Category: Tech

  • We’re here for now

    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? 😅

  • Hello, from WordLand

    This is a test post to see how well Dave Winer's new WordLand works in Zen (Firefox). I had issues in Safari. So far, it seems fine.

    Since I'm using Linux, I no longer have access to MarsEdit for posting to WordPress, and I still like avoiding Gutenberg for simple posts like this.

  • The Framework is the most exciting laptop I’ve ever broken – Cory Doctorow

    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.

    Source: Pluralistic: 13 Nov 2022 The Framework is the most exciting laptop I’ve ever broken

    This is why I’m not good at tech support. MOVE! But also, he’s right about the Framework. It’s awesome.

  • WordPress tooling

    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)_/¯.

  • CalDAV to Emacs diary

    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.

    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.

    Basically, it’s this:

    (more…)
  • A timeline

    Monday: “Cool, I can do everything in Emacs and a terminal!”

    Wednesday: “I’m so sick of using Emacs and a terminal for everything”

  • SilverBullet for some reason

    Screenshot of my SilverBullet journal for 9/27
    What am I doing in SilverBullet?

    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.

  • Where am I again?

    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.

  • Browser first?

    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.

  • One of those lazy blogging moods

    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!