Baty.blog

Category: Tech

  • I hit a tech wall

    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.

  • How’s the WordPress experiment going?

    TL;DR I’ll probably bail on it soon.

    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.

  • A couple of weeks full-time in Linux. How’s it going?

    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.

    (more…)

  • Org-social

    tanrax/org-social:

    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:

    https://jackbaty.com/social.org

  • 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:

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