I go through periods during which all I want to do is type some words, add a photo or two, and press "Publish". WordPress works well for that.
But it's still WordPress, you know? The "Site Editor" continues to improve, but to me still feels like a janky mess. Gutenberg is fancy, but it's also slow and can get in the way when trying to be "helpful".
And the plugins. So many plugins available, and all of them want me to "Upgrade to Premium" and nag me about it constantly. I hate it so much that it makes me want to stop using WordPress.
But then what? Ghost? Eleventy? Kirby? Moveable Type? I don't want to keep messing with baty.net, so I use baty.blog to test new blogging options. Maybe I'll try one of the new-ish simple tools like Pika.page or Bear.
I'll try to keep the disruption to a minimum, but don 't be surprised it things get wonky here soon.
Running the Backup and Sync app on the UGREEN NAS would fail with the following:
"Failed to perform "MyMedia". Reason: "Path does not exist/No permission/Insufficient capacity/Incompatible with the external device system"
Not very helpful.
Some poking around pointed to illegal filenames for exFAT. I searched for the files using the following:
find . -name "*[\"*:<>?\\|]*"
This found more than 100 files. I asked Claude to help with a script to rename the files. I chose "-" for the replacement character. Here's what Claude came up with:
find . -name "*[\"*:<>?\\|]*" -depth | while IFS= read -r file; do
dir=$(dirname "$file")
base=$(basename "$file")
new_base=$(echo "$base" | tr '":*<>?\\|' '-')
if [ "$base" != "$new_base" ]; then
mv -n "$file" "$dir/$new_base"
echo "Renamed: $file -> $dir/$new_base"
fi
done
Renaming the files worked, and the backup ran without error.
One other note, UGREEN support was fast and friendly, which I appreciate.
It's a little confusing, for sure. The plugin seems to be getting a lot of the developers' attention, so I'm optimistic it'll get simpler. For now I'm just happy that the bear can dance :)
So I replied to the mention at Mastodon from the WordPress notification. The reply showed up as expected in the Mastodon timeline. However, it also showed up on the blog's home page as if it was a regular post. I'll have to figure out how to stop that from happening.
I'm not an iOS guy, but sometimes it's nice using the iPad on the couch or in bed. A disadvantage of using an SSG for blogging is that posting from mobile, while possible, is a convoluted mess.
Using WordPress via the JetPack app on the iPad is not the worst experience. At least it's possible. So that's what I'm doing here. I'm relaxing on the basement couch with the dog sleeping next to me and typing this on the old iPad Pro with keyboard. It's a refreshing change of pace, even if it's not something I'll do all the time.
I just don't get why we suffer through using lesser software every day because "what if…?!".
If, for example, Day One goes away, I'll still have all my text/json/html/pdf exports, books, backups, etc. I can go all text then. I'd lose all the fancy bits, but at least I had them, until I didn't.
Meanwhile, I have this:
Screenshot of Day One, beginning 2011.Ain't it purdy?
I'm all about plain text. Most of my notes from the past few years use Org mode. My blog is written using Markdown. I get it, but there are also 25-year-old WordPress blogs still plugging away nicely.
Speaking of WordPress, I'm writing this post using it. You know why? It's easy, requires no other infrastructure or dependencies, and doesn't break once a month due to software updates. ::knocks wood::.
I don't know how long this mood will last, but it's pretty strong today.
Suffering every day now just to avoid some theoretical and unlikely future event that's easy to recover from seems unecessary and even a little foolish to me.
My obsession with being "in control" of as much as possible is waning.
I don't want to manage everything. I don't feel like worrying about it. So far this is more a feeling than anything, but it's a pretty strong feeling.
A couple of examples:
I'm typing this in WordPress. Letting WordPress deal with images, content, stats, etc. is something I am in the mood for. SSGs are great, and probably the right answer, but hooboy I get tired of thinking about all of it
I'm typing this on my Mac Mini, not Linux. Apple may have gotten wildly off-course lately, but even off-course, most things are nicer, and easier than with Linux. And, if I just let go of my desire for complete control, I can just use my computer and not deal with the underlying idea that "it's all mine, but I'm also responsible for everything."
So that's my mood today. Stay tuned to find out where else this feeling leads me.
At some point, for some reason, Zen changed the New Tab behavior when opening new tabs:
NEW TABS HAVE BEEN REMOVED, instead we are opting for opening the URL bar and then pressing enter to open a new tab ('zen.urlbar.replace-newtab' to false in about:config to revert)
An in-depth look at the currently trending Arch Linux configuration that is Omarchy.
They make some fair points, but to me they are mostly, uh, beside the point. I've tried switching to Linux with a dozen or so different distributions. I didn't enjoy any of them. I enjoyed just about everything about Omarchy right out of the box, which is the point. If it weren't for this cobbled together configuration with its questionable security and fragile bash scripts, I wouldn't be using Linux.
I impulse ordered the new Pebble smartwatch as soon as it was announced. At the time, I was looking for excuses to stop wearing my Apple Watch, and this seemed as good as any.
The watch arrived yesterday. It's very white :). There was no setup to speak of other than downloading the app so I can pick from thousands of faces. That should keep me busy for a while. I love e-paper screens.
I haven't spent much time playing with everything, but I feel like we'll get along fine. My only complaint is that there's no way to rotate the display so that (as a lefty) I can comfortably use the watch on my right wrist.
The only thing I've done is to add a Timer app and assigned it to a long press of the middle button. Time, weather, notifications, and timers are my primary uses for a smartwatch, so I'm covered.
The past month has been a whirlwind of new tech stuff for me. I bought 2 new computers to run Linux, so I've been learning to adapt my workflow to an entirely new environment. This means that just about everything in my computing life has changed.
I have a new NAS, and moved everything from the Mac Mini server to the NAS. This meant learning more Docker and understanding how to do things on the UGREEN OS.
I've been playing with a few new TUI apps for things like Taskwarrior and Mutt and LazyGit. So basically I've been fighting text files for a month and I'm bored with it.
It feels like I've hit a wall with all this. I need a break, which might be why I'm typing this here in WordPress using my browser instead of a Markdown file in Emacs for Hugo.
Also, my paper notebooks are getting some use. Maybe I should go for a walk.
I quite like how the theme looks and works. I like being able to just drag in images and have everything done for me. I like built-in analytics and comments. I like that there's a massive ecosystem. I like that I can switch themes with ease when I get bored. I like that when I spot a typo I can fix it right in place.
I don't like Gutenberg. I don't like how janky the control panel feels. I don't like every plugin trying to upsell me constantly. I hate the "Site Editor". Have I mentioned that I don't like Gutenberg? I don't like that my stuff is all out there and buried in a database.
The pros always outweigh the cons...for a few weeks at most. Then, the cons really start to eat at me. That's what's happening now. I copied many of the posts from the past couple of weeks here and added them to the Hugo blog at baty.net.
So, I may go back there, and leave this one idling for when I get the itch to write somewhere new.
Using Winer’s WordLand to post to WordPress encourages me to make shorter, even title-less, posts. While there are no character limits, the initial size of the form sort of adds an affordance of brevity. I don’t mind this.
TL;DR It's a love/hate thing, with love in the lead.
Here are a few thoughts on how things are going so far.
I'm still using Omarchy. I really like the tiling window setup with Hyprland. I sometimes paint myself into a corner, but mostly it makes window management fast and efficient. Workspaces on Linux are so nice.
Everything on Omarchy can be done via keyboard. Once I got used to the bindings, this has made getting around, launching apps, moving windows, etc. convenient. I'm not against using a mouse, but It's nice not to have to.
So far almost everything has worked without fuss. My Apple Studio Display works, as does its speaker volume, webcam, and microphone. I was able to print to my laser printer straight away, and never needed to install anything for it.
Speaking of installing things, using the little TUI wrapper over Pacman and the AUR is a dream. Launch the TUI, type part of the name of the app to install, and hit Return. Done. No app store, no DMGs to extract. Homebrew on macOS is pretty good, but it's not as all-inclusive and consistent.
Mostly what I like so far about Linux is how I feel about using it. I like the feeling of "Hmm, what can I do with my computer, today" rather than, "I wonder what Apple is going to allow me to do with my computer, today." Running Linux on this completely repairable and upgrade-able Framework laptop, I feel a sense of agency. It's a good feeling.
That agency, however, comes with responsibility. I'm completely in charge, here. That means when things don't work right (and sometimes things don't work right), it's on me to figure out some obscure way to fix it. I don't know where anything is, yet. Thankfully, things have been working fine, but inevitably there'll be some weird issue with the boot loader or Bluetooth will just quit working for no reason. That's when the parts of Linux I don't like will start.
I miss some things from the Mac. I miss BBEdit, Tinderbox, PopClip, DEVONthink, and others. I miss my photography workflow. Photo management and editing software on Linux is powerful, but it's not fun to use. At all. When doing any significant photo management, I switch to the Mac for now. I don't know if that will ever change. Capture One, Lightroom, and Photoshop are just too good.
Mostly, I miss having the standard Emacs bindings everywhere. It's driving me nuts to type this post in a web browser, for example. How do people deal with text like this. Arrow keys? Gross. I just want C-f, C-b, C-a, C-e, C-n, and C-p, is all.
All I know is that I'm having a lot of fun right now.
Org Social is a decentralized social network that runs on an Org Mode file over HTTP.
You can create posts, interact with groups, make replies, mention other users, create polls, or personalize your profile. All this without registration, without databases... Just you and your Org Mode file.
It's a ton of fun for us emacs nerds. Follow mine here:
I made it official, I’ll be blogging exclusively here at baty.blog for a while. Sometimes, by “a while”, I end up meaning “two days”, but it is what it is. It feels really good for those two days, at least. I’m having fun. I like the theme enough. I don’t mind dumping short and long posts at random here. You all may have a different opinion, but it’s my blog, right? 😅
Helping other people use technology requires humility: you have to want to help them realize their goals, which may be totally unlike your own. You have to listen carefully and take care not to make assumptions about how they "should" use tech. You may be a tech expert, but they are experts on themselves.
The sheer volume of tooling and resources around WordPress is a compelling argument in its favor. As long as I don't have to use the Site Editor, I think I could live here.
I like having anonymous comments (for now). I like detailed analytics built in. I like having an enormous amount of plugins available (even though I hope I don't need any of them). I like having a bunch of utilities for managing posts and categories and tags. I like the "Press This" bookmarklet for quickly quoting stuff.
I dislike Gutenberg, but if I'm honest, I dislike anything that's not Emacs, so what're ya gonna do? ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
Please, there must be a thousand ways to do this that I haven't discovered. If you know of anything simpler, I'm all ears.
Seb let me know about his package that does all this and more: cdsync
I use the Emacs Diary all the time. I prefer it to using only Org-mode dates in my agenda. The tricky piece is getting the stuff from my CalDAV (Fastmail) calendar into the diary.
Hanno's post, Managing calendar events in Emacs got me started. Their post is more geared toward Org dates, but it gave me a good leg up.
I installed vdirsyncer and khal via Pacman (Omarchy)
Here's my ~/.config/vdirsyncer/config:
[general]
# A folder where vdirsyncer can store some metadata about each pair.
status_path = "~/.vdirsyncer/status/"
# CALDAV
[pair jack_calendar]
a = "jack_calendar_local"
b = "jack_calendar_remote"
collections = ["from a", "from b"]
# Calendars also have a color property
metadata = ["displayname", "color"]
[storage jack_calendar_local]
type = "filesystem"
path = "~/.calendars/"
fileext = ".ics"
[storage jack_calendar_remote]
type = "caldav"
url = "https://my.caldav.account"
username = "nerd@example.com"
password = "averylongpasswordreally"
I ran vdirsyncer discover once and then vdirsyncer sync and it pulled my calendars down into ~/.calendars/
vdirsyncer creates .ics calendar files, which aren't useful for Emacs Diary. That's where khal comes in.
My ~/.config/khal/config file:
[calendars]
[[main]]
path = "~/.calendars/699f44f9-799a-4325-9328-aff622023096/"
color = dark green
[[other]]
path = "~/.calendars/2e7d0c52-d5c7-4e6a-aa2e-01f8eb84a515/"
[locale]
dateformat = %Y-%m-%d
timeformat = %H:%M
That tells khal where the calenders are, and sets up a usable output format for use in the Emacs Diary. The following command is where I landed.
It generates a list of calendar events from today until 10 days from now and puts the results into a file that I use as part of my Emacs Diary. Just make sure that includes are enabled:
SilverBullet is another tool for notes. I toyed with it last year for a bit and it was great fun. It's definitely geared toward the nerdier crowd, but for someone who wants to build a system of notes around a bunch of Markdown files, SilverBullet is a good option. I like it much more than Obsidian, fwiw.
While testing LazyDocker on Omarchy, I figured I'd use SilverBullet as a test bed. That was easy.
LazyDocker running SilverBullet
I doubt I'll actually use SilverBullet for my notes, but it's tempting.
Is it OK that I like posting in a bunch of different places using a bunch of different tools and methods? I think it's OK. Today, I don't feel like typing this in Emacs and then deploying the Hugo blog, even though it's easy and I love Emacs and static websites. Today, I feel like clicking a button, typing some words, and clicking another button, using nothing but a WordPress installation somewhere out there.
I've spent a lot of time installing and configuring software on the two new Linux boxes. Install a package and figure out where to configure it, then (maybe?) symlink and sync the configuration so that I can do the same things on the other computer. It's kind of exhausting. I realize that this is mostly a front-weighted problem, but still, it has me thinking of ways to reduce the ongoing effort.
One of those ways is to use more web apps. Omarchy makes "installing" standalone web apps easy.
I could use the Fastmail web UI for email instead of my intricate and complex Mutt or Mu4e or GNUS setup. I could use WordPress (or Kirby) for blogging and not need go/hugo/rsync, etc. I could use SilverBullet for notes. There is even a growing number of web-based image manipulation tools I could use for quick resizing/conversions.
I don't necessarily want to change my tools in order to take advantage of web apps, but it sure would simplify some things.
Some days I just don't feel like it, ya know? I don't mean writing blog posts. I mean creating, managing, and deploying the blog itself.
I just tried deploying baty.net (Hugo) from the new Framework running Omarchy, and forgot that I first needed to install Go, Hugo, rsync, and Node (for pagefind), then make sure my ssh keys were in place. It's a Whole Thing. I wasn't in the mood for it, so I came here to WordPress (aka Easy Mode) to bitch about it. So hello!
I just learned about Org-node. Org-node is an Emacs package that mimics much of Org-roam, but claims to be faster and easier to pick up. It’s node-based (via org-ids) and is pretty full-featured.
I’ve (temporarily) replaced my Denote workflow with Org-node, to see how it feels. I like the node-based approach. I also like that it uses org-ids for linking. I often worry that Denote’s “denote:” style links aren’t portable.
Zork, one of the original text adventure games, was one of the only games I've ever bothered to finish. It's from Christopher Drum and it's called pez: Portable Executable Zork.
I just downloaded a copy and am playing in a terminal on my Mac. Flashbacks to some great computer moments going on right now.
I’m writing this post in MarsEdit. It’s been a spell.
I’m mostly testing to see how things play with the awful-but-necessary Gutenberg editor in WordPress. Part of this effort meant I’m using “Rich Text” in MarsEdit. GASP!
Update: It doesn’t use Gutenberg. It creates the entire post in the “Classic” editor. I have yet to decide if this is all too much swimming upstream.
