If an article is titled something like, “What does [something] say about [other thing]?” the answer is “nothing” and I’m not reading it.

So there really is such a thing as “Fowling”.

Moving baty.blog to Micro.blog

A few times every year I get the bug to move my blogging to WordPress. I mean, WordPress has it all, and more, right? For a week or two, having it all feels good. But then, the “…and more…” part starts to rub me the wrong way, and the cracks start to show. Gutenberg shmutenberg! And plugins nagging me to “Upgrade to Premium!”. Jetpack. Ridiculous extra markup and CSS. It’s all too much.

Yesterday, I logged into the WordPress control panel and was greeted with the “Welcome to WordPress 6.9!” screen. Fine with me, but there was nothing new that I needed, and I carried on.

This morning, I was prompted to upgrade WordPress to 6.9. Say what? Sure enough, the blog was running 6.8.3 again. I have no idea why, and that bothered me enough that I started thinking about where I might move it.

Also yesterday, I re-started my Micro.blog subscription as a lighter-weight way to “micro blog”. It occurred to me that I was really only microblogging with WordPress anyway, so what about using Micro.blog for baty.blog instead of on a separate domain (micro.baty.blog).

So that’s what I’m doing. At some point today, I’ll change the domain here to baty.blog and put in a few redirects. Once again, I apologize for the churn.

Note to self

Index card with note: "If you don't keep it, you don't have to organize it"

I wanted a KVM so I can easily switch the Studio Display between the little Beelink Linux computer and my Mac Mini. The internet doesn’t seem to know how to do this or what, if any, KVM actually works. I’ll just keep plugging/unplugging cables, I guess.

I’d like to make my Jellyfin server available externally for family. Plan was VPS running reverse proxy into tailscale. Watched some videos, read some stuff. There’s no way I’m doing that. I’ll probably just port-forward from the home router and cross my fingers instead.

Had to fire the cleaning lady

Toilet paper holder with the roll on backwards

Comparing the diffusion vs condenser enlargers. The diffusion test (on left using the Beseler 45S) is just muddy and soft. Needs more testing, but just look at the dust and scratches that show up if you’re not careful on the other two (done using the Leitz Focomat IIc).

3 darkroom prints of the same self-portrait.

Just for giggles, I’m typing this into Obsidian using the micro.publish plugin. The idea is to spend less time scrolling timelines while still being able to share stuff.

So, here’s what happened. The toolbar in Kirby’s editor for daily.baty.net became unreadable after a theme change. I don’t feel like figuring out how to fix it, so I restarted my micro.blog subscription instead. Now I can just post stuff and not worry about it. I’m nothing if not fickle.

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.

Roll 064 (2025) / Leica MP

Here are a few photos from a roll of Kentmere 400 in the Leica MP. Family snaps, mostly. For some of the indoor photos I used a little Godox flash, totally guessing at exposure.

Ideal vs Authentic self

Will Ferrell on boring people

Immature is a word the boring people use to describe fun people.

Will Ferrell

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.

Ted Nelson on the future

I have seen the future– and it irks.

Ted Nelson, 1996

Roll 063 (2025), Rolleiflex 2.8D

This roll of expired Tri-X was languishing in the camera, so I forced myself to finish it with the usual self-portraits and dog photos.

Thursday, November 20, 2025

Now Playing: "Getting Killed" by Geese

Geese was mentioned by Nick Cave in the latest Red Hand Files, so I thought I'd give them a listen. I'm not sure it's my favorite, but it sure is interesting!

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 :)

So I replied to the mention at Mastodon from the WordPress notification. The reply showed up as expected in the Mastodon timeline. However, it also showed up on the blog's home page as if it was a regular post. I'll have to figure out how to stop that from happening.

I miss fun Twitter

An absolute classic. Makes me laugh every time. People are funny.