Baty.blog

Category: Tech

  • Some WordPress improvements – I hope

    At the urging of @coldkennels, I’ve installed the Classic Editor plugin for WordPress. Maybe writing the old way will be less annoying. Also recommended by him was the “Hide admin notices” plugin, which is supposed to minimize the annoying nagging to “Upgrade to Premium”. I did see that even that plugin wants me to upgrade, which is a bit ironic, but oh well.

    I’m conflicted about using WordPress, but without a meaningfully better everything-including-kitchen-sink option, I need WordPress for when I’m in that kind of mood.

     

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  • Where to now with baty.blog?

    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.

  • Fixing backups on the UGREEN NAS

    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.

  • Colin Devroe

    @jbaty @jack I wanted this to be a thing… but I fear it is far too complex!

    November 20, 2025, 2:48 pm 0 boosts 0 favorites

    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 🙂

  • Posting from the iPad

    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.

  • Future-proof, schmuture-proof

    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:

    (more…)
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  • Another one of those weeks

  • WordPress and ActivityPub

    I’ve installed the ActivityPub plugin on my baty.blog WordPress blog. Let’s see how it works.

    This should show my profile with a follow button:

    Jack Baty
    Jack Baty
    @jack@baty.blog

    I used to help build web and mobile apps as co-founder of Fusionary Media (1995-2020).

    Now I mostly just take photographs and write on my blogs

    75 posts
    4 followers

    Any reactions to my post should show up at the bottom of each post. (probably only from my other account, since I’m the “1 follower” :).

    Installation and setup was very quick and easy. This seems like a fine solution.

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  • Relinquishing (some) control

    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.

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  • Show a new tab when selecting New Tab in Zen Browser

    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)

    https://zen-browser.app/release-notes/#1.7.5b Features section.

    I don’t approve, so I found the setting to revert it using about:config…

    zen.urlbar.replace-newtab = false

    Much better.