somewhat clumsy input device through glass onto a computer. I tried the screen covers that are supposed to make writing on an iPad feel more like paper. They don’t. And worse, the rest of the iPad’s features (along with the entire internet) are always right there, lurking behind the glass, waiting to distract me.

The reMarkable tablet is billed as “the only tablet that feels like paper,” so I was of course intrigued. Skeptical, but curious. I wondered if it could really replace my paper notebooks even after the iPad failed.

Turns out that, yes, it can.

I love the reMarkable tablet, and here’s why.

It really does feel a lot like paper. The first time I wrote on it I was like, “Woah, that’s nice!” It’s enough like paper that I’m not distracted by how it feels.

I love the hardware. The device looks and feels great. Solid. It’s as thin as a half-used legal pad. The pen is light but not too light. And speaking of the pen, I bought the fancy one with an “eraser”. The eraser takes a minute to get used to, but is exactly the right thing. The pen doesn’t use a battery, so there’s never that fear of not being able to write because I forgot to charge it.

I love the look of the screen. It looks like paper. There’s no backlight, which many consider a missing feature. I don’t. It’s very easy on the eyes. It’s cool that I can choose the type of “paper”. No more fretting about which type of notebook to buy. Should I choose lined paper or do I go with a dot grid pattern? Doesn’t matter, now I can have all of them any time I want.

Battery life is great. The battery lasts long enough so that I’m not always thinking about the battery. I charged mine a couple days ago and it’s now at 87%.

It’s always ready. Using an iPad for writing is acceptable if I’m specifically sitting down to write for a while, but it’s less useful for general note taking. The reMarkable is always ready. I have mine set to sleep after 20 minutes. If it does happen to fall asleep while I’m thinking or doing something else, I just tap the button at the top left and it’s ready to go in less than a second. The iPad, on the other hand, needs to sleep much sooner if I want the battery to last through a couple of meetings. And when the iPad does fall asleep (as it always does) I have to tap to wake, then swipe up, then lean over so FaceID works (and it often doesn’t, so then I must also enter my pass code). This makes the iPad an unacceptable replacement for paper. The always-ready feeling of the reMarkable might be the most meaningful difference between it and the iPad. It’s not as ready as paper, but it’s close.

I love the lack of features. What I love most about the reMarkable tablet is what it doesn’t do, which is just about everything. There’s nothing else there. I can write and organize notes and sketches. That’s it. There’s nothing lurking behind a swipe or a notification. If I want, I can see all my notes on the companion apps on my Mac and iOS devices. I can convert my handwriting to text and email it to myself. That’s how I wrote this post, in fact. It worked great.

Many of the reviews I’ve read have focused on all the features that the reMarkable 2 doesn’t have. They miss the fact that those missing features are the greatest feature of the reMarkable. The reMarkable tablet is not much more than a stack of flexible notebooks, and that’s all I wanted.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on February 21, 2021.

Analogging

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

It only takes a few seconds to write something down in a notebook, and look what it gets you. It gets you an immutable, permanent record of something in a cool, personally unique format. It produces a physical artifact that will last for generations.

For a few years, I recorded each movie I watched and each book I read in a large notebook…just one line for each entry. But, as often happens, I was sucked into doing it digitally instead because convenience or search or whatever. This is a shame because what do I get for having a text file or Roam graph with a bunch of movies listed? I get a boring, digital, ephemeral text file that doesn’t really exist anywhere as a thing.

I really want to have that thing. But I kind of also want a searchable, sharable record at the same time. So, I did some math.

Let’s say that it takes 2 whole minutes to go get the notebook, record a book or movie in it, and put the notebook back on the shelf. And let’s estimate that I read two books each month and watch 4 movies each week. That’s what, 18 entries per month. Assuming I enter each one as it happens, that’s 36 minutes per month. In reality, I probably enter everything all at once each week rather than one thing at a time. This knocks it down to maybe 10 or 15 minutes per month.

I think I can find an extra 15 minutes per month for such a lovely permanent record. And if I can find another 15 minutes I can record everything digitally as well, for when I want something to search.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on February 2, 2021.

No one cares about my content. Medium can have it.

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 16:21:04 +0000

I have always thought that everyone should “Own their content” as well as the platform it’s published on. Basically, you should run your own blog on your own server at your own domain. Lately, though, I kind of stopped thinking about this.

Of course, some writing is vitally important and should be preserved. Links should never break, etc. I understand and agree.

But my writing doesn’t really matter. It’s certainly not important. I mean, what if (GASP!) the site I post my random thoughts on just goes away one day!? What if they change the ToS or whatever? Or introduce Ads!?

Do I care? I thought I did, but perhaps not.

Can you tell I’m considering posting directly to Medium and letting them handle the hosting, distribution, stats, comments, CDN, etc.? I’m talking myself into not caring about something that I thought I cared deeply about, and it’s a little scary. I’m trying it on to see how it fits.

This post, then, is not syndicated or cross-posted from anywhere else. It only exists here in Medium¹. What a world!

¹Of course I copied and pasted the published text into DEVONthink. I’m not stupid! :)

I wish podcasts would go away

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

You know what I hate? I hate when I’m reading a nice article or blog post or whatever and the author mentions something that I might be interested in and helpfully links to it, but when I click the link, I find myself staring at an embedded audio player that says “1:39:06” somewhere on it.

Well shit, it’s a podcast. Never mind, I guess.

I mean, I do want to learn about the thing, but to do that I don’t want to wade through two minutes of unnecessary intro music followed by ten minutes of two dudes humble-bragging and laughing at their own jokes, then a Squarespace ad, and then 30 minutes of stuff I’m not interested in. Or 75 minutes. Or 10 minutes. How am I supposed to know where it is without listening to the whole stupid thing?

It’s the same with video content, but at least with video I can often scrub through visually and get close to what I came for. With audio I’m stuck either click-guessing or listening at like 3x and neither of those are good options.

I want anything not intended as entertainment to be published as a blog post. That way, I can easily skim it or search it to find what I came for. I want to be able to copy the useful bits for my own use later.

Many people love podcasts, obviously, and I wouldn’t want to take that away from them. On the other hand, podcasts bury good information in audio, making it hard to find and use. I’d prefer text, thanks.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on January 16, 2021.

It’s not a good darkroom, but it works

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 21:14:58 +0000

My last house had a proper darkroom. It was a little janky, but there was a big sink, room for three enlargers, a wet side, a dry side, etc.

When I moved into my new house, I originally planned to turn an extra room in the basement into a shiny new darkroom. That didn’t happen, so I’ve been using the bathroom instead. It works fine.

Here’s my fancy darkroom.

The worst part of the whole thing is that tiny faucet. At minimum I should put in a tall one. As it is now, I need to fill a 1qt measuring cup, and then use that to fill containers. It’s a pain. The HomePod is nice because I can just tell it what to play in the dark.

I don’t have a fitting for the faucet to run a hose into the washing tray, so I just let the faucet pour into it.

I ran some string across the shower to use as a hanger for drying prints and film. Works great.

Here’s the meat of the operation. This is the bathroom closet, converted into the “dry side”. There’s room for this Leitz Focomat V35 enlarger. The V35 is a fantastic piece of equipment, but only enlarges 35mm film. I’m considering something that can do medium format as well. I have two 4x5 enlargers in storage but there is no way they’d fit. I can, however, make 4x5" contact prints on 5x7" paper. I love making those, so that should do.

There’s room for all sorts of photo paper and chemicals. I’ve only been making enlargements up to 8x10" so some of this is no longer needed but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. I also store my film scanner here.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s my darkroom. I was planning to not shoot any film in 2021 but I don’t think that’ll stick, so I dusted everything off and mixed up a fresh batch of chemicals in preparation for spending more time here.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on January 12, 2021.

What might I use Craft for?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 09 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Kevin asks, “I’m curious to know what kind of stuff you are tinkering with in Craft Editor?”. Good question, but I don’t have a great answer yet.

The short version is, not much.

Craft is a new-ish notetaking app for the Mac and iOS. It’s quite pretty and rather fancy. I of course try every new app for notes, so I have been playing with Craft for a couple of weeks.

Craft immediately reminded me of Notion.so, but I don’t like using Notion, so I dismissed it at first. After tinkering a bit, I grew to see it as a simpler, faster tool than Notion. It seemed to include the useful bits without all the hoo-ha of Notion.

So how might I use it? Well it’s certainly not going to be a replacement for Roam Research.

Roam has transformed the way I keep records and take notes. None of its competitors have tempted me away for any length of time.

I remain all-in with Roam for my daily notes.

Then, there’s Emacs.

For a few years I used Emacs for everything. Too many things, if I’m honest. Today I’m down to using it for notes on certain projects and for document creation. I’d like to move away from Emacs eventually.

I love LaTeX and Org-mode, but man, what a pain it all is to get right. I tweak and I tweak and I tweak. Personally, I love the way LaTeX renders and typesets documents. The people I share those documents with are less enthusiastic. I get, “Can’t you just send me a Google Doc?” a lot. No, I can’t send you a Google Doc. I don’t like Google or its Docs, so Craft could be a good option for the document creation tasks I now use Emacs for.

Craft makes it easy to create and share good-looking and easy-to-use documents, so to answer Kevin’s question, I’m considering Craft for creating documents I intend to share. I don’t know yet if that will be worth paying for, but it’s where I’m headed.

(I also posted this as a Craft document, but I’ve copied it here in case I delete my account.)

Originally published at https://www.baty.blog on January 9, 2021.

I stopped forwarding my baty.net

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 18:08:37 +0000

I stopped forwarding my baty.net email to Hey.com a couple weeks ago. I grew uncomfortable with the idea of not “owning” my email. This morning I re-enabled forwarding. I just really like how Hey works and missed it. I like the screened-out-by-default policy. I like being able to easily control which senders I’m notified about. Also, it’s just pleasant to work in. MailMate is awesome, especially for my work email, but I enjoy using Hey for personal messages. I’m currently reading my personal email with Hey, but then jump over to MailMate to reply, since Hey doesn’t yet support custom domains. Not sure what I’ll do once they do.

Bi-directional linking between anything using Hook

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 12:40:58 +0000

A few apps have offered some form of bi-directional linking, but it was Roam Research that made it famous. I’ve been using Roam for more than a year and it has transformed the way I take notes. It’s the way Roam does bi-directional linking that has me hooked.

Roam is great at connecting nodes within Roam, but the missing, er, link, for me has been the connections between files and other apps. For example, I’m not using Roam for my todo list, but I don’t like using my todo list for notes, either. If only there was a way to link all these things together somehow.

Enter Hook — Find without searching

Hook is basically a tool that lets me connect things that are related to each other on my Mac. I can connect an email in MailMate with a task in Things or a Github issue or a note in DEVONthink or a blog post or…you get the idea. I can even connect my notes in Roam with stuff in nearly any app or file.

What’s really helpful is that when I link something to something else, the link goes both ways. That means that if I’m viewing a file in the Finder I can, for example, link to the web page from which it was downloaded.

Another feature I’m experimenting with is “Hook to New”. This reminds me of using Org-noter in Emacs, but lets me annotate everything and without having to use Emacs.

I’ve been using Hook to New as a way to annotate files and web pages. For example, while reading a web page I trigger Hook (Command-Shift-Space) and hit Command-N. This creates a new Markdown document, opens it in BBEdit, and creates a Hook link from Safari to the note and from the note back to the page in Safari. The difference between this and putting a link and notes in Roam is that I can jump to the notes directly from the web page, while I’m reading it. And back again.

Previous attempts to integrate Hook into my workflow have failed. This time, however, I’ve learned from Roam the value of backlinks, which gives the whole concept a better chance of sticking.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on January 3, 2021.

Where should I be writing things down?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My grandfather once asked how much paint he should buy in order to paint his garage. My dad said, “Hang on.”, went into his office and came out two minutes later with a piece of paper and said, “We used just over two gallons of Benjamin Moore white from Ace Hardware when we painted it last time in 1983.”

My dad doesn’t have a fancy note-taking system. He sometimes jots things on notebook paper or a receipt and puts them into his filing cabinet. Even so, he can always find things. I think this is because he never ever thinks about his process. He doesn’t worry about creating a capital-W Workflow. He just keeps what he thinks he might need later and tosses the rest.

A new year is approaching and it’s time to review my own notetaking process… again. You see, unlike my dad, I overthink the shit out of my Workflow.

For example, what should I do with my journal? Should it remain in Org Journal or perhaps move entirely into Roam? How about Day One? Or TiddlyWiki? Paper? What is a journal anyway? I don’t use journals consistently. For example, where should I record that I changed the filter in the refrigerator? That’s not really a journal thing, but then what is it?

Perhaps a better question is, why record when I change the fridge filter at all?

I read a lot of articles about note-taking, journaling, Zettelkastan, and on and on. Learning how other people do things is interesting, but when I dig a little deeper I notice that most of these articles are written by people who seem to only be writing about note-taking or the broader topic of “productivity”. They don’t actually do anything with it.

If I’m honest with myself, I must admit that I fall into this group. I don’t need fancy tools or systems for taking notes. I like them, but I don’t need them for what I’m doing. I’m not doing any deep thinking or analysis or study. I mostly just want to write things down so I can look them up later. A plain text file on my Desktop and a little grep could handle that just fine.

The thing I need to determine is whether the fun I have playing with note-taking systems and tools is worth the stress and complexity and confusion it causes. I’m beginning to think not. I’m beginning to think I should stop writing so many things down and just stick to the things I may actually need later. And I should do this in simple tools which do little more than let me look up the specific things I want to know.

Do I need a formatted list of contextual backlinks in Roam showing me details around every time I changed the fridge filter? Probably not. Is it cool to have that? Definitely. So, I guess my goal over the coming weeks is to determine whether I should prioritize cool tools or my sanity when it comes to taking notes.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on December 26, 2020.

Can the Realforce R2 keyboard replace the HHKB?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Realforce R2 and HHKB

I’m convinced that the greatest modern keyboard is the Happy Hacking Keyboard Professional.

The HHKB is tiny, well-made, and uses Topre, the fanciest of switches. But, it doesn’t have dedicated arrow keys. It doesn’t have dedicated function keys. And it uses an unusual layout that works great, but can be confusing when switching between various keyboards (e.g. the HHKB and the MacBook Air).

I started looking for a different keyboard. I wanted Topre switches and a more standard layout. I also wanted arrow keys. I found the Realforce R2 TKL.

Realforce R2 (Mac)

The Realforce R2 is very expensive and the Mac version is hard to find. I ended up ordering mine from an eBay seller in Japan and it arrived a week ago. I’ve had a chance to use it for many hours so far, and it’s great, but I’m not sure it can replace the HHKB permanently. Here’s why.

The R2 is built very well. It’s heavy, solid, and, while unassuming, looks great. The Topre switches are everything I’d expect. And look at those arrow keys! I like having function keys that double as controllers for volume, playback, brightess, etc. And there’s a single dedicated key for swapping between function key modes.

So what’s the problem?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a great keyboard. The issues I’m having are minor and I don’t know how significant they’ll be over time, but still…

The larger keyboard puts me farther away from the trackpad. I didn’t realize how great it was with the HHKB to have the trackpad right next to where I’m typing. Like right next to it. Those few inches of extra reach thousands of times a day make a noticeable difference.

The Escape key is too far away, also. Again, just an extra inch or two but as a Vim mode user, Escape is one of my most-frequently used keys. (No, I’m not changing the vim bindings.)

The Realforce keys have variable resistance, meaning the outside keys, used mostly with a pinky, require less pressure to activate than the centermost keys. This is noticeable and mostly a good thing, but the outer keys are so very sensitive that I often accidentally type a “;” just by resting my fingers on the home row.

And what about those arrow keys? Well again, they’re a tad far away. The arrow keys on the HHKB are accessed via a function layer, which was a pain to learn, but they are so close to the home row that I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the trouble of having to reach for them. I mean, I’ve already gone through the learning curve and have gotten good at using them on the HHKB.

The strangest thing I’ve noticed is that with all those extra keys hanging off the right side, it feels like I’m using the R2 off-center. I know, it shouldn’t matter, but I notice it. It feels off, somehow.

Anyway, none of these issues are deal-breakers. The Realforce R2 is a fabulous keyboard. I highly recommend it, but I’m not sure I love it as much as I do the HHKB.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on December 24, 2020.

I got drunk on text files and accidentally spent the weekend with Emacs

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 29 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Emacs and I broke up recently. I felt I had to move on after years of destructive codependency. It wasn’t Emacs, it was me.

With so much newly-found free time, I began flirting with all manner of sexy tools. No longer did I feel stuck in the same rut and same routines. I could use a mouse. I could work in the cloud. I could mingle with various specific, proprietary, and visually stunning apps of all kinds. Point and click, point and click. It was liberating!

Over the recent holiday, I thought I’d take the time to clean out my digital closets and get a little organized. My desktop was riddled with screenshots, receipts, and other detritus I’d been ignoring. And I don’t even want to talk about my Downloads folder. Yikes. It felt good getting through that.

I went from ~/Downloads to ~/Dropbox. There were a few folders there with names like “notes”, “old-notes”, “org”, “obsidian”, etc. I figured I’d just sneak in, zip things up, and put them somewhere in ~/archive.

I cracked open the “old-notes” folder. It was full of Markdown files. They’ve been there for years, undisturbed. I figured it wouldn’t hurt anything if I just opened one or two to see what it was like. That’s when it started.

Markdown files were still configured to open in Emacs on my Mac, so when I double-clicked just that one little file, it opened right up. And there it was, Emacs, uninhibitedly presenting me a beautiful plain text file.

It was such a wonderful sight I couldn’t help but bring up dired and wow, there the rest of the files were, lined up, waiting to be read, edited, searched, controlled by git, forever. One thing led to another and my entire frame was filled with windows and buffers; some split vertically, some horizontal. All simple plain text and mine to do with whatever I wished.

Evil mode’s vim bindings came rushing back, as they always do, and before long I was flying around in so many files I started to get dizzy. Next thing you know I was opening other folders, other files. .org, .txt, .md, .html, you name it. God, it felt great. We had so much fun.

By the time I woke up two days later I had completely reconfigured Emacs, cleaned up some unused packages, moved my tasks to Org mode, committed and pushed everything to Github.

I don’t know yet if Emacs and are going to get back together permanently, but we sure had a great weekend.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on November 29, 2020.

Daily minutiae and record keeping

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 12:28:24 +0000

I like the word “minutia”. I’ve been thinking about the various little things that happen throughout a typical day as daily minutiae. Things like “Paid the gas bill” or “Had a minor headache” or “Changed oil in the car”. It’s all trivial and boring, but I find that I value having a record of these things.

But where to record all of this minutiae? If you know me, you know that I can never settle on one single note-taking app or system. Looking for a “better way” is what I like doing, even though it becomes frustrating when I deadlock over the decision. And I’m deadlocked right now about where to keep records of the “minute or minor details” of my day.

It’s not a problem of not having a good place to keep things, it’s that there are too many good places I could keep things. Here are the current contenders.

Tinderbox

Oh my, how I love Tinderbox. It’s one of the most powerful and flexible note-taking tools available. Tinderbox is where I started recording the day’s minutiae back in 2006. I maintained a Daybook file for years and it was wonderful.

Day One

But at some point things like iOS and Linux became interesting to me, and since Tinderbox is unabashedly Mac-only, I drifted away from it. Lately though, I’ve removed iOS and Linux from the table and that puts Tinderbox right back in the running.

TiddlyWiki

Day One is a fantastic journal app for Mac and iOS. I’m not consistent with it, but I do try to record one or two entries with photos each week. I love the book printing features. I’m just not sure it’s suitable for all the little bits and bobs of the day.

Roam

Ah, TiddlyWiki. Hidden beneath your cute name is a very capable and flexible tool for keeping notes. Add to that the fact that it’s all done in a single, free, local-first HTML file and you’ve got a strong case for use as a place for record-keeping. Of course I use it for my public wiki at rudimentarylathe.org

Org mode

A late-comer to the game, Roam Research is amazing and game changing. I’d say it has single-handedly re-invigorated the entire genre of note-taking apps. It took many of the ideas of Org mode and TiddlyWiki, added proper outlining, and mashed them up into something new and very cool. Roam is almost a perfect solution for recording minutiae. Except that it costs $15/month and is entirely cloud-based and proprietary. See, the thing with record-keeping is that it’s meant to be useful not just right now, but forever. Roam is fantastic for the now, but is risky for the longer term. This may disqualify it.

TheBrain

As wonderful and powerful as Org mode is, I think my years-long fascination with Emacs may be coming to a close.

TheBrain was not a consideration for note-taking prior to the recently introduced version 12. With TheBrain 12, notes are not only a first-class citizen, but they offer many of the features of Roam (minus outlining).

Is that a great list or what?! Can you see why I might be struggling with which to choose?

I’m currently thinking of going with either Tinderbox or TiddlyWiki.

For the past few days, I’ve been putting everything into my Rudimentary Lathe TiddlyWiki. It may be a bit too much information to share publicly, but I’m interested in the whole “public self-modeling” thing right now, so it works as part of the larger experiment. TiddlyWiki is also the only valid contender that is free and readable, as-is, forever. By “forever” of course I mean “for a long time”.

Using Tinderbox would be ideal. It’s a great outliner, and I love outlines. Beyond that it pays dividends with fancy maps and summaries so with a small amount of extra work, I get fun and useful output. Tinderbox is not free, however, but it is not (yet) subscription based. I’ve been using it for more than a decade, and the author doesn’t appear to have any intention of stopping development any time soon. Also, I usually export my notes every month to PDF files, so that gets me the necessary permanence.

I’m going to use both for a while, side-by-side, and see if the choice becomes more apparent.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 24, 2020.

TiddlyWiki is more fun than Roam

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 22 Nov 2020 17:26:16 +0000

I fell in love with TiddlyWiki almost exactly 2 years ago. I wrote in it almost daily until late August, 2020, when I moved full-time into a public Roam database.

Roam is great and I love it. I’ve tried everything else, and nothing beats Roam for easily taking, linking, and re-using notes. I’m still using a private Roam database for work projects and CRM-type stuff, and it’s great for that.

Roam is efficient, fast, clever…and boring. Easy isn’t the same as fun.

TiddlyWiki is fun. It’s playful. I can’t really explain it, but creating new “tiddlers” and messing around with customization and finding new organizing principles is actually enjoyable in TiddlyWiki. I am probably one of only a handful of people who actually prefer the separate view and edit modes.

So, I’m going to return to using TiddlyWiki instead of Roam for my daily notes and scraps. My wiki is still at rudimentarylathe.org, which is a thousand times more fun as a URL than https://roamresearch.com/#/app/jackbaty am I right? I expect Roam will offer custom domains at some point, but so for they don’t.

I feel that TiddlyWiki’s local-first, single HTML file, free and open-source approach is better suited as a place to do “public self-modeling” for the long term.

Plus, it’s more fun. I hope to see you there!

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 22, 2020.

All-in with Flickr (again)

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 20 Nov 2020 13:03:29 +0000

I joined Flickr in 2004 and have been posting photos there, on and off, ever since. For years, Flickr was the place to share photos and discuss photography. Then Yahoo neglected and thus helped ruin it. And of course Instagram eventually finished the job.

I dislike Instagram so much. Tiny, compressed photos. No good way to post from my computer. Terrible search. An unfathomable algorithm. Fucking hashtags everywhere.

And yet, Instagram is where everyone is.

Everyone except me, that is. I’m planting a flag and staying with Flickr.

Everything that’s important to me about a photo-centric sharing network is better at Flickr. Sure, it could use more people, but I can always cross-post things I might want more people to see. The photos are shown large and uncompressed. I can make albums and groups and add proper tags. I can post a thousand different ways. The API is first-rate. Camera metadata is readily available. Search works. Oh, and it’s not owned by Facebook.

I’m going to continue using Flickr for my primary sharing and social platform and ramp up my activity there. I’m now using it as a backup of all my “keepers” (instead of Google Photos).

I hope to See you there.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 20, 2020.

My new (5-year-old) Leica SL

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 12:42:11 +0000

When I first saw the Leica SL, I was amazed by its brutalist audacity.

Coming from the M series, this was not what I pictured when thinking “Leica”.

And yet the SL appealed to me immediately. It was powerful, flexible, beautiful, and very, very expensive. In fact, it was so expensive that I eventually stopped thinking about it. Then, when the SL2 came out last year it all came rushing back.

So, after five years, I bought one.

This came only a month after I purchased my dream digital camera, the Leica M10-P. Why would I do that? Well, as much as I adore the M10-P; its size, classic design, build quality, and optical rangefinder, I’m finding that I struggle with focusing. Rangefinder focusing has, for years, been my favorite way to manually focus a camera. Snapping those two offset squares together was fast and accurate, regardless of lighting. My eyes must be getting old because I now have trouble doing it.

When talking about the SL, people tend to talk about three things: Size, price, build quality, and the viewfinder.

One of the first things people mention is the price. OK, sure, when new, it was crazy expensive. Fine, but I paid only about 1/3rd of the original price, so let’s move on.

Leica doesn’t build cameras to a price point. They build them to a standard. A very high standard. This, then, is part of why they’re so expensive. And the minute you pick up the SL you can feel it. It is a brick. Solid, heavy, dense, and confidence-inspiring. Machined from solid blocks of aluminum, the camera feels amazingly well-built. Every control feels precise and just right. I value these things highly in a camera.

The SL is weather sealed, which is important to me, even though I rarely find myself needing it. I can’t explain it, but knowing I can use the camera in freezing or rainy weather is comforting, even if I hardly ever do it.

How about that electronic viewfinder? The internet was right, it’s awesome. For a long time, I was dead set against using an EVF. Then, they got better. And better. The EVF on the SL is so good that I barely notice it’s an EVF, except that it shows exact content and exposure of the image I’m about to make. It’s great. I thought the viewfinder on the Leica Q was good, but this is even better.

An EVF like the one on the SL makes manual focusing easy. This is awesome because I have a few nice Leica M-mount lenses that work perfectly on the SL using an adapter. Using M lenses on the SL seems to be as popular as using native lenses. After a day of testing, I can see why. The big, bright viewfinder and focus peaking is a combination practically purpose-built for it.

Let’s talk about the size. The SL is a big, heavy camera. Here is me shooting it with the Sigma 24–70mm f/2.8 DG DN Art Lens mounted.

And here it is next to the M10-P

No doubt about it, it’s big, but put an M-mount lens on it and things get much more manageable.

For me, there are two modes when it comes to taking photos; I’m either out specifically to take pictures or I’m not. If I’m out to take pictures, the size of the camera does not matter. I might feel differently if I was into street photography or planned to hike miles uphill for landscapes, but I normally do “editorial” type photography or portraits. Camera size isn’t a meaningful factor for me. If I’m not out specifically to take photos, I put the little Ricoh GRIII in my pocket.

Aside from my focusing problems with the M10-P, I bought the SL because I wanted something more flexible. And I still wanted a Leica, for all the reasons above.

Sometimes, I want more than what the M cameras can do. You know, fancy things like focus automatically and use zoom lenses. For this, I bought one autofocus zoom lens, the Sigma 24–70 f/2.8 Art lens and it seems fine as an all-purpose lens, especially considering the cost compared to the other options.

For specific things like portraits, I may consider one of the 85mm or 105mm L-mount options by Panasonic or Sigma. The Leica SL lenses are still way too expensive to consider, as lovely as they may be.

I’ve only had the SL for a couple of days, so it’s too soon to tell how well it will work in real life, but so far it’s everything I expected.

Prepare for an onslaught of dog photos, self-portraits, and snapshot of random objects around the house.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 13, 2020.

Am I losing interest in shooting film?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 12:16:08 +0000

Not so much the actual shooting part, that’s work no matter what the medium, but lately I find the rest of the process (developing, scanning, storing) to be more trouble than it’s worth.

Thing is, I enjoy spending time in the darkroom, processing film. It’s meditative; the perfect hobby for an introvert. I have various wonderful old cameras, which are often reason enough to shoot film. But is it worth the trouble?

If forced, I must admit that I like being seen as a “film photographer.” It makes me feel like I’m in a group separate from the masses. I like being an outlier.

The trouble, I’m finding, is that I don’t really like the results I’m getting. I’ve shot maybe 20 rolls of film this year and a couple dozen large format negatives. Not a ton, but I’ve gone through them and there are only a handful that I really like, and most of those I only like because of their filminess.

By “filminess” I mean grainy, blurred or otherwise odd in some way that screams “I’m not an iPhone photo!” Is that really the characteristic I’m going for?

I look at a lot of film photographs on social media. I’ve begun noticing that they’re often not very good. Aside from the fact that they were made on film, they’d be entirely forgettable. A lot of the images look like nothing more than an excuse to use a cool camera or a way to finish the roll.

In fact, this attitude is what I see in my photos, and I don’t like it.

As usual, I’m overthinking things, but the infrastructure I have amassed in order to ease the process of shooting film is ridiculous. If the results were better, I wouldn’t mind. I’m tired of getting to the end of the long, sometimes tedious and difficult process only to look at the images and think, “meh.”

Film photography is a wonderful hobby, but maybe I need a little break from it.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 10, 2020.

Finally, an expensive camera I don’t want — the Zeiss ZX1

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 21:50:56 +0000

The new ZX1 from Zeiss is certainly interesting, but not $6,000 interesting. I mean, I’ve spent that much on a camera, but no way I’d spend that much on this camera.

If I wanted to edit photos on a tiny screen, I’d use my phone.

If I wanted a nice fixed lens on a full-frame sensor, I’d buy a Leica Q2 and still save a grand.

If I wanted to feel like I was using a computer instead of a camera, I’d get a Sony.

I appreciate what Zeiss is trying to do. Good for them. I also think that, unfortunately, the future of photography will involved more and more software, but this one feels like a miss to me. Time will tell, and I’ll let someone else’s wallet tell it.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 2, 2020.

Manual Schmanual

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 23:17:20 +0000

I’ve prided myself on my ability to shoot a Leica M3 or Hasselblad 500C/M with no meter, no auto-focus, and no auto-exposure. Who needs it? Real photographers certainly don’t! Plus, being fully mechanical means that the cameras require no batteries and should be repairable forever. It’s a badge of honor.

Except, and maybe I’m getting lazy in my old age, I’ve grown to like letting the camera do at least some of the work. In fact, I prefer it. They’ve gotten pretty good at it and if I’m honest they do things better than me most of the time.

I guess it depends on the camera. For example, the big 4x5 cameras are slow, deliberate beasts, so having to adjust things just so is part of the experience. On the other hand, when just walking around with a digital or 35mm film camera, I want something fully automatic. Since most of the time I’m in walking-around mode, this means that most of the time I want to let the camera do the work.

The realization that I now prefer automation came to me after I bought the Leica M10-P. The Leica of course has a meter and aperture-priority exposure. But it needs to be focused manually. When I must manually focus, I love using a Leica’s rangefinder, but unless I’m range-focusing in bright light there’s no way I’m faster at it than I am with a modern auto-focus camera. Also, it takes two hands and sometimes it’s better when I can just lift a camera to my eye and press the shutter.

Manually focusing a camera is a pain I simply don’t feel like dealing with.

So, I’m finding that although I have my dream camera available, I most often pick up the little Ricoh GRIII. The Ricoh is much faster to use and, honestly, the images are comparable to the M10-P (shhhh, don’t tell anyone).

The same thing has been happening with film cameras. I stopped using the fully manual, no-meter-having Leica M3 and M4 and started using the M6. I wanted a built-in meter. Even more surprising is that lately I’ve been grabbing the big old Canon EOS-1v or Nikon F100 instead. Those cameras don’t have anything approaching the soul or joy of use of a Leica, but I kind of just want to point and shoot and move on, ya know?

I don’t know if this slow drift away from manual cameras is just a mood swing or if it’s permanent, but it’s changing how I think about shooting.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on November 1, 2020.

A variety of 35mm SLR film cameras

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 20:17:11 +0000

Here are my remaining 35mm SLR film cameras. Clockwise from front-left, they are.

Canon AE-1 Program. An AE-Program was my first real camera. I received one from my parents as a graduation gift. Today, though, it’s my least favorite. It just doesn’t feel good to use.

Nikon F100. This might be the single greatest deal there is when it comes to film cameras. These are semi-professional, high-end cameras that sold for around $1,400 (In 1999 dollars. One would cost more than $2,100 today). These can now be found for under $300. Great cameras.

Canon EOS-1v. The 1v was the best film camera Canon ever made. Or will ever make. It’s a solid, water-resistant, workhorse brick of a camera. I think if I were forced to keep just one SLR this would be it (with the F100 a close second).

Nikon F3. In production for nearly 20 years, the F3 is was a professional staple for as long as any camera I can think of. Mine is in great shape and works well, but I’m not in love with it. I can’t put my finger on the problem, but I never seem to reach for it other than to be sure and run a roll or two through it each year.

Olympus OM-1n. What a wonderful little jewel this is. And by little I mean little. Just look at it compared to the others. My copy is interesting because it came in a box of gear I bought on Craigslist. It was all dented and bent and basically unusable. The guy I bought it from said that it had literally fallen into a volcano (he was a geologist). I had a local camera repair shop attempt to fix it, and they did. It works great still today. The OM-1n has one of the biggest, brightest viewfinders I’ve ever used. I love it. I wish it didn’t use mercury batteries, though. I’ll never get rid of this one. I used to have a couple of the later OM-2ns and often consider picking up another.

I’ve been thinking of selling some of them. Instead, I’ve been loading them up with various films and shooting with them. It’s been so much fun that I’ve changed my mind and I’ll be keeping everything. At least for now.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on October 31, 2020.

Gettin’ with Gutenberg

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 31 Oct 2020 14:10:09 +0000

There are many advantages to using WordPress for publishing. I don’t consider the Gutenberg editor to be one of them.

Gutenberg is powerful and useful for enabling those of us who don’t feel like working too hard to create decent-looking, complex, media-rich layouts. But, most of my posts are just an image with a paragraph or three of text. I don’t need a fancy, complex, block-based editor for creating those.

So what to do? There are some great options for creating posts right on my Mac and publishing to WordPress. I’ve used MarsEdit on and off for years. It’s great at what it does. It allows me to write and publish to WordPress from a solid, well-developed macOS app.

I’ve tried publishing using other writing tools on my Mac. For example, Ulysses is a lovely app and enables posting directly to WordPress. Well, that’s not exactly true, since for many of us hosting our own WordPress installations, there are things that can prevent xmlrpc from working, rendering Ulysses incapable of properly connecting to WordPress. There are workarounds, but I don’t feel like dealing with workarounds.

I’ve even had Emacs configured to post directly to WordPress, but good lord look at that readme file. I’m not in the mood for all that these days.

None of these tools, as good as they are, address my favorite thing about managing a blog with WordPress, and that is WordPress is a Typewriter. As I wrote then, the problem is that…

…creating and editing content is too far removed from the actual rendered page.

This applies to static sites as well as local tools for publishing to WordPress. I prefer to edit in place. I want to read over a post, find something I want to change, click “Edit”, type, and click “Publish”. Using local tools like Ulysses or MarsEdit or even plain ol’ Markdown files forces me to work “over here” when I’d rather work “right there”, if you know what I mean.

So, I just ignore the things I don’t like about Gutenberg and use it anyway. There are ways around it, but not using Gutenberg feels like swimming upstream and I don’t have the energy.

I sometimes use the Iceberg plugin, which is basically a wrapper that makes Gutenberg look and feel more sane…more like just writing text in an editor. But it’s still Gutenberg, and that’s going to have to be OK.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on October 31, 2020.

Using the Skier Sunray Copy Box 3 for digital film scanning

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 17:40:58 +0000

I hate scanning film negatives. Especially color film negatives.

Scanning software is universally atrocious to use. Getting good color from scanned film is such a hit-or-miss (mostly miss) proposition that I’d largely given it up.

Many people are moving from using film scanners (flatbed or dedicated) to “scanning” with digital cameras. I’ve been skeptical of this, but ever since the introduction of Negative Lab Pro it’s become more interesting. NLP makes it easy to get decent color from a digitally scanned negative.

To scan film using a camera, you need a copy stand to hold the camera, a lightbox or other bright, even light source, a macro lens, and something to hold the negatives.

I’ve been using my Fuji X-T3, 7Artisans 60mm Macro, Kaiser Slimlite, and the MK1 from Negative Supply. This all worked pretty well, but was limited to scanning 35mm film. I also shoot 120 and 4×5. Putting together a kit for every format using the pricey Negative Supply gear would run me well over $1,000. More like $1,699 for the pro kit.

I started looking around for something a little more reasonable and found the Skier Sunray Copy Box 3. The kit for 35mm, 120, and 4×5 costs $299, so I took a chance and ordered one.

My scanning station looks like this…

Skipping to the chase, the Sunray box works great. The light source is ridiculously bright, allowing me to stop down and keep a fast shutter speed to avoid any shake. The holders are easy to handle and do a good job of keeping film flat. I was able to digitize a roll of 35mm film in less than 10 minutes.

My workflow for this is a little convoluted, since I use Capture One Pro for editing but NLP requires Lightroom Classic. I import the “scans” into Lightroom, crop, and convert in NLP, save TIFF copies of the edited RAW files, then move them into my C1 library for finishing. I’m still working on making this more efficient, but I’m getting the hang of it so it gets easier every time.

If you are looking for a (relatively) inexpensive way to scan film negatives using a digital camera, the Skier Sunray Copy Box 3 is a very good option.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on October 24, 2020.

Roam and TheBrain, together

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 12:23:33 +0000

Where should I keep my notes, TheBrain or Roam? I decided earlier this year to use Roam, and was confident in that decision until TheBrain version 12 added backlinks.

Now all bets are off.

With proper backlink handling, I’m considering bringing private notes back into TheBrain. I love the Plex and how it enables me to quickly gather context about a topic simply by looking at it. I already have thousands of inter-linked thoughts in my Brain and finding things there has always been fast and easy.

But I still love publishing to my public Roam database, so where do I write about something that might just as well be public? For example, I would like to keep notes about this blog, but where?

How about both!?

I sometimes forget that TheBrain includes a nice built-in (webkit-based) browser, accessed by simply attaching a URL to a thought. This means I can drag any page from Roam into a related thought in TheBrain and it gives me the best of both worlds. The screen shot above shows an example. The Plex on the left shows all my links in TheBrain, and the notes pane on the right shows the page in Roam. I can edit the Roam content right in TheBrain, but I can also link private thoughts or take private notes in the Notes pane, like this…

This is good.

Posted in Software and Tech and tagged Roam, TheBrain. Bookmark the permalink.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on October 24, 2020.

The iPod Classic (revisited)

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 23 Oct 2020 19:53:43 +0000

GQ told me that Now Is a Great Time to Go Back to an Old iPod and I believed them, so I bought one.

This is a 7th-gen iPod Classic fitted with a custom board and 256GB flash storage. I got it from PiratePTiPods on Etsy.

I admit it was a bit of an impulse buy, but after a week of use I’m glad I have it. I’ve loaded it with a bunch of my favorite songs, and have not yet run out of things to listen to.

Loading songs onto it hasn’t been my favorite pastime. I use Roon rather than Apple Music so I had to fire up Music and drag-and-drop songs into the app, then tell the iPod to sync.

On the other hand, it’s wonderful to use. I really like being able to just reach over and play/pause/skip or change the volume without looking up from whatever I’m doing. Touch screens are no match for that click wheel when it comes to actually controlling music. And of course not having the device send me notifications every two minutes is nice, too.

Wired headphones are required, but this is preferable because I own pretty good ones. The best part is that they don’t have to pair or charge. Also, unlike every pair of AirPods I’ve owned, they always work.

This may be just a fun bit of nostalgia, but it’s a nice-sounding, pleasurable, easy to use bit of nostalgia.

Posted in Misc and tagged Apple, Gear, Music. Bookmark the permalink.

Originally published at https://copingmechanism.com on October 23, 2020.

TheBrain v12 brings Backlinks to the table

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 18 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These days, proper backlinks are becoming table stakes for any respectable note-taking tool.

Roam Research didn’t invent backlinks, but their implementation was so well-done and useful that it made other tools seem lacking in comparison. Many of them are now scrambling to catch up.

TheBrain is an application that has seriously implemented inter-note linking for many years. The “Plex” is like an infinite mindmap with various types of links and it’s amazingly powerful when put to use.

The weakness of TheBrain for me has always been around taking notes. The notes editor always felt janky and looked, to my taste, icky. This has changed dramatically in recent years. Notes became a first-class citizen in version 11 and have really come into their own in the newly-released Version 12 (beta).

TheBrain version 12 introduces Backlinks and Mentions, two of Roam’s distinguishing features.

I stopped considering TheBrain as my primary repository of notes shortly after Roam was introduced. Roam is all about notes and automatic backlinks. TheBrain was all about structural linking, with notes as an afterthought (that’s not entirely fair, but it’s how I thought of them).

After a day of testing the new v12 of TheBrain, I’m having second thoughts. Thing is, TheBrain is better than Roam at structural linking. As soon as I activate a “thought” in TheBrain, I immediately get a sense of context. Here’s an example:

And a quick screen recording…

https://www.loom.com/embed/37e2b07d6aa74429b822b154c8b930e4

The big addition in v12 is backlinking. Here’s a screenshot the notes in my “thought” for TheBrain…

This shows all of the linked thoughts, and also lists any notes that link to or mention the thought. Very Roam-like! Not only has it become more useful, but the notes area looks really nice and works smoothly now.

I’m going to do some double entry for a week or so to see if these additions to TheBrain work as well as they seem to. I don’t know if I’ll switch back to TheBrain for the canonical place for my notes, though. Roam has other compelling features that are not (yet) in TheBrain. For example, the effortless creation of “Daily Notes” and block-level referencing are pretty great in Roam and have nothing comperable in TheBrain.

It’s exciting to see established, tried-and-true tools learn something from a newcomer. Version 12 puts TheBrain back in the game.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on October 18, 2020.

Upgrading my music streaming setup

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I sit at my home office desk an awful lot these days. This affords me the opportunity to listen to music for long stretches, and I’ve been taking advantage of that.

One of the best audio purchases I’ve made recently was a lifetime subscription to Roon. Roon does wonderful things with my offline collection of FLAC and MP3 files and at the same time integrates flawlessly with the Hi-Res Qobuz streaming service. It’s a fantastic way to manage and control my music.

I’d been using a paired set of Apple HomePods on my desk. They sound pretty good, if a little too bass-ey for my taste. HomePods work great with Apple Music, but I no longer use Apple Music. The HomePods offer no alternative inputs or outputs. It’s AirPlay or nothing. Unfortunately, Roon doesn’t yet support AirPlay 2 so the best way to stream HomePod pair was via AirPlay in Roon from my iPhone. Blech.

This all got me thinking about replacing the HomePods. I used to have a set of AudioEngine 2+ speakers, but I can’t seem to find them. Lost in the move? Or maybe I gave them away because I never liked them as much as the many positive reviews made me think I would. I thought they sounded harsh and I would grow fatigued quickly.

So what then? I’m not an audiophile, so I took to the web looking for “quality bookshelf speakers”. It took about three minutes to realize that everyone seemed to reference the powered, wireless offerings from KEF, and specifically for desktop use, the KEF LSX Wireless Speaker System.

At around $1,200 for the pair, the LSX were twice what I wanted to spend, but I kept reading and watching and learning. I was able to rationalize my way into a pair and am very happy that I did.

Setup wasn’t glitch-free, but I think that was due to my mesh Wi-Fi setup. Once I did a factory reset and firmware upgrade of the speakers, all was well and has been since.

Here they are on my desk.

While the LSX aren’t officially “Roon Ready”, they are “Roon Tested” and show up as such in Roon.

This is great because it takes full advantage of the Hi-Res stream from Qobuz. Happiness is an all-purple signal path in Roon!

And the sound? All I can say is that in this case the general internet consensus is spot on. They sound amazing. I mean, like really amazing. They are to my left when I’m facing the computer, and several times the past few days I’ve stopped what I was doing, turned to face the speakers, and replayed a song because I’d heard things in the music that I’d never noticed before. The KEFs have made me literally sit up and take notice. And after many hours of listening to many varieties of music I’ve not become fatigued at all. Not once. This is huge for me.

For a time I had a single HomePod on the desk and I’m here to tell you that a decent 2-channel setup is in a whole different league than a single HomePod’s pseudo stereo. Or Sonos’, or Google’s, or Echo’s. Adding a second stereo-paired HomePod was a huge upgrade, but nothing like what I’m hearing now. I haven’t yet gone into the KEF Control app to tweak things to suit the room, which will likely continue to improve the sound.

The KEFs have brought my desktop music streaming experience to an entirely new level and I couldn’t recommend them more highly.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on October 8, 2020.

Deleting Adobe

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I deleted the Adobe apps from my devices.

This was not due to some sort of protest or reaction to policy or subscriptions fatigue or anything like that. I did it because I needed to make a decision about how I manage and process my photos.

I wrote just a week ago about how I’m going to be using only Lightroom because I couldn’t deal with the combination of Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.

What I seem to write every time I switch to something other than Capture One Pro is something like, “Now, I’d prefer to use Capture One Pro, but…”

But what? It doesn’t sync with iOS? It’s too complex? I’m tired of managing files? All of those are true, but in the end, Capture One does the best job with my images and is as powerful as I could ever need.

I sometimes forget that I enjoy doing deep and detailed edits of my photos. It’s fun! Hell, one of the reasons I avoid shooting film is because I don’t want to wait to get to a computer and see what I can do. This isn’t what I’m supposed to be saying. I’m supposed to be saying, “Oh, I just shoot film and send it away for processing so I can focus on my art and not sit at a computer all day.” I’d be lying if I said that. I’d love to be that person, but I’m not.

Here’s what happens. I spend a couple of months in Capture One and get comfortable. Not bored, necessarily, but the novelty wears off a bit. Then I read a blog post where someone is doing something cool with Lightroom or Lightroom Classic and think, “Ooh, that sure would be nice.” and the next thing you know I launch Lightroom and breath a sigh of relief at how simple and sleek and new it feels. And it syncs to all my devices! And I don’t have to have a process for bringing in my iPhone photos. They just appear!

But then I try to add a layer or rename a file or organize things in a way that I prefer and Lightroom fails. Or I’m not sure I like the look of how Lightroom has rendered such and such an image, so I launch Capture One and breath a sigh of relief that I’m back where I belong and this is how I want to edit photos!

And around and around it goes and I’m tired.

Each time I switch I have to re-learn how I manage exports and watermarks and labels and organization. If I’m being honest, I have to admit that I like that part, but it’s getting in the way and I think I’ve finally reached a level of frustration that merits a more permanent decision.

That decision is now to move forward (again) with Capture One Pro and remove any temptation of “just trying it in Lightroom a second”.

So I’ve deleted Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Photoshop from all of my devices and I’l l be canceling my subscription as soon as I’m sure I won’t end up missing any photos.

The Photoshop thing is another pain point. I am terrible at Photoshop, but just knowing it’s there is comforting. I know that no matter what I want to do, I can do it in Photoshop and can find a resource online to help me figure out how.

This means it’s time to learn to use Affinity Photo for those cases where I need some extra fancy sauce.

Now, we’re all friends here and you know me. I change my mind. Will this time be different? I don’t know, but I’ve never gone this far toward forcing myself to stick with something, so maybe it will.

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on September 13, 2020.

A public Roam database is my new wiki

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 26 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Sometimes a new thing comes along and replaces the old thing.

I truly love my rudimentarylathe.org wiki, built with TiddlyWiki. TiddlyWiki is a wonderful, flexible, powerful bit of software. My use of TiddlyWiki has changed over time, and lately my wiki has become the only thing I’m using it for.

In order to publish the wiki, I need a few things. I need a web server. I need to use Firefox with the Timimi plugin or TiddlyDesktop in order to easily save my edits. I need a way to sync the file to the web server. Since I use Safari for browsing, adding Firefox just for TiddlyWiki eats up a lot of RAM.

None of these is especially difficult, but it adds overhead. I could use the Node.js-based configuration, but that adds even more dependencies. I’m trying to limit dependencies, not add them.

Using TiddlyWiki also means keeping up on TiddlyWiki. Having queries and plugins and all sorts of fun things available can be great, but in my case I’m only doing it to support my wiki. Do I need all that?

Roam has been wildly successful for me. I’m thrilled with it. It’s been the place I take notes for a while now and there’s no sign of that changing. This is surprising, considering my history.

When I first started using Roam late last year, I created both a public and private database. I experimented with them for a few weeks, but eventually gave up on the public one, because I was very into TiddlyWiki at the time and was unsure about my future with Roam.

Now that I’m all-in with Roam, I’ve been giving the public Roam database another shot. It’s going pretty well, and I intend to continue. One of my favorite things about it is that there’s no infrastructure to deal with. No plugins, sync, servers, etc. Just a browser.

I still need to decide what to put where (public vs private), but this isn’t a new problem. And there may be a solution at some point. I hear that the plan is to allow linking and embedding between private and public Roam databases. This would mean that if I want to share something from one db to another, I’ll be able to simply embed/transclude a block. This will be terrific.

The rudimentary lathe wiki has been mostly a journal, and with the Daily Notes feature of Roam, that becomes even easier. I worry a little that Roam can be harder to read than TiddlyWiki, what with all the bullets. On the other hand, TiddlyWiki is weird and always confuses people when they try to get around. Jump ball, I guess.

All this to say that I’ve been keeping my little wiki and daily notes in Roam instead of TiddlyWiki for a week or so again, and so far so good.

If you want to follow along, it’s here…

https://roamresearch.com/#/app/jackbaty

Or if you prefer something shorter, I’m redirecting from here:

https://www.baty.net/roam

Originally published at https://www.baty.net on August 26, 2020.

A Weekend Back With the iPhone SE

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 25 Mar 2018 14:37:16 +0000

I spent the weekend with my old iPhone SE and I’ve decided I like it better than the iPhone X.

The iPhone X is a beautiful device. Smooth, sleek, powerful, and the screen is just gorgeous. The iPhone SE, by comparison, is tiny, slow, and practically blurry.

However, the iPhone SE is also easier to carry, easier to hold, and easier to use.

Face ID is clever and it works pretty well, but sometimes having to either pick up or lean over the phone to read notifications is less than ideal. And frequently when I pick it up to read notifications it just opens up to the home screen instead. Haven’t figured out why yet, but I don’t enjoy it. Face ID can be super convenient but I’m not convinced it’s always better than Touch ID.

I don’t like putting cases on things. The iPhone X feels so nice that putting a case on it takes away one of the great things about it. Feeling nice isn’t the same as being easy to hold, and using a $1,000+ bar of soap without a case is just asking for trouble. The SE, on the other hand, is much easier to hold. Also, it’s not nearly as precious so even if I do drop it I’m not out that much.

I find the iPhone SE easier to use than the iPhone X. I’m still not used to the contortions required to unlock or swich apps on the X. I must have small hands because getting to the the control panel one-handed on the X is an exercise fraught with peril. Holding the phone securely and actually using it can feel like mutually exclusive activities.

Here’s something I can’t explain; I type much faster and more accurately on the SE. I can’t seem to type three words in a row correctly on the X.

Oh, and the SE has a real headphone jack. I hate not having a standard headphone jack on my phone.

There are of course downsides to the SE.

The camera on the SE is not as good as the one on the X. Especially the front-facing camera. Selfies look terrible in anything but broad daylight.

The SE’s screen is small. This obviously can be less useful than the big, bright iPhone X screen. Thing is, I don’t use my phone for doing much. I don’t read anything longer than tweets or short blog posts. I avoid writing on it as much as possible. I certainly never use it for watching movies. I do miss the larger screen of the X while using Maps, and I really miss it for viewing photos.

The SE is definitely slower, but not by as much as you’d think.

All in all, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed using the iPhone SE again over the past couple of days. It’s still the perfect form factor for me. If Apple introduces the rumoured SE 2 with upgraded internals and camera, I’ll have a decision to make.

Originally published at www.baty.net on March 25, 2018.

Paper Notebook Intentions for 2018

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 14:36:00 +0000

The final week of December is a good time for planning. I spend the week organizing things, tidying up my desk and files, and laying out plans for the year.

One thing I evaluate each year is how I intend to use my paper notebooks. This doesn’t mean I don’t allow myself to change things up, but I at least go through the exercise of thinking through my intentions.

2018 looks much the same as 2017. Here’s the plan.

Leuchtturm1917 (Medium, Dotted)

The Leuchtturm1917 is my Bullet Journal. I’ve been using a Bullet Journal for several years and have found no better system for managing my personal life. Tasks, lists, quotes, and ideas all go in mine. I don’t use a BuJo for work projects, but for personal stuff it’s a terrific system. I use a Quiver to hold whatever pens I’m favoring at the moment.

Epica Classic Leather Journal

The Bullet Journal is messy and random, so I use a fancy Epica leather journal for my personal journal (aka Diary). I try to write at least a page or two every day, but typically only use it once or twice a week. I am hoping to get closer my goal of writing in it daily this year. A personal journal is priceless and will be kept forever so I forgive myself the luxury. The paper in these books isn’t my favorite for fountain pens so I typically use a pencil.

Hobonichi Techo

Paper calendars remain my favorite way to plan my life, and the Hobonichi Techo is full of them. Monthly, yearly, weekly, daily, you name it. The Techo uses Tomoe River paper, which is tissue thin yet handles anything thrown at it. As with my journal, I try to add something to the Techo every day. Usually this is a small drawing or a note about the weather or a fun quote or just splash of watercolor. It also contains vertical calendar pages that work well for habit tracking, so I don’t need to create them by hand in my Bullet Journal. I’ve been using these cute little notebooks since 2013. They’re fun and useful and I intend to use mine often in 2018.

Field Notes (with Bellroy cover)

I don’t carry my larger notebooks everywhere, so I always keep a Field Notes notebook in my back pocket. I find that capturing a quick note in a paper notebook to be much faster than using my phone. It takes a while for me to go through one, and the covers tend to degrade and come off over time. To prevent this I keep mine in a Bellroy Notebook Cover. The Bellroy feels and works great. I review my notes every few days and copy anything important to somewhere more permanent.

Other miscellaneous notebooks

I use a few other notebooks for various tasks.

There are times I want to consolidate everything into just one or two notebooks but this feels like a pretty good setup for next year.

Originally published at jack.baty.net on December 26, 2017.

Why My Photos Remain on My Hard Drive

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 15:18:53 +0000

I like knowing where my “stuff” is, without depending upon additional software.

For as long as I remember I have kept my digital photos in a nicely-organized set of files and folders on my Mac. In recent years, these files have been managed using Lightroom but they are still just files on the filesystem. I know where they are, because I put them there. Lightroom’s library mimics the underlying files and folders. If something bad happens to Lightroom I know my photos will be fine.

What about the adjustments and edits made to photos? Those are “non-destructive” so they don’t touch the original photo and are known only to the Lighroom library. This is important, and is why I export JPG copies of any photo labeled with one or more “star”.

I also caption all of my photos and rename the files using the photo’s date and caption. This way I (or my descendants) will have access to both the files and the “what and when” of them even if the IPTC or Exif metadata has been somehow lost.

I like this system. The files-in-folders approach, along with solid backups, has proven itself to be resilient and easy to understand and manage for my entire digital history. Lightroom has been nothing more than a layer over top of those files.

Recent Adobe announcements and the introduction of Lighroom CC have me reconsidering the process by which I manage my photos. I haven’t come to any real conclusion yet, so this is just me taking notes about the process.

The iPhone, cloud storage, and social media have thrown a wrench in the works. Shooting photos with an iPhone and having them, along with any edits, instantly available and easily sharable on all my devices is like magic. Perhaps a little too magic. I worry that this is another case of short-term convenience getting in the way of long-term value.

I know the photos in my Apple Photos library can be found in the “Photos Library.photoslibrary” package, but I didn’t put them there and I can’t organize them how I want them. That bothers me. Perhaps I should just get over it. Cloud management of digital photos is the future, right?

The new Lightroom CC feels like part of this future, but suffers from the same problem as Apple Photos. The only way to organize photos is virtually within Lightroom CC. I can create collections and albums and such, but they are virtual and not reflected in the filesystem. This makes me uncomfortable.

My current system is a cumbersome combination of managing files via Lightroom “Classic” and letting Apple Photos do its thing. I’m trying to find something better. Apple Photos is pretty good, and can now use external editors like the terrific Liminar. Lightroom CC is geared more toward “serious” photographers, and I prefer that to Apple’s simple have-fun-and-share approach. On the other hand, wedding myself to Lightroom’s cloud is both uncomfortable and expensive.

I’m not an artist or a pro. I’m just an avid photo enthusiast who likes to tinker. As such, something like Lightroom CC should fit the bill, but I don’t think I’m ready to give up control my precious files quite yet.

So after all this, what? For now I’ll stick with managing files in Lightroom Classic and exporting the keepers to Apple Photos until I get this sorted out. I hope to have a better answer soon.

Originally published at www.baty.net.

Some really nice improvements!

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 20:26:46 +0000

Some really nice improvements! Some day I would love for the Teams and Projects search filter to default to whatever project I’m viewing when clicking the Find icon. Or at least promote the current project/team in the dropdown. We have many similar projects and the global scope is less useful than searching within a single project. Also, unless I’m missing it, the search results don’t indicate the project each item belongs to, which can make scanning the results a bit slower.

This is a request I hear from my team quite often.

Auto-keywording vs. Captioning Photos

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 19:19:19 +0000

The new version of Lightroom CC will automatically keyword photos so that I can search for things in them like “Car” or “Tree” or “Dog”. Apple Photos and Google Photos do something similar. Here’s how Adobe describes “Sensei”:

…the ability to search through all of your synced photos, leveraging the power of Adobe Sensei to automatically tag and keyword your images for you. Now you can find photos you’re looking for by searching for what is in the photos.

While this is useful, it’s not enough. My grandkids (or anyone else looking at my photos in 50 years) may want to know the rest of the story. They may say, “Yes, I can see that it’s a tree, but why did he take a photograph of it?” To answer those questions, the photos need captions/cutlines.

Photos taken with an iPhone will provide the basics of Where, When, and possibly even Who (via face recognition, but that isn’t useful outside of the photo library). What about the Why? That’s what needs to be recorded, and in my opinion is the most important part.

I keep saying: caption your photographs

Here’s another example I’ve used…

That was taken on the day my dad was baptized, making it more than just another photo of my dad as a child. The caption gives it meaning that it wouldn’t have had otherwise.

You don’t have to caption every single image, but taking the time to add a little note to some of them will be time well spent.

Originally published at www.baty.net.

The Joy of Not Sharing

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 12:40:35 +0000

August 31, 2017

Gail and I — Manistee (2017)

I love sharing my photos. I joined Flickr in 2004 and after that just about every other service imaginable, with Instagram being (reluctantly) the latest.

Box O Prints

But recently I’m finding a sort of joy in not sharing photos. Specifically, I’ve noticed that I haven’t bothered scanning or posting any of my recent Polaroid or Instax images. They’re instant, analog, and each one is a precious artifact.

I haven’t been deliberately not posting them anywhere, but now that I’ve noticed it I like the idea. It’s surprisingly difficult keeping things to oneself these days, so having this private box of memories feels good.

Originally published at www.baty.blog.

Culling Apps Because of the iPad

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:08:07 +0000

The more I use my iPad for “work” the more I like it. This is unexpected, and the trend does not seem to be slowing. In other words, maybe it’s not just novelty.

This means that in order to work easily in both desktop and mobile environments, I must rely on apps that work well in both. Taking that further, it means that I want to use the same app everywhere. My love for plain text files remains. It’s great being able to edit my files using any number of Dropbox-compatible apps, but using one app to edit Markdown on the Mac and a different one on iOS is beginning to feel like overhead I don’t need.

The drawback here, and it’s a big one, is that I may need to abandon some of my favorite things. At least the ones I live in, now that I live in different places. A few examples:

Tinderbox. God, I love Tinderbox, but there’s really no easy way to take advantage of it on iOS.

Curio. Curio is a wonder. There’s nothing like laying text, images, files, notes and what-have-you out on Curio’s big, beautiful canvas. But, no iPad version. I could export things as PDF or images so I can access them on the iPad, but that’s not what I’m looking for. I want to continue to work on the iPad, not just look stuff up.

Emacs/Org Mode. Ah, Org Mode. Org Mode does everything one would ever need. Tasks, project management, writing, publishing, outlining, and so on. But, with no good way to use Org Mode on iOS, it’s a non-starter. Plain-text as it is, it’s useless outside of Emacs.

So where does this leave me, app-wise? I have a lot to learn, but for the things I do most, here is what I’m using:

Ulysses for any writing. I can blog with it, take notes, write and publish documentation, you name it. It’s really good at what it does. I still need to get over the “but it’s in a proprietary database!” problem and run with it.

Day One. All journaling and “life logging” is going in Day One. I’ll miss my Tinderbox Daybook and Org Journal but Day One is great, seamlessly cross-platform, and meant for exactly these things.

Things The new version of Things works great. When not in my text-only mood and using Taskwarrior or Org Mode, I’ve always used OmniFocus, but I’m giving Things a try. So far it feels nice and strikes a good balance between complexity and ease of use.

There are a number of things still up in the air. Photo management is the big one. I’ve repeatedly tried using Photos and it’s never stuck. I’m addicted to a well-organized system of date-based folders for my images and it’s going to be tough getting over that. On the other hand, the seamless sharing and editing of photos using iCloud Photos is pretty compelling. I’m about to try an all-in experiment to see how it goes. The updates in High Sierra look good, too.

I’m just now digging into Workflow, which opens up a bunch of possibilities. I’m coming around to the possibility of not only making the iPad a part of my process, but making it my primary device, which is a complete reversal from my feelings about it less than a year ago.

Lots of new tricks for this old dog to learn.

Originally published at www.baty.blog.

Dead iMac forces an iPad-only experiment

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:06:58 +0000

I spent the morning trying to make it easier to get things done using my iPad. It went pretty well. I now have a workable Vim setup using Blink Shell. I have Bear all synced and organized. Tasks are back in OmniFocus. And so on.

In a stroke of ironic misfortune, the hard drive in my iMac died shortly after doing all of the above. This left me with the better part of a Sunday having no desktop machine, so I went for a walk. I played with the dog. I even rearranged my records.

It’s good to be offline, for a while, but I had my heart set on catching up on email, RSS feeds, GTD stuff, and just generally tinkering on the internet. So that’s what I’ve been doing, on the 10.5” iPad Pro with keyboard.

You know what? It’s not terrible. I think maybe if I learned to approach things differently, and added a dash of Workflow, this could become an acceptable way to get things done.

Originally published at www.baty.blog.

A terrible case for not reading paper books

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 12 Aug 2017 11:05:46 +0000

In “Why you should quit reading paper books”, Andy Sparks writes:

When you read on Kindle and highlight passages that you find beautiful, interesting, or challenging, you’re sending your future self a hell of a gift

That’s true, but here’s my version:

When you read a paper book and write in the margins or highlight passages that you find beautiful, interesting, or challenging, you’re sending your future self and generations to come a hell of a gift.

My version is better.

I’m 100% certain that the electronic versions of Kindle highlights, no matter how many backups or exports exist, will disappear with my death, or shortly thereafter. Browsing a loved one’s old books and reading the margin notes and seeing the highlights is a wonderful experience, and will remain so for decades to come.

I’ve found that the ability to electronically search highlights is over-rated and seldom used. I peruse dog-eared pages and passages from my real books (I call them “real” books because that’s what they are) whenever I need inspiration or to refresh my memory of a book.

If I think I’ll want to recall some specific fact or quote later, I write it manually on an index card, my commonplace book, and/or type it into DEVONthink. The act of rewriting important passages has the added benefit of helping it stick in my memory.

For me, the benefits of paper books far outweigh any minor inconveniences. There’s a reason ebooks are losing.

Originally published at www.baty.blog.

The Instagram “API”

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 14:03:45 +0000

Another reason I only reluctantly use Instagram. That’s a poor excuse for an API.

Originally published at baty.net.

Switching task managers is meta-meta work

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:35:02 +0000

Rob Milanowski:

I was spending more time on meta work instead of real work

As someone who frequently switches task managers, I can relate to this. The problem is that switching task managers is just another form of meta work. It’s meta-meta work.

I’ve rationalized changing task managers in more ways than there are task managers. It’s always some feature or other that I need and the current tool doesn’t have. Or it’s that the iOS version is so great. Or it’s that it needs to be cross-platform, or any number of other “reasons”.

Fact is, I switch task managers when I get bored and doing so is way more fun than doing actual work.

Originally published at baty.net.

Sticking with Org Mode

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:34:20 +0000

I tried moving away from Org Mode four days ago. Doing so required finding replacements for the following:

Email client
Task manager
Code/text editor
Note-taking app
Outliner
Publishing tool (PDF)
Git client
Daybook/Journal

I have favorite apps for all of the above, and I love using them, but it means that I end up with my “stuff” spread all over the place. I get hung up deciding where to write things down. Should it be a note in the Things task? or in Bear or just a note in DEVONthink?

In Org Mode I don’t have that problem. Everything is just text and notes, and TODOs can be mixed together any way that suits the task at hand.

Also, Vim keybindings will always be my favorite way to edit text. With Spacemacs and “evil” mode, every bit of text I write can be written using Vim keybindings; Email, notes, git commit messages, everything.

So, after just a few days away, I decided to stick with Org Mode.

Org Mode is weird in that while putting everything in it feels “open” and future-proof, it also sort of locks me in to using Emacs for everything. I’m OK with that, because the everything-in-one-place-ness of it is worth it.

Originally published at baty.net.

Replacing Google Analytics with Piwik

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:33:34 +0000

I’ve been running Shaun Inman’s Mint since 2005 and it’s always been more than enough to let me know that almost no one visits my site. I like Mint.

Shaun stopped supporting Mint some time last year, but I thought I’d just keep running it indefinitely. Unfortunately, after a recent server update, it stopped working. Rather than trying to figure out what went wrong I decided I’d find a replacement.

The obvious answer is to use Google Analytics. I’ve been using Google Analytics for various sites since it was an expensive self-hosted package called “Urchin”. Google bought Urchin in 2005 and since then it’s pretty much become the de facto standard for web analytics.

I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with Google owning so much of my data so I thought I’d look for an alternative.

Back in the day I used AWStats. I like the idea of analyzing actual server logs rather than relying on pings from embedded JavaScripts but let’s face it, AWStats is homely and cumbersome. I’ll pass this time.

I decided to try Piwik. The basic version is free, open source, and looks to be very capable. I like that it’s self-hosted so I own all the data. In less than ten minutes from hitting the download button I had a fully-working installation of Piwik on my server.

Piwik is overkill for the handfull of visitors coming to this site, but it’s better than a broken Mint installation and it’s way better than handing everything over to Google.

Maybe click a few links so I can give it a workout.

Originally published at baty.net.

Sticking with Apple

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:32:50 +0000

It has become trendy to question our allegiance to Apple.

There are certainly times I wonder why I continue to use Apple products. Between a bunch of little things always breaking and my disappointment with the new MacBook Pro I grow frustrated and threaten to leave Apple completely. I become curious about how the other half (or two-thirds, or whatever) live. I like to shake things up now and then, so this all leads to hedging my bets against Apple.

To this end, I’ve been using fewer Mac-only apps, more web apps, and have gone all-in with Emacs and Org Mode. You know, just in case one day I decide to switch to Linux or Windows. In recent months I’ve been this close to buying a fast Linux laptop and an Android phone, just to see how it would feel.

Fact is, that’s crazy talk. I can’t imagine I’d ever actually switch. Avoiding everything that macOS and iOS have to offer, just in case I change my mind some day, seems foolish.

My use of the iPad Pro has increased, and the updates in iOS 11 have cemented that trend. The relatively seamless integration between my Mac and my iPad is pretty compelling.

So, for now I’m clearing my head of any thoughts of switching platforms and will be moving my stuff into my favorite Mac and iOS apps.

For now, those are:

TheBrain for managing projects and files and connections
DEVONthink for storing everything in an eminently searchable way
Things for managing tasks. This one is new, and so far I like the v3 upgrade.
Apple Mail for email. At least until I run into too many things I don’t like.
BBEdit for text processing and editing
Bear for taking notes. I may end up using Apple Notes or nvAlt’s replacement but for now, Bear is pretty great.

My concern is that as great as the above apps are, Org Mode really is the best all-around productivity tool I’ve ever used. I may end up missing it too much to leave out of the rotation, and once it’s back in the rotation, it eats everything else.

Originally published at baty.net.

Keeping my Medium membership — for now

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 17:31:37 +0000

Colin Walker:

Although my Medium usage has significantly dropped off I had intended keeping my membership going. Then I realised something: I’ve only read one or possibly two members-only, funded stories.

Like Colin, I question the value of my Medium membership.

I became a Medium member the day memberships were announced. Since then, I’ve been tempted to cancel, simply because I don’t feel I’m missing much if I skip the “members only” content. The other members-only features are not compelling on their own, either.

Unlike Colin, I’m opting to keep my membership active — for now.

I admire that Medium is trying some new things. I like the idea of Medium. I can cancel any time, but for now $5/month is a small contribution toward their experiment.

Originally published at baty.net.

Moving on from Baty.net — or not

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 07 May 2017 13:37:35 +0000

I’ve been maintaining a blog in some form since 1998. Everything before 2000 has been lost, but that still leaves many years of writing.

While I enjoy writing, I also enjoy tinkering with publishing tools. My blog has run on most major platforms and a few minor ones. One minute I’m using a static blogging tool like Hugo and the next I’ve converted everything to WordPress. And ’round it goes.

The problem with changing things all the time is that content inevitably breaks during the conversion. For example, I somehow lost the images on most posts from 2012. That shouldn’t happen.

Another thing that shouldn’t happen is broken links. Remember, Cool URIs Don’t Change. I’ve changed the permalink structure and the domain name a few times and didn’t always bother with the appropriate redirects. Not cool.

Is it more important to keep all my writing in one place forever or is it better to make sure things don’t break over time? Since I can’t seem to have both, I’ve decided upon the latter. To that end, the intention is to keep baty.net as-is and begin writing everything here at baty.blog. It’s admittedly an experiment. This could turn out to be just another of my weekend whims, but that’s ok.

Nothing is stopping me from continuing to write in both places. Baty.net using Hugo and baty.blog using WordPress. One static, one not. We’ll all survive; however it turns out.

Originally published at baty.blog on May 7, 2017.

Paying for Medium

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 22:22:24 +0000

Medium makes me nervous. I’ve never known exactly what it is or what it wishes to be. I’ve never liked the sense of self-importance imbued on things written there. I don’t know if they’ll just disappear one day, taking years of writing with them.

And yet, Medium can be a wonderful place. I want them to succeed. I want people to publish great content while avoiding the click-bait tendencies of many publications. I want to enjoy reading what I find there.

So, I’ve paid to become a “Founding Member” of Medium. I’m spending $5.00 a month in support of Medium’s vague yet compelling mission. I get that much value out of Medium already, so I’m out nothing, really. I’m not paying as a writer, I’m paying as a reader. I hope they do great things.

So far, I love the new Morning, Noon, and Evening “Editions”. I check in a few times a day, read the latest, mildly-curated posts, and move on. The idea of being finished with something online is wonderful. It’s why I still read a paper newspaper, offline.

I’m looking forward to what comes next. Good luck to Medium! Here’s me on Medium

Originally published at www.baty.net.

Giving Spark Mail a Try

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 25 Mar 2017 15:42:09 +0000

I love email. In spite of its faults, email is the most reliable way to communicate with anyone, anywhere, anytime. It’s been this way for decades. It works.

Email is also a pain in the ass. Email puts anyone at all in charge of my todo list. Clients forward me 30-message email threads with only “Thoughts?”. Spam. Reply-all nonsense. You know the list. We’ve been bitching about email for years. People keep trying to “fix” it or replace it. Good luck with both of those. I’m perfectly comfortable with email. I’ve gotten pretty good at it.

That said, I love to play with different approaches to email. In the past couple of years I’ve switched between native Gmail web, Apple Mail, Mailmate, Mutt, and Mu4e.

Today I’ve been trying Spark to see if any of the modern approaches to email are useful. First impressions are positive. We’ll see how “smart” the smart inbox is. I forward all of my email accounts to Fastmail so multiple-account features aren’t useful to me. I like “snooze”. Not sure about “Pin” vs “Flag”. It’s new and shiny and I’m having fun with it.

The thing I may not be able to live with is not having easy access to individual emails. I can’t seem to drag and drop emails into, say DEVONthink. I also don’t see a way to link directly to a message. I use links to email everywhere so that could be a deal breaker.

In the meantime, Spark seems clever and pretty. I’ll see how I feel in a week or two.

Originally published at www.baty.net.

Chronos Made My Dumb Watch Dumber

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 12 Mar 2017 17:09:22 +0000

After becoming somewhat attached to notifications on my Apple Watch, I missed them when wearing my automatic watch.

In order to make my beloved analog watch a little smarter, I bought a Chronos. The Chronos attaches to the back of any watch and adds “smart” features like step counting and notifications. This sounded like a great idea.

What I found was that using the Chronos made my dumb watch dumber.

When wearing the Apple Watch, whenever I feel a little tap on my wrist I just glance at the Watch and see the notification details. When wearing the automatic watch with the Chronos attached, I’d get a tap on my wrist and reflexively glance at my watch and see… the time. In order to actually check the notification, I still needed to take out my phone. This was frustrating and not useful.

I like to wear my automatic watch when going out at night. Recently, I grabbed the watch on my way out and realized I hadn’t charged the Chronos. That was the end of it. The whole point of an automatic watch is that it takes no batteries and never needs a charge. I’m not interested in remembering to charge a watch that should never need charging.

I removed the Chronos and my nice, manual, automatic watch went back to its normal task of telling the time and making me happy.

Originally published at baty.net.

I’ve gone through this same process at least a dozen times.

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 18 Feb 2017 13:43:07 +0000

I’ve gone through this same process at least a dozen times. In January I’m all “Export->Files and Folders” and then in June I’m back to “Import->Files and Folders”.

Currently, I’m all-in with DEVONthink, primarily because DEVONthink To Go 2.1 acts as a document provider on iOS and syncs really well. Since it’s becoming the de facto filesystem for my iOS devices it might as well do the same on my Macs.

I also miss the permanence of linking to groups and documents in my databases from other apps. I tend to reorganize files frequently and some apps rely on the OS path so this breaks those links.

Every time I “leave” DEVONthink I regret it, but that doesn’t always stop me :).

Best of luck!

AirPods are Awesome

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 20:04:01 +0000

I’m not going to write a long review or anything, but I did want to say that I love the new Apple AirPods. They are the most Apple-like new product I’ve used in a long time. After using the AirPods for a few days, one wonders what the hell every Bluetooth headphone maker has been doing for the past decade. I’ll forgive Apple the Siri-only interaction model with this round, but they need to fix that. Otherwise, the entire experience is wonderful.

Apple has (at least historically) been good at eliciting reactions like, “Well, of course this is how it should work!” They’ve done it again with the AirPods.

Originally published at baty.net on January 8, 2017.

Ektachrome is Back

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 15:54:06 +0000

Film Is Not Dead:

We are very much pro film, in favour of film! Film is our heritage and we’ll continue to look at these opportunities and the one we can look at today is Ektachrome. — T. J. Mooney, Kodak Alaris

I haven’t shot any color reversal film since Kodachrome went away, but I may have to dust off the JOBO and mix up some E6 chemistry soon. This is good news.

Originally published on baty.net: Ektachrome is Back

A Short Break from Twitter

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Jan 2017 14:15:41 +0000

I haven’t been “on” Twitter since the first of the year. As of today that means it’s been a whole week. It sounds stupid just saying that, “A whole week.” Big deal. But, it’s been surprisingly difficult to stay away.

I realized that I was using Twitter as an excuse to do nothing useful. I’d scroll and click and scroll and click and I loved it. So what’s the problem? The problem is that I was always looking for something new to do, or more likely, just hoping to be entertained. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but I was doing it during every spare moment, and frequently in moments that I couldn’t spare. Not productive.

Too much of a good thing is a bad thing, so I’m taking a break. I don’t know how long it will last. It’s just an experiment.

I’d like to lose my pervasive fear of missing out.
I want to know if my background stress level changes.
I want to learn to seek things out deliberately rather than passively having everything streamed at me.
I want to reduce my intake of snark and false outrage.

One immediate side effect is that after one week without Twitter I’m already less angry at the world. That’s something worth pursuing.

In the meantime, I’ll be at baty.net and probably more active on Instagram.

Originally published at baty.net on January 7, 2017.

Weather logging in Tinderbox Updated

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 28 Dec 2016 16:27:23 +0000

For the past couple of years, I’ve used a “Stamp” in Tinderbox to append weather conditions to the current note’s text.

See Recording The Weather In Tinderbox for background.

While preparing my Daybook for 2017 I decided I wanted to include just the current condition and temperature rather than the entire weather summary. The following script grabs the weather (using wu) and returns just the condition and temperature.

#!/bin/sh  
\# Jack Baty, 2016 ([https://baty.net](https://baty.net))  
\# Grab and parse weather info using 'wu' by Stephen Ramsay  
\# [https://github.com/sramsay/wu](https://github.com/sramsay/wu)

\# Assumes $GOPATH is set

WEATHER=\`$GOPATH/bin/wu\`  
TEMP=\`echo "$WEATHER" | awk '/Temperature/' | cut -d':' -f2-\`  
COND=\`echo "$WEATHER" | awk '/Conditions/' | cut -d':' -f2-\`

echo "$COND $TEMP"

My Stamp calls this new script, adds the results to a custom attribute named “Weather” and then adds Weather as a KeyAttribute to the current note. This way the weather is only displayed on notes for which I explicitly asked for it. The new Stamp looks like this:

Now, if I want to include the current weather conditions with any note, I apply the Stamp and it looks like this…

Originally published at baty.net on December 28, 2016.

Literate Programming my Emacs Config

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 27 Dec 2016 21:13:27 +0000

Inspired by Sacha Chua, I decided to move my Emacs configuration into an Org Mode file. This lets me organize things nicely and keep notes about my progress, as I’m still learning a lot.

I use Spacemacs and keep all of my customizations in ~/.spacemacs.d/ so that ~/.emacs.d/ can belong entirely to the Spacemacs installation. My init.el file had grown a bit unwieldy, so I was looking forward to the opportunity to tidy things up.

First, I created a new file named jack.org, and copied all of my customizations into it. Then I wrapped each section in a SRC block so I could “tangle” it using Babel. Then I added Org headings around each section and rearranged the sections so they made sense, at least to me. Here’s a snippet…

\*\*\* Custom Agenda Commands

#+BEGIN\_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle yes  
(**setq** org-agenda-custom-commands  
(**append** '(("c" "Waiting for Client" tags-todo "Client")  
("w" "Waiting" todo "WAIT" **nil**)  
("p" "Active Projects" tags "project/-DONE-CANC" **nil**)  
("Q" tags "questions")  
("b" tags "bought")  
("l" tags "Links")  
("v" tags-todo "Events"))))  
#+END\_SRC

\*\*\* Capture Templates

#+BEGIN\_SRC emacs-lisp :tangle yes  
(**setq** org-capture-templates  
'(("t" "Todo" entry  
(file+headline "~/org/todo.org" "Inbox")  
"\* TODO %? \\n %i\\n")

(with-eval-after-load 'org-capture  
(add-hook 'org-capture-mode-hook 'evil-insert-state))  
#+END\_SRC

Now, whenever I update something in jack.org I just press C-c C-v t and all of the SRC blocks are rendered out to a file named jack.el

Spacemacs’ init.el file contains things I don’t know how to move, so I kept that file in place and I simply load my customizations into the appropriate section, like this…

(defun dotspacemacs/user-config ()

"Configuration function for user codeThis function is called at the very end of Spacemacs initialization afterlayers configuration.This is the place where most of your configurations should be done. Unless it is explicitly specified that a variable should be set before a package is loaded, you should place your code here."

(load "~/Dropbox/Sync/dotfiles/spacemacs.d/jack.el")

I don’t know if that was the best way of doing things, but it worked. Having my entire configuration as an Org Mode file is pretty nice. I’m finding it to be much easier to manage and it’s made me less nervous about cluttering things up in the future.

I’ve uploaded a copy of my configuration for anyone interested.

Originally published at baty.net on December 27, 2016.

Previewing Markdown files with Marked and Vim

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 02:10:52 +0000

I’ve been tinkering with Vimwiki again. It happens.

While editing Markdown files, I often want to see a preview of the file as HTML. This is where Brett Terpstra’s Marked comes in handy.

I didn’t know the best way to start previewing a file directly from Vim to Marked. A quick search turned up this post by Rob Allen showing how to use Vim’s make command to open the current file in Marked.

It’s easy. In ~/.vim/ftplugin/markdown.vim, I added the following line…

set makeprg=open\ -a\ Marked\\\ 2.app\ ‘%:p

Now, when editing any Markdown file I just type :make and that file opens in Marked. Neat.

Originally published at baty.net on December 15, 2016.

DiceWARE

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:19:46 +0000

DiceWARE:

I’m Mira Modi. I’m a seventh grader in New York City, and I sell strong, secure passwords. It sounds a little crazy to buy a password. But using a terrible password, such as 12345 or password, is even crazier.

Genius. Of course I ordered one

Permanent vs Easy

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:18:17 +0000

The ideal website is static and hosted on a simple service like Amazon S3 or a cheap VPS. As long as someone keeps paying the bill, a static website will be around forever. There’s no need to worry about software upgrades or CMS vulnerabilities. A static website is fast and permanent.

But for the editor(s), a static site isn’t very easy to manage.

My blog has run on just about every platform ever created. I love when I switch to a completely static build. It’s just raw HTML files in a folder, what could be better? Many things could be better.

I want to post from Ulysses or MarsEdit or whatever other tool comes along to make the process more pleasant. I want to automatically post book reviews from GoodReads. I want better integration with other services. I want to play with a wider range of templates and widgets. I want to easily post from my iPad.

What I don’t want is to deal with keeping WordPress updated and running smoothly. I don’t want to worry about security issues. I don’t want to worry about making sure everything is backed up safely. I don’t want to worry about cache invalidation. I don’t want to worry about keeping a server updated and secure.

I love playing with my site. WordPress may not be simple or permanent, but it makes almost everything about blogging easy. If I want permanence, I can run httrack a few times a year and mirror everything.

One thing I do know, is that a blogging platforms like Medium or Tumblr are never permanent.

It’s a tough call, and one that I (re)make regularly.

I Painted a Tree

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:17:18 +0000

I’ve been experimenting with watercolor painting. It’s not going well, but I refuse to give up quite yet. Yesterday I painted a tree, as practice. It’s not a good tree, but I’m happy that I can tell it’s a tree.

Apps I Installed on the 9.7 inch iPad Pro

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:15:41 +0000

Whenever I get a new device I set it up “from scratch”. In doing so, I figure I’ll be avoiding all of the cruft and nonsense that accumulates over time. I imagine installing a half-dozen or so non-Apple apps and THAT’S IT!

It never works out that way.

Here are the apps I installed within the first hour of owning the smaller iPad Pro, and the list has grown since then.

1Password
GoodNotes
Procreate
Tweetbot
Outlook
Ulysses
Day One
Google Photos
DEVONthink To Go
Dropbox
PDF Expert
Quip
TextExpander
Slack
2Do
Drafts
Plex
Netflix
NYTimes

Going smaller with a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 12 Dec 2016 19:13:14 +0000

When the original iPad Pro was released I bought one right away and I loved it. It was so big and fast that I thought it might replace my laptop for meetings and quick outings.

That didn’t happen. In fact, it fell out of regular use because it was so big. I recently started using the new 13” MacBook Pro, and here they are side-by-side.

It felt like I was using two laptops. Why grab the iPad when the MBP is the same size and way more capable?

Long story short, today I bought the smaller 9.7-inch iPad Pro and I already think it makes much more sense. It augments the MBP instead of competing with it. It’s easier to use with the Pencil because it’s possible to hold in one hand while writing with the other. The big iPad needed a dedicated work surface.

I might even be able to watch movies on it in bed. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro was awesome for watching movies, but it was difficult to hold for extended periods, so I rarely used it for that.

I guess if I really wanted to go all-in with iOS I’d stick with the big iPad, but that’s not going to happen anytime soon, so I’m better off with the MBP for “real” work, and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro tangential tasks like reading, watching movies, games, drawing, and so on.

My recent switch from an iPhone 6 to a 5s convinced me that smaller can be better. Going to a smaller iPad Pro seems to have confirmed it.

Things installed on 2016 MacBook Pro

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 18:08:22 +0000

I get a new laptop every few years. I always start fresh and install everything from scratch. It’s interesting to see what changes and what doesn’t. Most of the things I installed this time are the same as last time. Maybe I really am settling down.

Anyway, here’s what I installed on my new MacBook Pro, in no particular order.

Apps

BBEdit
iTerm
Emacs
TextExpander
Keyboard Maestro
1Password
Dropbox
Droplr
Skitch
Interarchy
Moom
Day One
Slack
Dropzone
Reeder
Google Chrome
Acorn
Soulver
Alfred
TheBrain
Tinderbox
DEVONthink Pro Office
Adobe Creative Suite
Microsoft Office
Resilio Sync

Command line apps/utilities

Oh-My-ZSH
MacTex
mbsync
Git
Vim
Hugo
remind
Wyrd
Mu/Mu4e
gnupg2
pass
pandoc
xapian

Exporting my Tinderbox Daybook to Org Mode

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 18:05:44 +0000

Every month I export my Tinderbox “Daybook” entries so that I can print and bind them (a whole other story). I have a pretty good Org Mode setup for creating PDFs so I wanted the output to be Org Mode files.

Previously, I used the built-in OPML templates and then converted the output to Org Mode using Pandoc. This was all a bit cumbersome, so I created simple Org Mode export templates, based on the default OPML templates.

Template: Org Mode

#+TITLE: Daybook ^value(attributeEncode($Name))^ 2016  
#+DATE:   
#+SETUPFILE: ~/Dropbox/org/\_SETUP\_DAYBOOK  
#+OPTIONS: toc:nil num:nil &gt;:nil ^:nil &lt;:nil H:2  
#+STARTUP: overview  
  
^action($HTMLExportExtension=".org")^  
  
^children(/Templates/Org Mode/Org Mode Item item)^

The front matter sets up my preferred options and LaTeX settings.

Template: Org Mode Item

^if(ChildCount)^\*^indent("\*",^value($OutlineDepth(parent)-1))^ ^value($Name)^ - ^value(format($StartDate,"M0-D w"))^  
  
^value($Text)  
^children(/Templates/Org Mode/Org Mode item)^\*^indent("\*",^value($OutlineDepth(parent)-1))^  
^else^\*^indent("\*",^value($OutlineDepth(parent)-1))^ ^value($Name)^  - ^value(format($StartDate,"M0-D w"))^  
  
^value($Text)^  
^endIf^

This just loops over the notes and outputs org-formatted text.

So, to process my monthly Tinderbox Daybook I do this…

Select the month in Tinderbox
Choose “Export Selected Note”
Open the exported file in Emacs
Hit “CTRL-x CTRL-e l o” to export a PDF
Print.

It looks like this:

Much better!

Cross-posting to Medium

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 21:56:08 +0000

This post is mostly to test whether or not my new IFTTT recipe is working.

I like Medium, but I don’t want to live there. The best compromise might be to cross-post things from baty.net. I hesitate to automate the process because I post a lot of useless stuff, much of which is useless to everyone but me. On the other hand, there are people I’m interested in and I wish they’d post more nonsense.

Cross-posting everything automatically is a good way to make sure that the nonsense is distributed as widely as possible.

The Revenge of Analog (Book)

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 21:53:10 +0000

If ever a book was meant for me, “The Revenge of Analog“ is it.

David Sax dives into the ongoing resurgence of analog: film photography, paper notebooks, vinyl records, even education. I believe all of these things matter, and that their continued (and growing) use is for the better.

Sax perhaps sprinkles everything with a bit of unnecessary hyperbole, but he’s obviously excited about the same things I am, so I’ll forgive the excess.

“The Revenge of Analog” is a fun and informative read for anyone even remotely interested in the life of “real things”

MacBook Pro 2016 Keyboard

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Nov 2016 21:46:25 +0000

Nov 26 2016

This should give you an idea how much I dislike the keyboard on the latest MacBook Pro. I have to get used to it, but I don’t have to like it.

And let me say again how much I love the Apple Extended Keyboard II. Still the greatest keyboard ever made.

Originally published at baty.net.

Three Notebooks

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 12 Nov 2016 21:39:09 +0000

I have taken to carrying three notebooks. Here’s how (or better, when) I use them.

Before it happens

I use a Hobonichi Techo Planner for scheduling and planning. It’s loaded with calendars and dated pages.

The Hobonichi is a wonderful, easy-to-carry planner that uses Tomoe River paper; my favorite. I record all event-based information in one. On each day’s page I write a list of things relevant to that day. I sometimes include a small sketch representing the day.

While it’s happening

I use a Field Notes notebook to jot things down while I’m away from a desk.

The Field Notes notebook fits in my pocket, so I always have it with me. With it, I can quickly capture things any time.

After it happens

I use a Leuchtturm1917 notebook to record notes and keep lists. It’s a modified Bullet Journal.

The Leuchtturm is great for longer-form notes and lists. It’s my bullet journal and where I collect things captured in the Field Notes notebook once I’m back at my desk.

My notebook configuration changes regularly, but I like where things are now.

Originally published at www.baty.net.

Leeloo 2005–2016

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 18 Sep 2016 17:58:58 +0000

Shortly after Christmas, 2005, my daughter surprised me by taking me to the local Humane Society and handing me an envelope with enough money for an adoption. She wanted me to pick out a new puppy. We already had 2 dogs at the time so I wasn’t exactly keen on getting a third, but I said I’d take a look.

I immediately fell in love with an adorable pit bull mix and we took her home. She was strong and beautiful so I decided to name her “Leeloo”, after Milla Jovovich’s strong, odd, and beautiful character in “The Fifth Element”.

Leeloo had funny ears and the sweetest disposition. I loved her.

A few weeks ago she stopped eating. After about a week we learned that her kidneys were failing, and quickly. We tried a number of treatments but her condition continued to worsen, and the decision was made to put her down.

I am heartbroken, but thankful that she was kind enough to spend her 10 years with me.

I’ve selected some of my favorite photos of Leeloo and created a collection on Flickr here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jbaty/albums/72157672738415752

Or if Flickr ever goes away, there’s a copy of them here: https://www.baty.net/galleries/leeloo2016/

I’ll miss my sweet Leeloo.

Originally published at www.baty.net.

Plain Text Accounting with Ledger

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 14 Aug 2016 17:54:38 +0000

I dropped out of accounting in college. I hated every minute of it and could not make two columns balance under any circumstances.

I have always had trouble budgeting. For me, the balance in my checking account represented how much I could blow on whatever impulse purchase suited me that day. Prior to my daughter’s wedding, I looked for help. I found it in YNAB. YNAB uses a sort of “envelope” system for tracking where money needs to be. It worked very well, the proof being was that I was actually able to afford to pay for the wedding.

Then YNAB went to an online-only subscription plan and I started looking elsewhere. Their online version works fine, but no longer feels right. Plus, I don’t need yet another service with access to my financial accounts.

What I found was Ledger. Ledger is a command-line double-entry accounting tool that uses a plain-text format for entries. Ledger was created in 2003 by John Wiegley, the current maintainer of Emacs. I love plain-text for most things, most of the time, so I dove in.

One of the things I’ve learned while struggling with spending is that it’s beneficial to enter every transaction by hand. That’s right every transaction should be entered by hand. This forces me to feel everything I spend. It’s also why I still prefer to hand-write checks. I’m reminded that it’s real money. Also, small monthly subscriptions that I may have missed become visible. I’ve saved hundreds of dollars simply by forcing myself to pay attention.

Here’s an example of an entry in my Ledger file:

2016-08-08 \* Betterment Transfer   
  Assets:Betterment:Roth IRA $250.00   
  Assets:Checking

2016/08/09 \* Blue Apron   
  Expenses:Food:Groceries $59.94   
  Assets:Checking

Since Ledger forces double entry, each transaction must contain both the target and source accounts. These accounts need not be set up ahead of time, they just become accounts the first time they are used. They are hierarchical and can be nested as deeply as I like. I try to keep things at just a few levels deep. I’m learning accounting as I go!

To mimic the “bucket” functionality of YNAB, I use Ledger’s “virtual” accounts. These are separate accounts that can be either shown or hidden when generating balances or other reports. Here’s an example in which I move $100 from Checking into my “Vacation” bucket.

2016-08-14 \* Vacation Fund   
  \[Bucket:Vacation\] $100   
  \[Assets:Checking\]

Notice the brackets around each entry. This indicates that those are virtual, but should still balance. If I look at my balance with Ledger after that it will show my Checking account has $100 less than before, even though it really still has the $100. To see the balances without virtual transactions, I use the “ — real” switch. With real, Ledger shows what I actually have in the account. Without using real I see what is left after moving the $100 to “Vacation”. I’m still getting the hang of it, but this is all easier to do than to explain.

Emacs comes with ledger-mode, making data entry easy using auto-completion for accounts and automatically copying accounts from similar entries. It all sounds like a lot of work, but I find that it’s easier for me than using Quicken or YNAB. Plus, it’s all mine, and it’s all free.

Ledger does lots more, including handling multiple currencies, commodities and pricing, automatic transactions, etc. I’m trying to start simple, but this all feels very good. Being in complete control of my data using an open, simple format makes me feel more in control of my finances.

You can find lots of good resources at plaintextaccounting.org

Originally published at notes.baty.net.

Re-Pairing

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 15:40:23 +0000

The only thing worse than untangling wired headphones is constantly having to charge and (re)pair wireless headphones.

I hate headphone wires. After I lay them out carefully on my counter, I turn my back for five minutes and when I look again they have become an impossibly-knotty puzzle of wires and ear buds.

And so, I bought fancy Bluetooth headphones in order to free myself of the recurring nightmare of tangled wires.

This would be awesome, except that the wireless headphones always seem to need a charge at random intervals, usually shortly after beginning a long walk. What’s even more frustrating is that they, even more randomly, fail to pair with my iPhone. This drives me nuts. I too-frequently end up standing half-way out the door screaming at the phone because “I just want to listen to some music while I walk, god damn you!”

Honestly, I’d rather deal with the wires.

Originally published at notes.baty.net.

The Temptation of Other Tools

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 14:22:00 +0000

I am easily distracted by shiny new things. This is dangerous for productivity because it causes me to burn down my system and start over on a regular basis. As fun as that is, it’s not what I should be doing. For example, last night after reading a random blog post I impulsively started moving all of my tasks and projects back into that other todo app that I love. Doing that led me to changing how capture works with email, which makes me want to look up some helper scripts and then it was 2:00AM and I realized how much I’d miss Org Mode and oh yeah Mu4e is awesome and now what?

Not healthy.

As a reminder to myself, I am posting the list of tools and processes I’ve been using and should continue to use because they work. I can only hope that the potential embarrassment of changing my mind later adds enough friction that I actually stick with these things for longer than usual. Here goes.

Digital at my desk(s)

Emacs and Org Mode for tasks, project management, and creating documents
Mu4e for email, supplemented by Mailmate when the mood strikes. via IMAP.
Deft for random notes, supplemented by nvAlt when the mood strikes. Same files.
Remind / Wyrd and Google Calendar for events. I have them synced.
DEVONthink Pro for digital storage and recall of files and documents
Dropbox for sync

Mobile (iPad Pro and Pencil)

DEVONthink To Go 2. Now in beta, sync works great.
GoodNotes for handwriting notes, meeting notes, drawings, etc.
Editorial for editing random notes (synced with Deft/nvAlt on Mac)

Analog

Field Notes notebook always in my pocket
A modified “Bullet Journal” for personal tasks, projects, and planning. I use a Leuchtterm1917.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Originally published at baty.net on July 22, 2016.

Using Markdown instead of Org Mode

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 03 Jul 2016 15:19:14 +0000

I have recently abandoned using Org Mode, even though I love nearly everything about it.

The problem is that even though Org Mode documents are technically just plain text files, they are nearly useless outside of Emacs. Sometimes it’s nice to use a different editor. Sometimes it’s nice to edit using an iPad Pro.

So I’m back to using Markdown. Writing documents using Markdown can be done in any text editor. Most modern editors support Markdown very well. Files synced via Dropbox or whatever can be edited using any number of fine iOS-based editors. (I currently use Editorial)

It’s the flexibility of Markdown editor options that compelled me to abandon Org Mode. I still prefer Emacs for editing on the Mac, though. This is largely because of Pandoc Mode and Orgtbl Mode.

The combination of Markdown mode and Pandoc mode for Emacs provides many of the fancy bits of Org Mode, like folding, linking, etc. Pandoc mode makes exporting to multiple output formats almost as flexible as Org Mode.

Orgtbl-mode is a minor mode which allows me to work with Markdown-formatted tables as easily as I did in Org Mode. Very handy.

The gist is that with a little setup, writing and publishing using Markdown can be as easy and complete as with Org Mode, and I get to use whatever editor I choose, on both my Mac and my iPad.

Originally published at notes.baty.net.

I wonder if this could also be said about the behavior of the Wordpress “Publish” button.

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 29 May 2016 13:41:11 +0000

I wonder if this could also be said about the behavior of the Wordpress “Publish” button. “Even if you make the error of thinking that clicking the Publish button won’t actually do what it says it will, you’ll certainly figure it out”

Making the Medium “mistake” is certainly less potentially destructive. Perhaps that was the point, but if my “life was over” after accidentally clicking a button, I’d make work of not doing it again, regardless of whatever design flaws caused it to happen in the first place.

Leica M3 vs Nikon F3 in a few words

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 28 May 2016 17:43:23 +0000

Leica M3 and Nikon F3

The Leica M3 and the Nikon F3 (with motor drive) are the two cameras I’m working with at the moment. Both are over-engineered and delightful to handle. Both are iconic. When you see a camera represented generically it’s usually based one of these two.

They are somewhat different cameras.

The Leica was made in 1960 and the F3 in 1983.
The M3 is uses a rangefinder for focusing while the F3 focuses through the lens
The M3 is entirely mechanical (no batteries) while the F3 has a meter and automatic (aperture-priority) exposure
The M3 has a mechanical cloth shutter, the F3’s is electronically-controlled titanium
I paid $1000 for the M3 and under $300 the F3

They have different strengths, and I enjoy them both very much. Right now the Nikon feels fresh and exciting. This is not only because the Nikon is brand new to me. It’s also because it has automatic exposure and a built-in meter. I sometimes forget how convenient that can be.

The motor drive is cool, too. If someone asked you for a “camera sound effect” the F3 and MD-4 would be what they meant. The Leica’s nearly-silent snick is completely different. Both sound great.

Loading film in the M3 requires that the bottom be removed, the film loaded onto a fussy separate take-up spool, then carefully reassembled. With the F3 you just open the back, stick the leader into a slot, close the back and go.

Both systems can use lenses dating back to the 1950s. Both are manual-focus cameras. both are built like tanks. Both are awesome.

Originally published at baty.net on May 28, 2016.

Leeloo, Nikon F3, Tri-X, HC-110, Pakon and done

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 19 May 2016 00:55:21 +0000

Leeloo. Nikon F3. Tri-X in HC-110 (B). 50mm 1.4

Leeloo is beautiful but is not the most photogenic of dogs. It takes work to get a reasonably pleasing shot of her. I like this one.

The photo was taken with the new (to me) Nikon F3 which I’m enjoying very much. It feels like a camera that has just what is needed but no more. Not as minimal as the old Leica’s I’m used to, but the viewfinder is huge and bright and automatic exposure sure comes in handy.

Also, I’m new to developing in HC-110, and I wish I would have discovered it sooner. It’s a syrup that lasts forever and is very easy to mix. Much easier to deal with than D76 and I don’t see a significant difference in the results so far. Another bonus is that with dilution “B” (1:32) it only needs 4:30 in the developer. I scanned this using the Pakon. The time from taking the last frame to posting this shot was under an hour.

Process in HC-110: 4:30
Stop/rinse: 1:00
Fix: 6:00
Wash: 8:00
Dry (in film dryer): 20:00
Scan: 5:00
Process and upload: 2:00

Shooting film is fast and easy, all things considered.

Originally published at baty.net on May 19, 2016.

I don’t like what’s happening with Apple

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 08 May 2016 12:55:50 +0000

As a long-time Apple fan, I’ve been discouraged by what I’m reading lately. The Arments and Grubers of the Mac community have been spending much of their time writing about where and how Apple has been lacking. I’ve been wondering the same thing.

For years I’ve defaulted to using whatever Apple provided, both hardware and software. I knew it would be best in class and would just work. This feeling has been fading.

For me, hardware peaked with the iPhone 5s and the MacBook Air. The new phones are bigger, but not significantly more useful to me. The latest Macbook is skinny and pretty, but less powerful and useful than my 2013 11″ Air. The Apple Watch is ugly, slow, awkward to use, and not nearly useful enough to justify wearing every day. The 4th Generation Apple TV isn’t showing much promise either.

And I certainly don’t need or want an Apple Car.

And as for software? Meh. Most agree that iTunes is a mess. Apple Music just makes things worse. Using iCloud for sync should be obvious, but iCloud has been wholly unreliable for me. Instead, I choose Dropbox if it’s an option. I tried moving my photos to the Photos app but with fewer than 10,000 images the app pegs my CPU the entire time it’s running. I prefer Alexa to Siri by a wide margin. The Reminders app crashes constantly on one of my Macs. The Mac App Store restricts the usefulness of many of my favorite desktop apps and the iOS App Store is full of mostly games apps too simple to be useful.

It’s all very disappointing, and I hope things turn around.

Originally published at baty.net on May 8, 2016.

Fewer Dials

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 22:06:56 +0000

Me, from earlier today…

I’m exhausted. Everything I do seems to involve making dozens of tiny unnecessary decisions. It’s my fault. I love “workflows” and “processes” and tweaking and exploring software and sitting at the computer figuring out (presumably) better ways of doing things. I’ve asked for this, but I no longer want it. I want fewer options, fewer decisions, fewer opportunities to become lost in whatever system I’m currently running.

An example…

I wanted to write something about how I’m feeling today, so I threw out a quick tweet (see above). Then, I thought about it more and wanted to add some detail. For that sort of thing, I blog. Seems simple enough, but here’s my thought process…

Where should I post it? Medium? Tumblr? Baty.net? Dave Winers new 1999.io? I think my blog (baty.net) would be good. Ok, now, where should I write it? I could use the WordPress New Post form but everyone says that’s just overkill and cumbersome and whatever so I need something better. Something cooler. Maybe something “distraction-free” even. How about Vim? I love writing in Vim. Or maybe Ulysses. Ulysses is awesome. I could write it there using Markdown and convert it to Rich Text and then paste it into WordPress. Or MarsEdit? I love MarsEdit and miss using it. That should work. Heck, maybe I should go back to a static site, since that was just Plain Text™ right? Right!?

You see? It’s like that with every single thing I do.

When I need to write something down, just a quick note, I have to decide if I want it in Vimwiki or Notes or Evernote or DEVONthink or TheBrain or Tinderbox or some new thing I just heard about this morning. Maybe TaskPaper. The new version is awesome. The new version of everything is always awesome.

It’s ridiculous. I go through this phase regularly, but this time it feels particularly bad. I want fewer things that can be adjusted. I love adjusting things. I love dials and options and depth in software, but it’s making me crazy and not helping me actually get anything done. I don’t think I’ve finished a decent-sized project in months. I’ve certainly spent enough time doing “work about work” though.

I feel like gutting everything and starting over. Ditch 90% of my options.

I don’t have any solutions yet, but I’m working on it. First thing I did was just use the boring old WordPress editor to write and post this. That worked great.

Originally published at baty.net on April 11, 2016.

ServerPilot and DigitalOcean

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 13:28:27 +0000

I recently provisioned and configured a new Linode VPS for hosting my sites. This replaced an aging VPS that was running Ubuntu 8.xx and I didn’t feel like upgrading the kernel so I built a new one and moved everything over. I am capable of configuring a new LAMP or LEMP stack and installing what I need on Linux, but I’m not good at it. I also don’t have the patience for constantly keeping up with security/system updates. My sysadmin skills have atrophied, so I spun up a new DigitalOcean droplet and let ServerPilot handle everything.

ServerPilot is a service that offers a simple control panel for remotely managing a newly-provisioned VPS from DigitalOcean (it does work with other services). Your VPS is automatically configured with Apache, nginx, MySQL, PHP, firewall, etc and is updated automatically when system patches are available. The control panel is very lightweight and simple. It might be too simple for some, but for me it strikes a good balance. I just want to toss a new app on it and have it running quickly. If I never have to typechmod -R whatever again I’ll be happy.

So far the experience has been simple and pleasant. I’m running the free tier of ServerPilot on a 1GB droplet. We’ll see how that runs. I may upgrade to the paid tier to get stats, multiple users, SSL, etc. but for now this is working very well.

Originally published at baty.net on April 9, 2016.

David Rees is winding down his pencil sharpening service

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 11:43:24 +0000

David Rees started an Artisanal Pencil Sharpening service and kept a mostly straight face about it the entire time. The execution was brilliant. Of course I bought one:

My artisanally-sharpened pencil from David Rees

He wrote a book on the subject: “How to Sharpen Pencils”

Chapter 11 of “How to Sharpen Pencils” includes an in-depth discussion on mechanical pencils, which is included here in its entirety:

Mechanical pencils are bullshit.

The book is filled with terrific and useful information about pencil sharpening. I recommended his service to all my friends. I can only assume each and every one of them purchased his or her own pencil.

So it was with surprise and what I can only describe as horror that I read the following tweet:

Wanted to wait until the markets closed so as not to cause panic. Rumors are true, my pencil sharpening biz is effectively done

— David Rees (@david_rees) April 9, 2016

I see that he’s changed the price of newly-sharpened pencils from $40 to $500, which could be why he says “effectively done”. The good news is that you could still get one. At least for now.

A professionally-sharpened pencil isn’t just a tool, it’s an investment.

Originally published at baty.net on April 9, 2016.

Book: Turn the Ship Around!

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:32:34 +0000

Amazon

I loved this book. Someone described it accurately as “The Hunt For Red October” meets “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” A few of my highlighted quotes:

A little rudder far from the rocks is a lot better than a lot of rudder close to the rocks

Provide people with the objective and let them figure out the method

What do we do on a day-to-day basis? We learn.

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Book: Anything You Want

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 00:12:38 +0000

Lots of good, concise advise from Derek Sivers. Most of it resonated with me. The takeaway theme for me was “No effort was spent on anything but my customers”.

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Making library miscellaneousness awesome

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 21:15:00 +0000

David Weinberger on the Sitterwerk Art Library:

That the shelves have no persistent order doesn’t mean they have no order. Rather, works are reshelved by users in the clusters the users have created for their research. All the items have RFID tags in them, and the shelves are automatically scanned so that the library can always tell users where items are located.

As a result, if you look up a particular item, you will see it surrounded by works that some other user thought were related to it in some way. This creates a richer browsing experience because it is shaped and reshaped by how its community of users sees the items’ inter-relationships.

I love everything about this.

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Bought Some Music

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 19:38:14 +0000

That’s right, bought. I prefer owning things to renting, but I’ve been lazy and it’s been a while since I’ve bought anything digital. Here’s what I picked up today.

La Chinga — “Freewheelin’”

I’d have grabbed this one based on the album cover alone. Good time hard rock.

Baroness — “Purple”

I enjoyed “Yellow and Green” and this one seems like more of the same.

The Dead Weather — “Dodge and Burn”

With a title like “Dodge and Burn” of course I’m in. I really like this band. I’ve nearly worn out “Horehound”. A vinyl copy of this one is on the way also.

I burned all three to CD so I can listen to them in the car, since I hate wiring up my iPhone and finding/playing music on it while trying to drive.

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Stagnant and dull can digital books ever replace print?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 14:46:47 +0000

Craig Mod:

Where will those explorations happen? I don’t know. But I do know that print has endured and continues to endure for good reason. Our relationships to our most meaningful books are long and textured. And until we can trust our digital reading platforms, until the value propositions of digital are made clearer, until the notes and data we produce within them is more accessible and malleable, physical books will remain at the core of our working libraries for a long time coming.

Craig Mod has gone from being a long-time avid Kindle user back to reading physical books. His essay captures the nearly identical evolution I’ve gone through with physical vs Kindle books. I haven’t bought a book on the Kindle in a long time. I don’t love them, and more importantly, I don’t trust them. I’m not willing to trade trust for convenience.

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Robots will take your job

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 21:13:50 +0000

Scott Santens in The Boston Globe

AMELIA IS many things. But she’ll never take a sick day, join a union, or waste time on Facebook on the job. Created by IPsoft over the past 16 years, the AI system learned how to perform the work of call center employees. She can learn in seconds what takes humans months to master, and she can do it in 20 languages. Because she’s able to learn, she’s able to do more over time. In one company trial, she successfully handled one of every 10 calls in the first week, and by the end of the second month, she could resolve six in 10. Deploy her worldwide, and 250 million people can start looking for a new job.

Some version of this is _going_ to happen. It’s unsettling at the very least.

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Bulletin Boards

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 22:48:18 +0000

Part of my bulletin board

I love bulletin boards. Nothing is more versatile than a bulletin board with a hand full of push-pins.

A bulletin board will hold mundane things like a self-referential index card. It will also hold the most precious things, like a photo of my dad next to the first car I remember him driving.

And everything in between. All right there in front of me, all the time.

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I almost stopped using an app launcher

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 15 Mar 2016 22:13:50 +0000

I found the following in a draft blog post from back in August:

First, there was Quicksilver. Then, there was LaunchBar. Then there was Alfred. Then there was LaunchBar again. I’ve been using one launcher app or another for so long that it’s hard to use a computer without one.

While learning about some of the fancy file manipulation features in LaunchBar, it occurred to me that, neat as they are, I never used any of those features. After thinking about it, I realized that I only use three features: app launching, clipboard history, and the calculator. This made me wonder if I really need LaunchBar. Turns out that I don’t.

Launching applications is something that later versions of Spotlight does just fine. That handles about 90% of what I used LaunchBar for.

I actually did try it for a while. Like a week. Turned out I do use some of those other nifty features. I’m still using LaunchBar every day. The first mention of it here was back in 2007 with From QuickSilver to LaunchBar. We’ve been together a while.

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The Problems I have with Org Mode and Emacs

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 22:44:53 +0000

I love Org Mode. After years of resistence due to my reliance upon Vim, I discovered Spacemacs and my switch to Emacs-based editing was off and running.

Org Mode can do anything I’d ever need when it comes to writing, organizing, searching, and publishing documents of any kind. With its powerful Agenda it can manage my entire GTD process. Spacemacs makes using Emacs palatable for me, so everything should be hunky-dory. It is pretty great. But…

Emacs began to eat my world. It does email!? Cool, spend a weekend figuring out Mu4e and isync and a million other bits and I’ve got a darn fine email system. It does Git? Neat! I’ll just figure out Magit next weekend so I can have a powerful source code management tool, right in Emacs. Twitter, IRC, and so on, forever.

The thing I realized was that I already have software and systems for nearly everything that Emacs/Org Mode can do. What’s worse, with Org Mode, I’m required to use Emacs. This should be fine, even desired, but after years of keeping nearly everything in Markdown files, I started to miss the flexibility of using whichever editor suited me at the moment.

For example, I’m writing this in Ulysses, which is a marvelous writing environment. For prose, Ulysses is way better than Org Mode. Even so, if I get bored, I’ll switch to BBEdit or Vim or Spacemacs to edit Markdown files.

So, as flexible as Emacs and Org Mode are, they remove the flexibility of using the tools I already know and love. I’ll keep Org Mode as part of the tool kit, but I may be done trying to use it (and Emacs) for everything.

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1949 Delahaye

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 17:22:23 +0000

I’d never heard of Delahaye before seeing this image. This might be the coolest car ever made.

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Turn cremated remains into a vinyl record

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 16:25:36 +0000

MNN:

When the album that is life finally reaches the end wouldn’t it be nice to keep that record spinning for eternity?

Of course it seems silly. I love it.

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Leeloo and her ears

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 13 Mar 2016 14:26:06 +0000

Leeloo. Nikon F100. HP5+

I’ve always loved her lopsided ears

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Apple llc 4x5

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 00:09:02 +0000

This is a working Apple IIc that I keep in my basement for no valid reason other than it’s neat to look at.

I don’t know what happened with this image. Probably a bit over-exposed. Putting a beige subject on a white background wasn’t a great idea either.

Crown Graphic 4x5
f/22 for 1⁄3 second
HP5+ in D76 1:1 for 13 minutes

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Abandon Your DVCS

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 19:28:54 +0000

Benjamin Pollacks:

And then Git happened. Git is so amazingly simple to use that APress, a single publisher, needs to have three different books on how to use it. It’s so simple that Atlassian and GitHub both felt a need to write their own online tutorials to try to clarify the main Git tutorial on the actual Git website. It’s so transparent that developers routinely tell me that the easiest way to learn Git is to start with its file formats and work up to the commands. And yet, when someone dares to say that Git is harder than other SCMs, they inevitably get yelled at, in what I can only assume is a combination of Stockholm syndrome and groupthink run amok by overdosing on five-hour energy buckets.

Here’s a tip: if you say something’s hard, and everyone starts screaming at you — sometimes literally — that it’s easy, then it’s really hard. The people yelling at you are trying desperately to pretend like it was easy so they don’t feel like an idiot for how long it took them to figure things out. This in turn makes you feel like an idiot for taking so long to grasp the “easy” concept, so you happily pay it forward, and we come to one of the two great Emperor Has No Clothes moments in computing.

I frequently hear developers say “something must’ve happened during the merge.” I should never hear that. I don’t blame the devs, I blame Git.

I’ve used Git for a long time. I came to it via CVS, then Subversion, then Darcs (really!). Git is awesome and way better than those that came before, but I am regularly frustrated by it. I really wanted to adopt Mercurial but DVCSes were young and Git had all of the momentum even though Mercurial was (and in my opinion still is) better. I stuck with Git. Git started out hard, then got easier. We’ve made it hard again, somehow.

But I do think it’s time all of us apologists take a step back, put down the crazy juice, and admit, if only for a moment, that we have made things horrendously more complicated to achieve ends that could have been met in many other ways.

This is true for way more than just DVCSes. It’s true for just about everything in the development landscape today.

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Amazon Echo Vs Siri

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 05 Mar 2016 14:13:38 +0000

MacSparky

Between the speed and reliability, I feel more comfortable asking Alexa questions because I’m not worried about whether or not the Echo will stop and think for long seconds before screwing up. That trust means I use it more often.

Mr. Sparks’ experience, ahem, echoes mine.

The Amazon Echo has remained my favorite device over the past six months. It is in my kitchen and I use it many times every day for setting timers, adding reminders, performing conversions, playing music, and telling jokes. It always works. I don’t have to think about it.

Using Siri, on the other hand, feels like work. Siri makes me wait too long just for her to get things wrong.

Siri also requires me to do something first. I have to pick up my phone, press a button, and wait. Yes, if I’m sitting at my desk with the iPhone plugged in1, I can just say “Hey Siri”, but if I’m sitting at my desk I don’t need Siri. When I still had an Apple Watch, the experience of using Siri wasn’t worth the effort. Way too slow.

With Alexa (I call her “Alexa”, not “Echo”), I just say what I want, from anywhere in the room, even when there’s music playing, and she responds quickly and accurately. I use Alexa while I’m doing other things. With Siri, I need to stop what I’m doing in order to use it. Big difference.

Alexa does what she does quickly, accurately, and with zero friction.

I ordered the new Echo Dot as soon as it was announced. I did that by saying “Alexa, order an Echo Dot.”

I don’t have a 6s, which removes the power requirement. It remains to be seen if this would improve the experience, as my phone is usually not near me when I’m at home.
↩

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Tragedy Of The Stream

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 17:30:58 +0000

Mike Caulfield

This is the Tragedy of the Stream, folks. The conversations of yesterday, which contain so much useful information, are locked into those conversations, frozen in time. To extract the useful information from them becomes an unrewarding and at times impossible endeavor. Few people, if any, stop to refactor, rearrange the resources, gloss or introduce them to outsiders. We don’t go back to old pieces to add links on them to the things we have learned since, or rewrite them for clarity or timelessness.

I worry about this. At Fusionary, we use Slack for nearly all internal communication. It’s fantastic, but important corporate knowledge becomes lost in the stream. It’s not just Slack. It’s email, JIRA, Basecamp, etc.

I sometimes make the effort to extract valuable information from Slack, etc. and refactor it in our Confluence wiki, but I’m the only person who does and it’s not enough.

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Defending Apple

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 13:13:02 +0000

Late last night I found myself arguing with a guy at the bar about the FBI/Apple hubbub.

I expected to swiftly bury him with an expertly-constructed argument damning the FBI and praising Apple for taking a stand against the continuing erosion of our capital-P Privacy etc. etc.

What happened instead is that I sounded like an anti-government conspiracy theorist with an agenda.

I woke up confused.

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Some Recent Large Format Photos

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 24 Feb 2016 16:21:18 +0000

I’ve been having a lot of fun with my 4x5 cameras lately. Most of the images have been made using a Crown Graphic set on a tripod in my basement “studio”. I quoted “studio” because it’s really just a bedsheet hung as a backdrop and a couple of floor lamps for lighting. Not an ideal setup by any stretch but it works for now. I don’t have a way to trigger flashes with the Crown Graphic so I’m using poor-man’s continuous lighting.

Processing has been done one sheet at a time in R5 Monobath. Results have been inconsistent but it’s so easy to use that I’ve stuck with it. Six minutes in a single tray using one chemical and I’m done. It’s practically as convenient as digital! Ok maybe not but still, it’s pretty easy. Now that everything is set up it takes five minutes to shoot, 10 minutes in the darkroom, and a couple hours of drying time.

Here are a few of them…

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In Defence Of Pretentiousness

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 14:45:20 +0000

Dan Fox, theguardian.com

Being pretentious is rarely harmful to anyone. Accusing others of it is. You can use the word “pretentious” as a weapon with which to bludgeon other people’s creative efforts, but in shutting them down the accusation will shatter in your hand and out will bleed your own insecurities, prejudices and unquestioned assumptions. And that is why pretentiousness matters. It is a false note of objective judgment, and when it rings we can hear what society values in culture, hear how we perceive our individual selves.

Dan Fox defends pretentiousness at length and it’s about time someone did.

When I hear one person label another as “pretentious”, it’s the former that I lose respect for. This is much like calling someone’s work “self-indulgent”. If your work isn’t self-indulgent, then you are not an artist, you’re an entertainer.

via baty.net at http://baty.net/2016/in-defence-of-pretentiousness

Does Sharpness Matter?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 13 Feb 2016 14:02:25 +0000

The Online Photographer:

The essential ambivalence or contradiction (duality? dichotomy?) is that technically, sharpness is a goal, and considered a virtue; but aesthetically, it’s just a property — no better or worse, inherently, than any other property.

I spend a lot of time on various photography forums and the focus on sharpness, if you’ll pardon the pun, drives me nuts. It’s as if being “tack-sharp” is the only meaningful quality. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and should be avoided.

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Five Year Journal

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 17:27:26 +0000

Levenger 5-Year Journal

I just finished my first 5-Year Journal from Levenger and I can’t recommend it enough.

The idea is to write a short sentence or two each day. The journal is laid out so that each page contains five entries, one per day for each of the five years. It’s great seeing what I wrote on any given day in prior years. It’s easy to spot things that have changed over time. Better yet, it’s easy to spot the things that haven’t.

I bought four of them and now have three left. That’s 15 more years of small daily records. Priceless.

Originally published at baty.net.

Hosting My Blog Using Github Pages

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 17:24:25 +0000

NOTE: It seems odd to post to Medium about how I host my personal blog. Maybe it’ll remind someone that personal blogs are important.

Baty.net is now using Github Pages for hosting. This might be the only hosting option I haven’t tried.

I usually host the site on my VPS at Linode. I can handle most sysadmin-type tasks so this works fine. After last week’s DDoS attacks at Linode I started considering other options again.

For a while I used Netlify which worked very well, but it limited how many times I could push updates. I tend to publish, say “Oops!”, and re-publish a number of times for each new post. For some reason no amount of proofreading beforehand helps with that.

Then I tried S3. For the life of me I can’t get my head around Amazon’s web services so S3 was never my favorite option.

Which brings me to Github. I already keep the source files for baty.net in Git so adding a “gh-pages” branch and pushing there wasn’t too difficult. The only downside with the way I’m doing it is that all of the rendered files need to be in the source tree. Not ideal, but it’s only a minor annoyance.

To deploy I use the following shell script (stolen from the Hugo tutorial here):

#!/bin/bash

echo -e “\\033\[0;32mDeploying updates to GitHub…\\033\[0m”

\# Build the project.  
hugo

\# Add changes to git.  
git add -A

\# Commit changes.  
msg=”Rebuild site \`date\`”

if \[ $# -eq 1 \]  
  then msg=”$1"  
fi

git commit -m “$msg”

\# Push source and build repos.  
git push origin master

git subtree push — prefix=public git@github.com:jackbaty/baty.net.git gh-pages

A couple of other requirements:

Put a CNAME file in /static (if using Hugo) with baty.net as the only line
Create an ANAME DNS record aliasing jackbaty.github.io to baty.net

So far, so good.

The nice thing about a static site is that I can easily push it anywhere that serves plain old HTML files. There are very few moving parts and I like that.

Originally published at baty.net.

The iPad Pro is going to destroy everything I’ve built

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 19:25:54 +0000

I’m angry with my iPad Pro and it hasn’t even arrived

I’ve spent a great deal of time over the years refining, tearing down, and rebuilding my process for storing files, taking notes, and managing information. Most of the time I feel like everything is in flux and I have no idea how I want to do things. But once in a while, the past few months especially, I feel like I’m finally settling into a groove. Now it’s going to go to shit.

You see, I am a desktop computer guy. iPhones and iPads are primarily for consumption, as all but a few crazy outliers know perfectly well. This means that for actually getting things done, it’s OS X. Anything that runs on OS X works great for me. This includes terminal-based apps. I love my carefully-contrived workflows based on Mutt, Emacs Org Mode, VimWiki, etc. I blog via Hugo using Markdown-formatted text files written with Vim, Emacs, or BBEdit. I spend time in IRC using Weechat. Todos are managed in Org Mode. You get the idea. The computer is where things get done

I’ve had every new iPad since the first version. Never have I considered using one seriously for anything significant. I watch Netflix, read long articles, and occasionally Tweet. There was always a useful separation of concerns and that’s been fine with me.

Along comes the big, beautiful iPad Pro, with its desktop-class performance and giant screen and nifty keyboard. And a Pencil that doesn’t feel like a poor surrogate for my clumsy fingers. Dammit. This is the one that could challenge my stubborn refusal to use an iPad for things that I would normally only do on my laptop. Of course giving up my OS X-only tools means throwing out all of my hard-earned workflow “gains”. Now I’ll have to use apps that work well in both environments and sync nicely. It’s pointy-clicky-tap-pinch-and-zoom land from now on I guess. What about Hazel and Keyboard Maestro and Tmux and the rest? What about my little shell scripts and Applescripts that make things all slick and effortless?

Of course, I realize that it’s not an either/or proposition, but I know me. I’ll spend weeks refactoring my entire system to make room for the new iPad and reluctantly retiring a few beloved tools in the process. It’s bittersweet.

I can’t wait.

It’s a coping mechanism

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 12 Nov 2015 13:59:40 +0000

Well, it’s not so much a coping mechanism as it is a domain name I’d registered some time ago that has gone unused. Medium now allows custom domains for “publications” so here we are.

As usual, I waffle on where to post things so I expect this will change at some point but for now I’m going to write some things here. I don’t know if what I write will be short, long, or…ehem…medium. I don’t know if I’ll post things to my blog first or not. Basically, I have no idea what this is for but again, here we are.

Siri vs the Sony Microcassette Recorder

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Thu, 08 Oct 2015 13:03:22 +0000

Sony BM-575 Microcasette Dictator

I’ve carried an old-school microcassette recorder in my car for years. There is no better way to quickly record a note while driving. The little Sony BM-575 is perfect for the task. I just grab it, slide the button, talk, and release the button when finished. I can do it without taking my eyes off the road. It’s simple and quick, and the batteries last forever. Once a week I rewind the tape to 000 on the counter, transcribe whatever notes are relevant from the recordings, and reset the counter.

I should be able to use Siri on my phone or Watch for this, but it’s never worked as well as my little recorder. The process when using the iPhone looks like this:

Press and hold the home button and wait for Siri to activate
Say “Take a note” and wait for Siri to say “Ok, what would you like the note to say” or whatever. (I would prefer saying “Take a voice memo” but Siri then just launches the Voice Memo app, which requires me to push yet another button to begin recording. Too much hassle.
Speak what I want the note to say and wait for Siri to create the note and say “Got it.”
Press the home button to go back to whatever the phone was doing

Dictating using the iPhone while driving is awkward and fidgety compared to using the recorder. Maybe the iPhone 6S will improve things. It would be nice to retire the little Sony, but only if using the iPhone is an improvement. So far that hasn’t been the case.

Originally published at baty.net.

Hobonichi Cousin 2016

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 14:04:42 +0000

For the past three years I’ve used the highly-regarded Hobonichi Techo planner. It’s a great little planner, but perhaps too little.

My notebook binder of choice in recent months has been a Roterfaden and it’s quickly become a favorite. It’s the perfect (A5) size, built wonderfully, and the clip mechanism is clever and useful. In it I’ve kept an Apica Premium C.D. notebook and the combination is great. I’d been carrying my little Techo separately, which worked but wasn’t ideal.

Then I discovered the “Cousin” version of the Hobonichi. The Cousin is A5 and just as awesome as the littler Techo. The only problem is that it doesn’t come in an edition that’s been translated to English. I decided to try one anyway. I bought the Spring 2015 version and love it.

Roterfaden and Hobonichi Techo A5 Cousin

Everything is in Japanese, but that’s fine since I’ve learned to recognize the symbols for each day. Not a problem. The Cousin fits perfectly in the Roterfaden. I love the combination and have ordered the 2016 Cousin.

Originally published at baty.net.

I like my Apple Watch but I don’t love it

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 29 Jul 2015 16:38:04 +0000

I own two very nice watches.

The first is a Tag Heuer automatic that I bought six years ago and had, until recently, worn every day. It looks the way a watch is supposed to look, requires no batteries, and is waterproof to 1000 feet (because over-engineering).

The second is an Apple Watch that I bought just a couple of months ago. I’ve worn it almost every day since. It’s the nice, stainless steel version, but with the basic “sport” band. It’s not waterproof but can probably be worn in the shower (I don’t).

I love the Tag. I love its design, construction, feel, everything. I beat on it without fear of scratches or breakage. It should last the rest of my life. And again, it doesn’t require batteries of any kind.

I like the Apple Watch, but I don’t love it. It feels good for the most part. I will probably buy a nicer band at some point, but the actual watch is solid, smooth, and substantial. It doesn’t feel nearly as hardy as the Tag, and I don’t dare wear it near dirt or water.

I don’t like Apple Watch’s square face. A few square-faced watches are attractive to me. Apple’s isn’t one of them. Watches are round, and projecting a round, digital face onto a square device doesn’t help.

Battery life is another issue. The Apple Watch’s battery life is darn good for a smart watch but terrible for a watch I wish to wear every day. If I don’t charge it overnight, I can’t wear it the next day. Blech. In fact, forgetting to charge the Watch has forced me to wear the automatic a few times, each time reminding me how much I like the Tag.

But the Apple Watch is smart. Being smart is, of course, a significant advantage over a simple automatic watch. The problem is, Apple Watch doesn’t work very well. The worst thing is that the face doesn’t always come on when I expect it to, which reduces its value as an actual watch. Twisting my arm around and finally giving up and tapping the face isn’t great. And forget trying to talk on it all Dick Tracy style. That never works well.

Other problems are minor but annoying. One is that apps take too long to launch and connect. I don’t even bother using Runkeeper on the Watch since it’s faster to pull out the phone and launch the app. It shouldn’t be. I have no idea how the Health and Activity apps are supposed to work together. I “start a workout” and walk a couple of brisk miles, but that somehow doesn’t count toward my Activity goal. This makes no sense to me. Dismissing notifications is a hit or miss affair. I force-press to “dismiss all” and sometimes it works, sometimes not.

And after everything, I suspect that the Apple Watch will feel outdated in a year or two. The Tag Heuer is more, ahem, timeless.

There are lots of things I love about the Apple Watch. Having my next appointment and the current temperature right there on the Watch face is great. I love that notifications are now all silent and I can quickly determine whether I need to pull out my phone or not. Always-on fitness and heart rate tracking is nice.

I love the idea and potential of the Apple Watch, but don’t love the actual Watch.

Originally published at baty.net on July 29, 2015.

My Current iPhone and Google Photos process

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 17:10:05 +0000

I tossed my tinfoil hat aside the day Google released the new Google Photos. I’ve tried nearly every photo storage/backup/sharing service and Google Photos is by far my new favorite. It combines drop-dead simple backup with some fancy searching and categorizing features. All for free.

I started out by configuring both my Mac and iPhone to send photos to Google. The problem was that I also import my photos from my phone to my Mac so I was getting duplicates of everything. To avoid this, I’ve turned off syncing on my phone. Now my process looks like this…

Take photos on iPhone for a day or so
Plug iPhone into Mac and import via Image Capture (deleting all photos from phone after import)
Edit, tag, and caption every “keeper” using Photo Mechanic
Import into Lightroom

Since the photos in Lightroom are uploaded via Google Photos Backup they eventually end up visible both at photos.google.com and the Google Photos iPhone app. No duplicates. The other benefit is that all of the uploaded images are properly captioned, making the already great search feature even more useful.

Originally published at baty.net on June 24, 2015.

Using Flash with the Hasselblad

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 15:25:50 +0000

Kelly Photobombs (2015). Hasselblad 503CXi

Carrying around a Hasselblad and flash unit makes for a cumbersome kit.

Hasselblad 503CXi with D-Flash 40

See what I mean? It’s a monster. Shooting handheld with a big camera in natural indoor light makes for a nearly impossible situation. Using a flash dramatically reduces the number of blown shots and with medium format film the higher the hit rate the better.

While the rig is bulky, it’s also dead simple to use. The Hasselblad 503CXi offers TTL metering when used with the D-Flash 40 so the whole thing ends up being sort of a giant point-and-shoot. I just set the shutter speed to 1⁄60 and the aperture to f/8, focus and shoot.

Dad-splaining (2015). Hasselblad 503CXi with D-Flash 40

Originally published at baty.net.

Book: How We Got to Now

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 15:23:50 +0000

I’ve enjoyed most of Stephen Johnson’s books, and have now added “How We Got To Now” to the list.

The book looks at six technologies that have “made the modern world”. The six are…

Glass
Cold
Sound
Clean (hygene)
Time
Light

He demonstrates how each of those innovations had profound and unexpected effects. For example, discovery of microbes led to chlorinated water led to the bikini bathing suit (read it and found out how that happened).

Many of Johnson’s books refer to the “adjacent possible”, meaning that very few things are invented in isolation. It’s the network of ideas and not individual genius that sparks great ideas. I found that he drives this point home more often than necessary, but otherwise it’s a fun, informative, and fascinating read.

Originally published at baty.net.

The latest New Flickr might be the one that I needed

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 22 May 2015 17:17:05 +0000

I’ve been uploading photos to Flickr since 2004. It’s always been my favorite way to share images, even during its dark years when things languished for way too long.

Flickr offers unlimited storage, so I’ve always wanted to upload everything there, but I haven’t. The reason is that the Photostream displays all of my photos (public and private) when I’m logged in, with no easy way of viewing it as other people see it. I’ve worked around this by using a different browser or logging out. This works, but is a pain so I rarely bother. The Flickr mobile app has always allowed me to switch between public and private views, so why not the web app?

The changes Flickr rolled out yesterday are pretty great. They include a better integrated search, newly-designed “home” page, and a “Camera Roll” view which makes organizing and editing groups of photos easy, without needing to resort to using the “Organizer”. Those updates are nice, but my favorite is the ability to filter my Photostream based on each photo’s visibility.

Now I can upload everything without all those photos polluting my Photostream.

Originally published at baty.net on May 9, 2015.

First attempt using New55’s R3 Monobath Developer

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Fri, 08 May 2015 16:38:14 +0000

That didn’t go well.

This was my first time using the R3 Monobath Developer from New55. Other people have great results with it but I’ve obviously done something wrong.

The image above is a scanned 4×5 negative (HP5+) shot using an ancient Crown Graphic. Many things can fail when shooting large format film that I’m certainly not ready to blame the developer. I’ve never seen this sort of ghosting effect before so it’ll be fun tracking down what went wrong.

Another thing I learned is that I’m finally going to need an exhaust fan in the darkroom. The R3 contains ammonia and phew it’s strong. Probably not good for me to stand there for six minutes in the dark just breathing it all in.

I love the idea of a monobath developer, especially for large format so I’m going to keep trying.

Originally published at baty.net on May 7, 2015.

Around the yard with the OM-2n

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 03 May 2015 16:28:12 +0000

I was cleaning out a closet and found my bag of unused Olympus gear. I couldn’t remember why it was unused so I grabbed one of the OM-2n bodies with a “silver nose” Zuiko 85mm f/2.0 and shot a roll of Tri-X. I’ve found the 85 to be a bit prone to flare. Like this…

Generally, though, I still like the OM-2n. My favorite is the OM-1n but auto-exposure sure can be handy. Here are a few other images from the roll (scanned on the Pakon and basic curve adjustment in Lightroom).

Katie

Leeloo

Underside of basketball net

Jeep grille

Leeloo

Originally published at baty.net on May 3, 2015.

A Random Dream

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 19:28:38 +0000

Gail and I were sitting in small chairs against the wall of a plainly-decorated hotel room. We were talking with another woman seated to our right. We were waiting for something.

A large, olive-skinned man stepped into the room. He said nothing, but began to burp. His burps were loud, deep, and disgusting. Gail struggled to avoid vomiting from the sounds.

After several minutes the man stopped, cleared his throat, and turned to me. He looked at me solemnly and said, “On the 3rd birthday of my second daughter I will pay you handsomely for that” and walked away.

Dreams are cool.

Originally published at baty.net on April 18, 2015.

A quick walk with the Leica IIIf

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 00:12:03 +0000

I wanted to burn through a roll today so I grabbed the little Leica IIIf and shot a few around the house then took a walk to finish it up. I nearly lost the roll while processing, but salvaged enough to get a few usable images.

Originally published at baty.net on March 22, 2015.

My new microwave has only one button

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 25 Feb 2015 15:13:33 +0000

The microwave I bought 13 years ago (a Sharp Carousel) finally died last week, so I started shopping for a replacement. I wanted something simple. The simpler the better. I mostly just need to reheat leftovers.

I looked at several models recommended by The Sweethome but those fell into the same add-every-feature-we-can-think of trap that I was hoping to avoid. Why do microwaves need so many unnecessary buttons and modes and readouts?

Finally, I found the Sharp Medium Duty Commercial Microwave. Notice anything?

That’s right, it has only one control. No presets, no defrost, no sensors, no carousel, not even a temperature setting. There’s not even a clock. I just turn the dial and it starts cooking! This makes me unreasonably happy. Yes I know other microwaves may only require pushing one button to cook something, but it’s one button out of many. That’s different, and not what I wanted.

But how well does the new one work? Well, I’ve only had it for few days but have used it a half-dozen times and so far I’d say it works perfectly for what I need in a microwave.

Originally published at baty.net on February 8, 2015.

Zim vom Schafer see (2003–2014) – A good boy

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 23:15:27 +0000

Zim vom Schafer see (2003–2014) – A good boy

A few days ago my 11-year-old German Shepherd, Zim, died suddenly and unexpectedly. Up until that moment he was happy and healthy with no signs of slowing down.

Earlier that day I arrived home from work and fed the dogs and we then went outside to play with a stick. Zim’s favorite thing in the world was chasing stuff. I’d throw a stick and he’d chase after it and and proudly bring it back to me. We’d then play tug of war with it and I’d throw it again. And again. He was happy to do that all day long. He loved it.

Once I’d had enough I called him into the house but he stood there defiantly with the stick in his mouth, staring at me with those pleading eyes of his. “Fine, one more throw,” I said. I threw the stick one more time, as far as I could, and he tore after it excitedly and brought it to me in the garage, like he always does. I gave him a treat, like I always do.

He went into the house but seemed to have trouble walking. I thought maybe he’d hurt his foot while running to fetch that stick. He then sort of hobbled back into the garage and lay down. He looked confused. He wasn’t even trying to get up.

I knew something was seriously wrong and immediately carried him to the car. I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other gently petting him. “Good boy,” I said, over and over. “You’re a good boy.” He lifted his head once and looked at me. He no longer looked confused. He looked, I don’t know, resigned. He laid his head back down and by the time we arrived at the vet he was gone.

I have always prepared for Zim not being around, as German Shepherds aren’t known for living long lives. But being prepared isn’t the same as being ready. I wasn’t ready. I’m not ready. I miss him terribly. He was a good dog and I loved him very much. I’m glad I threw him the stick one more time. One last time.

Goodbye Zim, my good boy.

Also posted on my blog: http://baty.net/2014/10/zim-vom-schafer-see-2003-2014/

Still on the GTD Merry-Go-Round

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 15:32:54 +0000

Still on the GTD Merry-Go-Round

Back in 2010 I realized that there was a pattern to my GTD “workflow” solution(s). I called it my “GTD Merry-Go-Round” and wrote about it here

Years later, I’m still doing the exact same thing. As a way to remind myself that I shouldn’t do that, I’m re-posting here.

My approach to Getting Things Done (GTD) is cyclical, and goes like this…

Phase One — Go all in.

I keep forgetting to do things. Stuff is not getting done. Time for some serious GTD. Time to bring out the big gun, OmniFocus. This is followed by 4 hours of brain dumps, project organization, and inbox cleanup. I create perspectives, set repeating tasks and basically prepare for war. Stuff gets done, dammit! This phase lasts for about two months.

Phase Two — Simplify

After a couple of months of religiously doing project reviews, capture, and inbox processing, I start to get bored with it. “Omnifocus is just too fussy and complicated,” I say. Thinking it’s the tool’s fault, I move everything over to Things. Things is so much cleaner and simpler! No more wasting time with perspectives, nested tasks, folders, contexts and all that nonsense. Spending less time on the “system” has gotta be good, right?

Phase Three — Going retro

Using Things is so simple that I become enamored with the idea of making the system even simpler. So simple in fact, that I don’t need some stinking computer program telling my how to run my life. I then move everything into one of those awesome Moleskine notebooks. Think of it, just a pen and paper! What could be easier? Plus, I probably need a new pen. No more worrying about syncing or futzing around with software. This is definitely all I need. Why I bothered with those silly other systems is a mystery.

Phase Four — Return to Phase One

I love my notebook, but it’s hard to capture everything. Writing by hand is work, so I don’t always bother. I then promptly start forgetting things. Or I accidentally leave the notebook at home. And copying unfinished tasks forward manually is such a pain. That’s what computers are for, right? Time to go all in, and I need something serious, so I install OmniFocus and get to work.

Repeat.

Done with To-Do Lists

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 22:44:10 +0000

Done with To-Do Lists

I’ve been addicted to fancy versions of to-do lists ever since I first read David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” several years ago. The ideas behind GTD are powerful and can be very effective when applied consistently. I drift in and out of using a full-on GTD workflow and am constantly tweaking my “system”. In fact, I spend so much time trying to get things perfect that I stop actually getting work done. That’s a problem.

Last week I noticed that the most productive people I work with don’t seem to have a system at all. How can that be? Sure, they have a calendar and take a few notes and may put something in Reminders on their iPhone but that’s it. No noticeable weekly review, no @contexts, no elaborate Omnifocus perspectives. It appears that they just get to work and that’s it. Unheard of!

So I started thinking about to-do lists and realized that I may not need a fancy system for managing my to-do list at all. In fact, many things don’t need to be written down in the first place. Do I really need to put “Buy Groceries” on a list? Or “Deposit check”? Probably not, since not doing those things will become obvious pretty quickly. I’m unlikely to forget them when I’m broke and hungry.

Today I read James Altucher’s post, “To-Do Lists are Ruining the Planet. A bit hyperbolic, but still, it was right in line with how I’ve been thinking. I like the idea of letting “themes” guide my next actions rather than whatever I shoved into OmniFocus during last week’s review. I think I’ll try living without an overwrought workflow for a while and see what happens. Maybe I’ll just get some work done instead.

Also posted to my blog: http://www.baty.net/2014/06/15/done-with-to-dos/

All Text, All the Time?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 16:41:56 +0000

All Text, All the Time?

This was originally published on my blog. I’ve revised and reposted it here.

Many of the smartest people I know swear by a terminal-based, text-only workflow. They claim that Vim and tmux and Markdown and a terminal are all anyone ever needs in order to be productive. I love the idea and am fully equipped to live that way.

But it never works.

I’m comfortable in Vim and I’m learning to use tmux and I write most everything in Markdown. I can fly around in files and panes using only the keyboard and I find there’s nothing like Vim for the sheer pleasure of editing text. It’s all pretty awesome. But let’s be honest, unless text is the only thing you’re dealing with, it’s also rather limited*.*

Viewing a directory listing of text files, no matter how consistently named just isn’t that useful to me compared to something like an outline of rich text notes in Tinderbox or a notebook full of text and images and PDFs in Evernote. Even a list of notes in nvAlt is better.

Writing anything of substance in Vim, no matter how tweaked out my .vimrc gets, is never as smooth and comfortable as I’d like. Invariably, I get lazy and go back to writing in something like Ulysses. At least it’s not Word, right?

With a text-only workflow in a terminal, I feel that I have to do too much of the work. I either have to remember too many arcane key commands (both the commands and that the commands are available) or I have to write something to do the work for me and wrap it up nicely. I’d rather just start writing.

Where does that leave me, text-wise? Unfortunately the jury is out, but right now I’m in sort of a middle ground of using text files but managing and writing them in fancy tools. I still create a lot of text files, formatted using Markdown2, but when writing anything more than a quick note, I use Ulysses or Tinderbox. I always have an iTerm/tmux window open for when I need a terminal: making quick text file edits, managing todos using taskwarrior, etc. I think it’s a pretty nice mix of both worlds.

So while I’m not ready to commit to all-text-all-the-time in a terminal, I can still reap many of the benefits without working too hard.

Working on an iPad

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:18:48 +0000

Working on an iPad

This was originally published on my blog over 18 months ago. Still applies.

I have no doubt that one day it will be possible for someone like me to do all of my work on an iPad, without compromise. I say “someone like me” because I’ll probably have died of old age by then.

There are 2 primary camps on this issue. The first are the “True Believers” and they say, “I do everything on my iPad right now. It’s a content-creation miracle!” The second group I call “The Curmudgeons” and they say things like, “The iPad is great for games and movies, but no way can anyone get real work done with one.”

I fall somewhere in the middle, but tend to side with The Curmudgeons. While many things I need to do are _possible_ on the iPad, I find few of them to be easier. Even the True Believers tend to qualify their claims with words like “almost” and “good enough” and “I survived.” But if you enjoy it that way, good on ya. For me, no app, no matter how good, will help me to enjoy typing on glass. And if I need to bring a keyboard, I might just as well take my 11" MacBook Air and be done with it.

We’re in a period of fascinating transition but right now I feel the Curmudgeons’ assessment is more realistic than that of the True Believers. This may change, and perhaps sooner than I think.

Federico Viticci said recently, [on Twitter]…

Like I said, people who get *so mad* when they hear “I get work done on iOS” do that because they have a direct interest in OS X

I don’t understand getting angry at someone over any of this. While I’ll be sticking with my laptop for most work, I won’t get angry at you for saying you prefer to use your iPad. I may not believe you, but we can still be friends.

Too many blogs, too few ideas

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sun, 29 Dec 2013 22:30:35 +0000

Too many blogs, too few ideas

I start a new blog every time I want to try some new blogging software. There’s nothing wrong with that other than I’ve ended up with many places to write but nothing to say. I suppose I should just pick a venue already and be done with it, but I can’t seem to decide where I want to “live” online.

There’s baty.net. The site is built using my favorite software, Tinderbox, and is statically generated. I love everything about this, in theory. In practice it tends to be a tad more work than I prefer. For example, the RSS feed is broken and I’ve not been in the mood to fix it. I’m not ready to give it up yet, but I’m also not motivated enough to do much here.

My “real” blog has been at jackbaty.com for years. For a while now it’s been built with SquareSpace. There’s much to like about SquareSpace, especially for people wanting a site more involved than a simple blog. I don’t, so it’s overkill. Plus, the editor is terrible for actually writing.

Medium is new. I like it. The editor is terrific. What I don’t like is the feeling that every post needs to be somehow meaningful or important. That’s the vibe I get from most of the writing here. That might be just me, so we’ll see where it goes. My stuff is at http://medium.com/@jackbaty

Tumblr is my current favorite. I tend to just toss stuff out there without too much (or enough, probably) thought. It’s the perfect place for that. It feels social without being _too_ social.

There are a few others, but those have been mostly abandoned. I need to decide where to live. Haven’t yet, just thinking it through.

I love being noticed

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Wed, 25 Dec 2013 17:22:05 +0000

I love being noticed

I like to think of myself as being above the single-click ego-validation cycle of social media. Everyone else’s stream looks to me like a desperate bid for attention. Not mine, of course. “I don’t care about followers,” I say. “I’m just putting stuff out there for myself because I enjoy it,” I say.

Every now and then I’ll look down from my high horse and say, “I’m so done with the platitudes and inane politics of Facebook and the righteous indignation of Twitter and the shitty over-processed photographs on Flickr.” To prove a point, I’ll cancel one of my accounts and proclaim that over-sharing and like-baiting are a waste of time at best and psychologically damaging at worst.

Then someone will like, re-blog, favorite, re-tweet, or whatever one of my photos somewhere and I get that little charge. If I’m honest with myself, I love that little charge. Some stranger clicking an icon is all it is, yet it makes me feel good. There is probably something wrong with that, but I’ll take it.

For all of my anti-sharing rhetoric, I share lots of things. I pretend it’s just a nonchalant thing and I don’t really care if anyone looks at what I’ve done, but secretly I wait for the little messages on my phone telling me that someone noticed me.

Being noticed feels good. I just wanted to admit that, and of course to share it with you.

What If They Find the Bodies?

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 19:50:01 +0000

What If They Find the Bodies?

The dream always begins with the realization that I hadn’t buried the bodies well enough. You see, the floor of the fruit cellar was hard-packed dirt, making it difficult to dig. Especially when in a hurry. I had buried them long ago and was not entirely certain that I’d done a sufficient job of covering my tracks.

And now the police were snooping around while investigating an entirely unrelated crime. Surely they’ll find something. If they do, there’s no doubt the evidence will lead them quickly to me. A small crowd gathers in the yard, anticipating something gruesome. Little do they know! I watch helplessly as several officers cautiously descend the small concrete steps leading into the cellar. Maybe it’ll be fine. But then as they pull the short chain on the single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, I can see beyond them and into the darkness. The floor shows obvious signs of being disturbed. My stomach lurches and I begin to run.

That is where the dream always ends. So far the bodies remain buried.

Sex and Pancakes

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 19:31:53 +0000

Sex and Pancakes

I met the most beautiful girl I had ever seen while on a blind date with her best friend. This was in 1985 or so. My friend Wayne had met Debbie at a local bar, and the two of them invited me to join them along with Debbie’s best friend for a sort of double date. I’m embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember the friend’s name. It was a perfectly decent evening, but it was Debbie who had captured my attention. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was beautiful, confident, and very funny. I envied Wayne, but of course said nothing.

The following night I was back at the same club with another friend. We were sitting in a booth, drinking and watching the girls dance, when I heard a familiar voice calling my name from the booth behind me. It was Debbie. She was alone, so I asked her to join us. We talked and laughed and drank. It turned out she was supposed to be meeting Wayne that night, but he had stood her up. A few drinks later she asked me if I wanted to go on another date sometime. I said, “Sure, I’ll call Wayne and see if he’s available.” She stopped me and said, “I’m not asking Wayne on a date, silly — I’m asking you.” I of course said “Yes!” in what could not have been the calmest, coolest voice she had ever heard. We danced once or twice after that and parted ways. I was giddy.

The plan was for Debbie and me to get together the following Saturday. She was entered in some sort of beauty contest that night at Electric Avenue, which was the club of choice at the time, and she asked if I’d like to take her there. I picked her up in my dad’s car, a Pontiac Grand Prix I’d borrowed while mine was in the shop. She lived in a small apartment above an somehow even smaller appliance repair shop. Her driveway emptied onto a steep street. The Grand Prix had a manual transmission, so I would have to set the emergency brake to keep the car from rolling away. Debbie was wearing the sort of blue dress that people write songs about, and she looked fantastic. When we walked arm-in-arm into the club I was feeling pretty good, but when she took 2nd place in the beauty contest I suddenly knew what it was like to be out with the hottest - well, second hottest, I guess - girl in the place. It felt good, I must admit. We celebrated with a few shots and danced a bit. I was having a wonderful time.

After a bathroom break I returned to find some guy sitting in my chair and chatting Debbie up. He was a big dude, so I just stood there awkwardly, trying to figure out how to handle the situation without injury. Sensing my concern, Debbie simply nodded toward me and said to the guy, “You’ll have to move — a real man was already sitting here.” She said it with a straight face, and the look of disbelief he gave me was priceless, but he got up and left. Debbie then kissed me hard and made sure he saw it. I had no choice but to fall in love with her immediately.

We closed down the club and went back to her place. I was too drunk to drive, but did anyway. I pulled up to her house, parked the car, and we hurried inside, where I quickly removed that blue dress. There was sex then. The kind that takes you by surprise — the kind you almost don’t believe is happening at the time. You know the kind, I hope. Eventually, exhausted and still a bit drunk, we slept.

What seemed like only minutes later I awoke to the sound of someone pounding at the door. I looked over at Debbie, and it was obvious she wasn’t about to do anything about it, so I lurched out of her unfamiliar bed only to discover I couldn’t find my clothes. Naked, I grabbed the closest thing I could find; a frilly pink robe hanging on the closet door. The robe didn’t fit, was nearly see-through, and had some sort of stupid fuzzy collar. It was in this robe, red-eyed and ridiculous, that I answered the door and met Debbie’s father for the first time. I knew it was her dad because he looked me up and down, thrust out his hand, smiled, and said, “Hi, I’m Debbie’s dad — and if that’s your Grand Prix out in the street, it’s about to be towed.” I’d forgotten to set the parking brake, and the car had rolled out into the street, blocking traffic. I invited him in, grabbed my keys, and darted outside in a blur of pink hangover.

I convinced the police not to tow the car (or arrest me for my outfit) and scurried back into the apartment. By this time, Deb (I called her Deb now) was awake and sharing a few intimate details with her dad about the previous night. I wanted to die, but he just said, “Really? That’s nice. It was nice meeting you, Jack. Why don’t you two get cleaned up and stop over for breakfast? I’m making pancakes.”

Debbie and I dated for a while after that. At some point we stopped. I don’t remember why now, but the pancakes were delicious.

The Magician

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 19:05:32 +0000

The Magician

The following is a story from a long time ago.

A magician performed at our school one afternoon while I was in the fourth grade.

The magician, I don’t remember his name, probably “The Magnificent something or other,” placed an extravagant bird cage on a table. There was a dove inside. Using a large silk cloth, he covered the cage and bird. With a magic word and a flourish, he snatched the cloth from the cage and, you guessed it, the cage and bird were gone!

At home that evening, I placed my portable record player onto the center of my bedroom floor, and covered it with a bath towel. I spoke some magic words, flourished wildly, and quickly snatched the towel from atop the record player. To my surprise, the record player was still there. I repeated this dozens of times that night, each time concentrating a little harder. I thought that if I performed just the right move with just the right incantation, magic would happen.

I’ve been doing basically the same thing every day since then.

A 750-word Poem In One Breath

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 18:43:44 +0000

A 750-word Poem In One Breath

I have been diligently writing my 750words every. Tonight, I had nothing to say, so I thought I’d blurt out a 750 word poem in one breath, without stopping. Technically it’s 761 words, but who’s counting? I am subjecting you to this not because it’s a good poem, but because it’s a fast poem. And it was fun to write.

Let’s be honest, I must lie
do or make or cause to cry
and take your hand from far away
it’s used to only slap and pray
and see if I just watch and wait
while all the others give and take
this may be nothing, all a joke
but you’ll forgive me what I wrote
and if we fall into a hole
once and for all we’ll know our role
in which the play plays out its play
while you’ve forgotten yesterday
it is too late to wonder why
each day and night I pass you by
to see if you will notice me
or if you’ve seen my fleeting glee
to take us to that very place
where none are caught despite the chase
investigate the mother’s yarn
into the other’s loving arm
you’ve never seen me take a thing
while dancing into brilliant spring
each fuck and fancy builds to this
yet started with an empty kiss
beware the rending of a heart
it finishes without a start
but never knows a single dance
or makes a thing bereft of chance
and never runs into the wall
or curls itself into a ball
of fate will not allow portents
or random silly accidents
not walk not run not move a bit
for fear of losing all of it
to theft of joy or bully thus
then takes so much from each of us
that such is known but much is lost
into a fading muddy past
when each and only runs aground
we only ever hear the sound
of fools and creatures lost in time
who take and get and say “that’s mine!”
should never live to see the day
in june or august, march or may
into the darkness shining dim
and gasp at every thought of him
who makes the sunlight take its leave
and all the happy ones bereave
to wander into lonely rooms
beneath a single sad mushroom
that sprang from filth left far behind
and into crust of earth and rind
go further onward within reach
until the darkness has been breached
it screams a mighty fearful scream
and tells each of us what to dream
for fear of wondering aloud
those things we know are not allowed
it cannot be it only seems
that singing is the sound of dreams
all wrapped in bows of false and fake
another empty dawn will break
we see yet we cannot defend
our actions or our riches lend
a hand or other limb to those
who’ve sliced the thorn off from the rose
and petals drift among the clouds
to silence agonizing crowds
of those without and those within
who speak of solitude and sin
and sex and will we ever come
and when and if we might have some
in time it shows a perfect time
a way in which those things sublime
writhe into out of up and down
pushing deeper under ground
we mold our habits foolishly
while others trip and fall and flee
but all is wonderful and rich
and sounds deliver perfect pitch
with ear to door and wall and earth
we hear the glowing after birth
but fail to know what is to come
our ending is beginnings womb
for someone elsewhere out to play
another sense of feigned dismay
so that we feel each other’s pain
cannot be washed away by rain
or weather not meant to be known
a blinding light is never shown
until the bottom rung we grasp
unfastening the final clasp
it falls way under the bed
never too be seen or said
that if we cannot hide our need
and wear it all out on our sleeve
then take and take and give and get
but lose that goddamn safety net
for fear of falling keeps us down
as if we’ve never left the ground
so rise and touch and tamper with
that softer smaller one who is
beneath you when you feel as low
when nothing is allowed to grow
and reach and pull and grunt and tug
into the whole that you have dug
around and in and up and down
there is no scream when losing ground
it takes away the final groan
and sends the other far from home
we’ve never looked into this breach
and now we fear it’s out of reach
but once we twisted wrapped and warm
with pleasure covering the harm
and you and I and nearby sleep
(I pray there is a soul to keep)
we barely notice when the quiver
changes to a shameful shiver

Duck Tease

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 18:26:38 +0000

Duck Tease

The following is a story from a long time ago.

My family spent part of each summer at a campground in Newaygo, Michigan. The park was called “Sandy Beach,” even though their really wasn’t much of a beach or much sand on it.

I’ve always preferred the company of myself to that of a bunch of other people, so I’d spend much of my time just wandering around finding my own little adventures. One day I was at the south end of the park, where there was a largely unpopulated area I liked to fart around in. I was just skipping stones and hanging out, when a group of ducks gathered nearby. It looked like a family, maybe a mom and two young children. I noticed the ducklings would see the rocks splash and swim toward the resulting circles in the water. They must’ve thought it was food. This was a fun game of duck teasing.

Or at least it was fun until I threw a rock a little too far and hit one of the younger ducklings in the head, snapping its neck. The poor thing was swimming around frantically trying to hold its head above water, but couldn’t. I ran out into the river and grabbed it, trying to hold its head up and help it swim. It’s mother squawked and screamed. Eventually I gave up and the little duck drowned right in front of me and its family. I cried out that I was sorry and just sat down in the sand and sobbed. A long time passed, and the duck’s mother also finally gave up and swam away with her remaining child. Pretty sure that was the last time I ever deliberately teased any animal for any reason.

Killing Things

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 17:25:32 +0000

Killing Things

Photo: Beatrice Murch

The following is a story from a long time ago.

Young boys are mean and they like to pick on things even smaller than themselves. Animals, for example.

I never killed anything cute, of course, but small slimy critters were fair game. It started with what we called “tent” worms. You know, those fuzzy little caterpillar-looking things that build elaborate web-like tents in trees. The field behind my house had plenty of them, so I would gather up a couple of friends and conduct the infamous Tent Worm Raids.

At first we would attack by poking holes in their tents with sticks. They would fall out onto the ground in great, writhing piles. We would then set to smashing them en masse with bricks and rocks and sometimes our shoes untill all that remained was a pile of smeared caterpillar guts and fuzz. It was cool, but gross. After doing this to a few trees with our primitive stick weapons, I had the greatest idea ever.

I’m sure you remember when we all used real aerosol sprays for everything. Ozone layer be damned! Hair spray was one of those things, and my house was full of it — something called “Final Net” I think. Every kid on earth with access to a lighter knew what to do with hair spray and a flame. I decided to try using one of these impromptu flame throwers as a weapon against the approaching Tent Worm hoards. I held up my lighter near one of their tents, flicked it, pressed the spray button and fwooooosh! the air was filled with falling clumps of flaming caterpillars. They’d squirm and fizzle and burn to a crisp on the ground. The tent itself would disintegrate instantly in a ball of fire. It was awesome!

Fortunately we were pretty good at controlling our hair spray weapons. We’d make sure the fire never got out of control and eventually get bored and head home, victorious. I’m sure my mother spent many mornings wondering why she was out of hair spray.

Golden Delicious

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 17:17:05 +0000

Golden Delicious

Photo by Sean Behnam

The following is a story from a long time ago.

The house I grew up in was located on the edge of a large apple orchard. Our back yard butted up to an open field, which in turn butted against the orchard. Directly across the field were 2 trees growing golden delicious apples. Golden Delicious have always been my favorite apples. I don’t know if that’s a result of the convenience of having the trees just a short walk away or not. Of the 2 trees, only one produced the most delicious possible apples. The man who owned the orchard had once told me that I could help myself to as many apples as I wanted, but asked that I only picked them for me and my family. I always respected his wish. Occasionally I would pick more than one or two and carry them in my outstretched sweatshirt or wrapped in my jacket. My dad also liked the apples, so a couple of extras were nice. The Golden Delicious on this particular tree were huge. To me they looked seemed enormous. I could barely get my fingers around them. It was like trying to palm a basketball. I loved the firmness of a just-ripe apple. I could eat them by breaking off a chunk with my teeth. I loved to sink my teeth into them, just enough to puncture the shiny skin and get a good grip, then rip a huge piece off with a sucking and cracking sound. The broken hunk of apple would barely fit in my mouth, but I’d chew it until it was gone, then start over with another one.

Some of my favorite afternoons were spent sitting quietly under or around that tree, eating apples. The orchard is gone now, and my favorite apple tree with it. Their are now apartments over top of the whole thing. They’re called the Apple Ridge apartments, and they taste awful.

The Storm of ‘78 and an Alien Invasion

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 07 Dec 2013 16:03:22 +0000

The Storm of ‘78 and an Alien Invasion

Part of a series of recollections from my youth

When I was thirteen years old there was a wonderful snowstorm. (At thirteen, blizzards are still considered good things.) It was one of those storms that everyone refers to by the year. “Back during the blizzard of ‘78" is what they would say. School was canceled for days. That almost never happened in our school district, so this was quite an event.

One day during the aftermath, I spent most of the morning trying to build an igloo. This involved mostly scooping out one of the drifts made by the snowplow. I guess what I actually built was a cave. The drifts and plow piles were so high you had to work at climbing them, and falling actually seemed dangerous.

Eventually I tired of digging and started sort of wandering around the ditch by the road. The snow had already crusted over so there were hard, flat areas and broken bits of snow kicked up by walking. I spent some time arranging the snow chunks into cities. Small, elaborate, alien cities. There was a stick nearby and this stick worked very well as a weapon of mass destruction, if you happened to be an Evil Alien Warlord. Which I was that day. I rained death and disaster down upon my snow crust alien landscape. The tip of my Death Stick could smash entire communities with a single sweeping motion. The insignificant life forms trying to escape had no chance as I showered them with ice and slush and dirt bombs from on high. I was unstoppable.

Eventually I stopped. My fingers were cold and my toes were numb and it was getting dark, so I went inside and watched Gilligan’s Island reruns and drank the hot cocoa my mom always made for me when I was cold.

My Favorite Notebook

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 16:31:51 +0000

My midori Traveler’s notebook

My Favorite Notebook

There are generally two types of notebooks: those with fixed pages and those with movable pages. The ever-popular Moleskine has fixed pages and I’ve used them for years. Moleskines look nice and feel nice and, contrary to some reports, the paper works fine with the right fountain pen. I like the immutability of fixed pages. Fixed pages leave me with no decisions to make about how to organize them. I consider that a feature rather than a limitation.

On the other hand, sometimes I change my mind and really want to move things around. Switching to the Circa system by Levenger solved that problem nicely, but I never loved the way Circa notebooks looked or felt. Using a Circa notebook feels like using office supplies.

Moving to a Filofax was my attempt to improve the pleasure factor while maintaining flexibility. Unfortunately, my Filofax experiment ended in failure. A Filofax is a great planner but a terrible notebook.

What I wanted was a high-quality notebook that looked and felt great, offered some flexibility, but wasn’t a free-for-all, organization wise.I wanted a notebook that made me want to bring it everywhere and actually use.

Enter the Midori Traveler’s Notebook:

The Midori Traveler’s Notebook is nothing more than a leather cover for a system of inserts, but it’s a nice leather cover and a clever system of inserts. In mine I have a lined notebook, a weekly planner, and a plastic zippered pocket. It offers a combination of the things I love about Moleskines and Filofaxes, in an even cooler package.

What works for me is that the pages in each insert are fixed, but I can swap inserts any time. This offers enough, but not too much, flexibility and I find it to be a great solution.

I love how the Midori looks, feels, and functions and it’s my new favorite notebook.

About this site

jack@baty.net (Jack Baty) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

My name is Jack Baty.

I wanted to capture a snapshot of my content on Medium.com and keep it safe in case Medium ever goes away.

First, I Exported my account data from Medium.

Then, I used a utility from Brennan Kenneth Brown called Meddler!.

I chose the Hugo-compatible format and created a new Hugo blog, told it to download images, installed a theme, made a few configuration tweaks, and Bob’s your uncle.