Blot.im has been down for going on two days now. I assume this is due to Amazon’s AWS issues over the past 24 hours. Still, it’s a bummer. As a defensive maneuver I’ve moved the site back to Hugo, at least for now.

Update (3:45 p.m.): Blot is back up after “the server was caught in a deathloop”. I copied today’s entry over and pointed the DNS back to Blot.

Mike Hall is on a roll with his Denote setup. I’m following it all closely because I use a nearly identical set of tooling, except mine is not nearly as well thought out or complete as his. His latest adjustment is around org-gtd and Things. I’ve been using org-gtd for a week or so and I’m also not sure it’ll stick. Mike created a nice way to generate links between Denote notes and Things that has me thinking.

Speaking of Mike Hall, He recently posted about how he’s generating a searchable, static HTML version of his Denote notes so that he can look stuff up while on his phone. All I want from my Denote notes on iPhone is the ability to find and read them. I asked Mike to share his setup, which he kindly did. A few path tweaks and I was up and running in no time.

If y’all were born in the 50s or 60s you’d have done things exactly the same as we did. And if we were born in the 80s or 90s we’d be bitching about it, same as you. Just like your kids and/or grandkids will be bitching about all the stupid things you’re doing that will turn out to have been mistakes.

June 14, 2023 Blot Meta Denote Emacs Journal Reply by email

When creating a new project folder (group) in DEVONthink, I often make use of Templates. Templates are just files in a folder somewhere that get copied into the DEVONthink database. For example, I have a project “starter” Tinderbox document named “Basic Project Template.tbx”. When inserting the template file into my DEVONthink project, it uses the same name as the original, which isn’t helpful. DEVONthink is very scriptable, so I wrote an AppleScript to rename the selected document the same as the enclosing group/folder.

Well, I didn’t exactly write it. It’s more like I conjured it.

I first tried copying an existing script that seemed like it would give me a head start and set to modifying that. I didn’t know how to refer to the enclosing group in AppleScript so I started to browse DEVONthink’s dictionary. It occurred to me that maybe I could just ask ChatGPT for help, so I typed:

“Write me an applescript to rename an item in DEVONthink to the name of its enclosing folder”

ChatGPT wrote the following:

tell application "DEVONthink 3"
    -- Get the currently selected item
    set selectedItem to content record of viewer window 1
    
    -- Get the enclosing group (folder) of the selected item
    set enclosingGroup to parent 1 of selectedItem
    
    -- Get the name of the enclosing group
    set enclosingGroupName to name of enclosingGroup
    
    -- Get the name of the selected item
    set selectedItemName to name of selectedItem
    
    -- Generate the new name by combining the enclosing group name and the selected item name
    set newName to enclosingGroupName & " - " & selectedItemName
    
    -- Rename the selected item with the new name
    set name of selectedItem to newName
end tell

It worked great on the first try. The only change I made was to remove the “selectedItemName” from the final name. What a world.

June 12, 2023 Workflow DEVONthink AI Reply by email

I’m not convinced that much has improved meaningfully since we started optimizing for digital.

June 11, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I woke up from my trance and bailed on my disjointed bricolage of Fastmail->Gmail->Mimestream. Cobbling various pieces together just so I can use a single mail client on my Mac seemed…shortsighted. Mimestream is nice, but not that nice, you know?

So I’m back in MailMate and/or Mu4e. Oh, and sometimes Apple Mail. But I’m thinking about switching back to notmuch from Mu4e. Now that I say it, I’m not sure this is any better :). At least I’m not relying on Gmail now, I guess.

June 11, 2023 Email Workflow Reply by email

June 11, 2023 Reply by email

Dammit I just lost an hour on Mastodon even though I’m supposed to be “off” social media. I have nothing to show for it, either. It’s insidious!

I lost my head for a second and thought maybe I’d do the whole “Emacs from scratch” thing again. This time, I tried the new beta branch of Crafted Emacs because I like their approach on the new version. But yeah, it’s beta and things broke and I’m not good enough to troubleshoot. Back to Doom for now.

There’s a difference between “The simplest thing that could possibly work.” and “The simplest thing that might actually work.”

I’ve stopped using subheadings with multi-paragraph contents in these daily notes because I like scanning a list of titles as a way to find stuff. Burying them in daily notes makes it harder.

June 10, 2023 Social Email Emacs Journal Reply by email