September 25, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Apple Studio Display

I splurged on a new Apple Studio Display for my home office. It’s only been 24 hours but I couldn’t be happier. I wish it wasn’t so expensive. Even the “base” model is too expensive. And no way I’m paying another $400 just so I can adjust the height. That pisses me off a little, but the display is gorgeous, so all is forgiven.

Here’s why I bought one:

• My 32-inch LG was too big. I know that sounds crazy, but too much screen real estate is a distraction for me.
• I wanted 5k. Whenever I switched between the (4k) LG and my internal Retina MacBook Pro monitor, the difference when reading text was pronounced. Moving to the internal Retina display felt like putting on glasses.
• I wanted built-in speakers and camera. I keep the MBP in clamshell mode, so I needed to have extra speakers on my desk and didn’t like the clutter.
• The hardware is beautiful. I stare at my monitor nearly all day, every day. The Studio Display is simply nicer looking than anything else I’ve seen. This alone doesn’t justify the purchase, but it sure helps.

I’ve taken the LG to my temporary office in our old building, so it’s not like it’s going to waste. The new Studio Display is a great upgrade, though.

Apple Studio Display in home office

September 24, 2022 Apple Hardware Reply by email

September 23, 2022 Journal Reply by email

I’m trying something with TiddlyWiki. My public wiki has over 3,000 entries. As much as I try keeping notes in my array of Org-mode files, I almost always find what I’m looking for in the wiki instead. I’ve also kept a local, private “Lab Notebook” wiki in TiddlyWiki. It competes with my Org-mode daybook and journals, though, so I’ve neglected it.

It occurred to me that I’ve enjoyed using TiddlyWiki for public notes. However, I can’t only keep a public wiki, because not everything belongs “out there”. Just most of everything. That’s where the Lab Notebook comes in.

For example, I recently sold my Leica M6. Here’s the wiki entry. I wanted to record that it was sold, so I did that. But, I also wanted to record who I sold it to and where I shipped it. Those details don’t belong on the public wiki, so now what?

I dusted off the Lab Notebook wiki and started making entries there again. This isn’t a “Zettelkasten” or anything fancy like that. It’s just a stream of entries for recording technical notes throughout the day, with some links between them. And it’s all in a single HTML file. But here’s the kicker. If I have a private note that I want public, I just drag and drop it from my private wiki to my public one. In TiddlyWiki, that means simply dragging any link to any note (aka “tiddler”) between wikis. That’s a super handy feature.

Even better, in the Arc browser I open a split window with both wikis. I can write in either of them, and quickly drag content between them. It looks like this:

TiddlyWikis

That’s it. That’s the entire UI in Arc.

As always, this is mostly an experiment. It means taking fewer notes in Emacs, and that rarely lasts. On the other hand, this is easier and prettier and I have the magic of TiddlyWiki to keep me interested. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

September 22, 2022 TiddlyWiki Notetaking Reply by email

I’m taking notes over on the wiki today. Things may be sparse over here for a minute.

September 22, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Yep, still thrilled with Blot.im for running this blog.

I have a lifetime subscription to Roon and it’s easily the best music player/streamer/library there is. The one big drawback with using Roon is that it only works on my local LAN. If I’m, say, in the car, I can’t listen to my Roon library or playlists, etc. Yesterday Roon 2.0 was released, and it solves this problem. There’s a new app, Arc, which connects to my Roon Core (running on an old Intel NUC) and lets me stream anywhere. So far it works great.

TiddlyWiki turned 18 years old this week. I wonder if we’ll be saying the same thing one day about Notion, Craft, Roam, etc. I have doubts.

September 21, 2022 Journal Reply by email

I use Notmuch in Emacs for managing my email. It’s fast, powerful, and (once used to it) easy to use.

There are a few oddities I’ve learned to work around. The first is with deleting messages. The manual for Notmuch states:

notmuch does not support, nor ever will, the deleting of messages

I’m ok with this, since Notmuch provides a way to essentially bury deleted messages using tags. I don’t necessarily need to actually delete the message file. Any message tagged with +deleted is hidden from searches unless explicitly included. Ignored tags are set in ~/.notmuch-config like so:

[search]
exclude_tags=deleted;trash;

This works fine, but the problem is that my new messages are also automatically tagged with +unread and +inbox, so in order to properly flag a message as deleted, I want those two tags removed as well. There seems to be no built-in way to do this. I found this odd, since there is notmuch-archive-tags, which lets me configure which tags are added or removed when archiving a message. Here’s my config for that:

(setq notmuch-archive-tags '("-inbox" "-unread" "+archived"))

There is no such configuration for deletion, so I made my own. To do this, I borrowed some code from Spacemacs and integrated into my Doom Emacs config.

(setq notmuch-message-deleted-tags '("+deleted" "-inbox" "-unread"))

(defun jab/notmuch-search-message-delete (go-next)
  "Delete message and select GO-NEXT message."
  (notmuch-search-tag notmuch-message-deleted-tags)
  (if (eq 'up go-next)
      (notmuch-search-previous-thread)
    (notmuch-search-next-thread)))

(defun jab/notmuch-search-message-delete-down ()
  "Delete a message and select the next message."
  (interactive)
  (jab/notmuch-search-message-delete 'down))

;; My own delete key
(map! :map notmuch-search-mode-map
        :n "D" #'jab/notmuch-search-message-delete-down)

Now, pressing “D” in any notmuch search buffer deletes the selected message and moves to the next one. This all seems like it should be built in, but if it is I couldn’t find it. If anyone knows a better way to handle this, please let me know.

September 21, 2022 Emacs Email Reply by email

How I spent my morning

Someone suggested, “Publish your thoughts, not your notes.” Also something about leaving it up to someone else to publish your notes after you’re dead. Which they’ll do, but only if your thoughts are worth it. This seems like good advice.

September 20, 2022 Journal Reply by email

1946 Leica IIIf (converted from IIIc)

If I’m not taking notes about the thing that I’m reading or watching, it’s only entertainment.

The draw of paper for me is twofold. First, it’s wonderfully, frustratingly immutable. Second, I firmly believe that writing by hand helps with recall.

How is it that I’m just now discovering Henry Wessel? Awesome work:

September 19, 2022 Journal Reply by email

☁️ Overcast +73°F

An embarrassment of riches

I’m down to only two.

I sold the M6 yesterday. I already regret it. On the other hand, I used the camera for five years and sold it for twice what I paid for it. Sure, Leicas are expensive, but I like to think of them as cash, in camera form :). Besides, I still have two great Leica M film bodies: The M3 and the MP. I can’t wait to see what Leica releases in October, though. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a brand new M6.

I often think of audio/video “content creators” lazy because they don’t have to type words, but I never create audio/video because it’s too hard. There’s a conflict there :).

We tend to forget that no one before, say, 30 years ago, chose to use analog tools. That’s all there was. “Luhmann used paper index cards!” “Cartier-Bresson used a film camera!” “Hemmingway used a manual typewriter!”

I see a lot of “Second Brain” people making statements that end in something like, “…because that’s how the brain works.” but I never see any evidence that they actually know anything about how the brain works.

Speaking of second brains, I find that I capture a ton of information in my notes, but I don’t seem to actually ever learn anything from any of it. I am now actively searching for a way to improve this. When I become overwhelmed by my digital notes, I bring out the paper.

I hate the word “ideation”.

I spend way too much time with other people’s thoughts in my head. There’s a point at which other people’s thoughts push my own thoughts out of the stack and I end up only parroting what other people think.

In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today.

Gen Z Never Learned To Read Cursive

That’s a little depressing. I write in cursive all day. On the plus side, it seems I don’t need to worry about encrypting my journals.

September 18, 2022 Journal Reply by email