A beach in France, 1960s. Photo by Ron Baty.

I love this photo, taken by my dad while traveling to France during his time in the Navy. There’s just so much going on.

I write on paper a lot, and mostly in cursive. I don’t understand, then, why my handwriting has become so much worse recently. Is it laziness? It can’t be old age. Not yet anyway. It kind of puts me off writing that way.

Phil has been keeping copious Darkroom notes and I’m quite envious. I work fast and loose in the darkroom and so far I’ve been OK with that approach, but Phil’s notes make me want to try being somewhat more fastidious about it.

April 23, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I don’t want to talk about Mastodon on Mastodon. I don’t want to be lectured on how I’m “supposed” to use Mastodon. I don’t want to see other people being lectured. Let’s try a filter for a while, then.

Monday: Everything belongs in Emacs. Everything!
Wednesday: I should go back to using paper.
Friday: Oooh, there’s an update to Logseq! ::installs::.

April 21, 2023 Journal Reply by email

Good advice from Nick Cave:

Fill yourself with the beautiful stuff of the world

Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files

One day, when someone is writing my biography and asks, “What were your greatest contributions to your field?” I’d like to have a good answer.

My fascination with Elon Musk wore off some time ago, but cheering his setback with SpaceX strikes me as poor form.

There sure is a lot of, “Actually, a chronological feed IS an algorithm.” going around. Yeah, thanks for nerdsplaining that to me, but everyone knows what they mean so pointing it out is meaningless.

April 20, 2023 Journal Reply by email

When it comes to subscriptions, yes, I can afford $3 a month. I just can’t afford another $3 a month.

One thing I’ve noticed in my job hunt is that I’ve worked on some fun and interesting projects over the years. I’d like for that to continue.

April 19, 2023 Journal Reply by email

Looky looky, I got new goggles. (So of course I wanted an updated profile pic)

New goggles!

Slab looks like an interesting knowledgebase tool.

Build a culture of knowledge-sharing today. Easily create, organize, and discover knowledge for your entire organization, from non-technical to tech-savvy.

April 18, 2023 Journal Reply by email

This site doesn’t have a “dark mode” because I don’t like dark modes and it’s my site, so there! It’s also a slight rebellion against the silly idea that light themes “burn out the readers sight at night.”¹ Hyperbole much? Those are my reactive, contrarian reasons. The actual reason is that I’m lazy and don’t feel like putting in the work. I understand that it can be an accessibility issue for a small percentage of people, so I’ll get to it one day. Until then, the rest of you can turn down your monitor or wait until morning 😜. There’s also RSS.

I dislike threads on Twitter and Mastodon so much. Cory Doctorow wrote a post called How To Make the Least-Worst Mastodon Threads that offers a few tips to make them less awful, but they’re still awful. He also, naturally, posted this as a thread on Mastodon in which he basically broke up the Medium post into screenshots of the text. Sigh.

I’m ashamed of how poorly I react to new information that doesn’t fit my models or beliefs. I don’t know how to effectively reduce my own bias. Time helps, usually.

I like the idea of Sourcehut and (most of the time) its bare-bones simplicity. But after many months I still cannot navigate the site to save my life. I may decide to consolidate back on Github.

I lean left, so DeBoar sometimes hurts my feelings because he knows how we can be:

Look, I’m gonna level with you here. Like the vast majority of leftists who have been minted since Occupy Wall Street, my principles, values, and policy preferences don’t stem from a coherent set of moral values, developed into an ideology, which then suggests preferred policies. At all. That requires a lot of reading and I’m busy organizing black tie fundraisers at work and bringing Kayleigh and Dakota to fencing practice. I just don’t have the time. So my politics have been bolted together in a horribly awkward process of absorbing which opinions are least likely to get me screamed at by an online activist or mocked by a podcaster.

Freddie DeBoer, “A Conversation About Crime”

When buying a new vinyl record, it almost always includes a code to download the MP3 version. Why don’t I get a free ebook version when I buy a hardcover book? I would like that.

April 17, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I haven’t been shooting much recently, film or digital, but I did finish a roll of HP5 in the MP this weekend. Nothing much of interest, but here are the keepers.

Steve tasting beers at Founders

All Day IP trailer at Founders

Alice on couch

My mom and dad deciding what to order

Jeff with his Mercedes

Self-portrait with bad hair

April 17, 2023 Photography Leica Film Reply by email

My right wrist hurts when I move it certain ways. I don’t think it’s carpal tunnel but I’ve switched out my mouse for a trackpad to see if it makes a difference.

What should I do with the Synology? The only app I use regularly is Plex. Otherwise, it’s a place to dump archives and backups. I have two external USB drives hooked to my MBP that can do that work instead. Seems like overkill to have a giant NAS just buzzing away in the corner, doing not much of anything.

I’ve replaced homebrewed emacs-mac @28 with emacs-plus @29 on my MBP. After running ./bin/doom sync it launched without a hitch so far. Shocking. I used the following:

brew install  emacs-plus@29 --with-imagemagick \
                            --with-no-frame-refocus \
                            --with-native-comp \
                            --with-savchenkovaleriy-big-sur-icon

That last bit gives me an app icon that looks like this. Purrdy.

I have a draft post that I’ll never publish titled, “The radicalization of Dr. John Campbell” and it makes me sad. Not because I won’t publish it, but because I felt the need to write it in the first place.

The “I’m a good driver” syndrome is everywhere.

You know what I hate? Gossip. Whenever I’m in a bad mood it’s often on the days that the internet feels like nothing but a giant gossip engine.

April 16, 2023 Journal Reply by email

My dad on Easter

I snapped this photo of my dad from across the room with the 35mm Sigma. This edit is a severely cropped version, but it’s still 3300px wide. Sometimes having all those extra megapixels in the SL2 comes in handy.

Sorry about the RSS noise after that last post. I keep forgetting that any image placed in Blot’s directory hierarchy is automatically turned into a photo post unless its file begins with “_“.

April 15, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I replaced our flaky sprinkler system controller this weekend. All by myself.

The unit I chose was the Rachio 3 Smart Sprinkler Controller. They offer 4, 8, and 16-zone versions. My system has 9 zones because of course it does. The good news was that Costco sells a version with 12 zones for the same price as the standard 8-zone model. Yay me!

I’m not a handy person, so it was with some trepidation that I even started this project. I was careful to remember to take lots of “before” photos to use as a reference.

Wiring in the old controller

Removing the old housing was a little tricky because it was nailed to the backing board rather than screwed.

The old controller, not-so-carefully removed

Three screws later and the new controller was in place. I used the reference photos to connect the wiring and it was time to test everything.

New controller wiring

The Rachio app walked me through getting everything set up. Of course nothing worked. I had missed one common wire. Once that was in place, the system was working. The next step was to go through each zone and indicate grass type, soil type, amount of sun, grade, etc. This took me about thirty minutes, after which a default schedule was created for me, using the information for each zone.

The Rachio app

It’s pretty cool. The app knows my local weather conditions, and skips runs based on wind, temperature, and rainfall. My wife has access so she can start and stop things any time, right from her phone. I was excited to add it to HomeKit until I read that they’d recently abandoned HomeKit support. Well, crap. That would have been nice.

The first run ran as scheduled this morning. I received a text letting me know it was about to start. The run is timed to start so that it “ends before sunrise”. The next run has been automatically postponed until next Wednesday, as it’s supposed to rain tomorrow and Monday. Pretty cool.

Once in a while, I get a DiY project right. Feels good when that happens.

The new Rachio 3 controller, installed

April 15, 2023 DiY Reply by email