When I was a kid I kept a small, fresh-water aquarium. It was fun, but I always knew that the really cool fish lived in salt water. Fast forward 40 years or so and I’ve finally put together a salt-water “reef” aquarium.

I’ve started small because there seems to be quite a percentage of people who bail on them within the first year or so. I want to be sure it sticks before spending tons of money and going all-in.

I went with the “beginner” BioCube 32. I set the tank up the first week of June. Added “live” rock and sand. Put in an additional powerhead pump for better flow, and waited. “Aquascaping” the aquarium was fun. I think I have a configuration that looks nice and also leaves plenty of nooks and crannies for critters to hide in.

New tanks need to go through an initial Nitrogen cycle before adding any fish or corals. Using live rocks and sand helps move this along. I tested my water for Ammonia and Nitrites every day or two, and after two weeks it was ready.

I bought my first fish, an Ocellaris Clownfish, on July 3rd. Clowns are everyone’s first fish. They’re cool and easy to care for, so why not? Mine is a “designer” Black Clown. We named him “Marcus” for no particular reason.

Marcus the Clownfish in his new home

Isn’t he cute! (All clowns are born male).

Since Marcus seemed to be doing well, I added another fish yesterday. A Bicolor Blenny. We named this one “Benny”. (I know).

Bicolor Blenny (Photo Wikipidia)

I haven’t taken a photo of him yet because he’s still hiding in a hole on the rocks. I did take a snap while acclimating him. Acclimation involves slowly adding water (drip by drip) from my aquarium into his water from the local fish store (Water Colors Aquarium Gallery)

Acclimating Benny

I also added a couple of Astrea snails in anticipation of algae growth.

Astrea snail

So far, so good. There’s a lot to learn about keeping a reef tank. Water parameters are critical, especially with coral. I can’t wait to start adding coral! There are feeding issues, cleaning, filtering, diseases, livestock problems, and on and on. It’s awesome so far. I love fish!

July 8, 2022 Reply by email

I rage-quit Emacs this morning. By that, I don’t mean that I hit C-x C-c really hard, although I did do that. I mean I stopped using Emacs.

I have spent so much time this past week futzing with my Emacs config. And then futzing with my note-taking process in Emacs. And then reading articles about how other people futz with these things. It occurred to me that I’ve not done much of anything else. So I quit.

Emacs is worse than other software because it’s too damn good at too many things. This sounds like a stupid reason to stop using Emacs, and it kind of is, but I need a break from living neck-deep in it. I need a change in venue.

What usually happens is that after a couple of weeks (sometimes days), I miss it. I miss that it does nearly everything and what it doesn’t do I can make it do, with just a few days of venturing down various rabbit holes. It’s those rabbit holes that get me. And around it goes.

So, for now, I’ll edit text in BBEdit or (gasp!) Vim (an excuse to try the new v9). I’ll keep tasks in Things. I’ll write notes in TheBrain. Everything else I’ll just stop doing, I guess.

Me, every few months.

“But did you really?” you ask. We’ve been here many times before. But yes, for the moment, I’m going to take a break from Emacs (and :sniff: Org-mode). I have to quit cold turkey or I just keep going back. Let’s see how long it lasts this time.

June 29, 2022 Emacs Reply by email

The quote from Robert Greene that I posted yesterday has thrown me a little:

[People] are far too present and familiar, their every move displayed on social media. That might make you relatable, but it also makes you seem just like everyone else.

Robert Greene

I don’t know how I feel about the idea that posting so much about myself makes me seem the same as everyone else. I always figured it showed how I was different. The very last thing I want to do is be just like everyone else.

I started writing daily notes on my wiki as an alternative to spamming social media feeds with my every passing thought. I moved them to a separate blog because I thought that it was easier for normal people to read than the wiki. Then I rolled them into baty.net and here we are.

But I sometimes worry that I share too much. I worry that there’s nothing left to the imagination. I honestly don’t know if this is a problem or not. I have days I want to burn it all down and pull a _why.

I have a strong feeling that I will die young without artifact. That I will make no lasting impression. This will be my avenue. So hold your horsess I just have a few more things to do in life and I’m sure I’ll be out of your hair.

Why The Lucky Stiff

How could I ever re-invent myself if the self everyone knows is the real one?

The answer is unclear. I share things because it’s the best way I know of to be part of society without actually being part of society. Sharing makes me feel known. It makes me feel like I exist. Writing on my blog rather than on social media feels like a different and better way to feel that way while still being different than everyone else.

I have no real intention of disappearing, but I am re-thinking what it means to be here.

June 23, 2022 Blogging Reply by email

You’ll notice that I highlight short phrases in many of my daily post entries here. I think this makes it easier to scan things later. The HTML markup for this is just a styled <mark> tag wrapping the text to be highlighted.

I write my posts in Org-mode and convert them to Hugo-compatible Markdown using ox-hugo. The path from Org-mode to HTML for this is a little convoluted, so I cheat and use a macro to generate the markup.

At the top of my blog.org file, I have defined the following macro:

#+macro: mark @@html:<mark>$1</mark>@@

And when writing posts in Org-mode, I surround the text I want to be highlighted with the macro, like this:

I would like to {{{mark(higlight this text)}}} in the rendered HTML, please

This replaces the text passed to the macro with properly-escaped markup for export. While it’s easy enough to type the macro manually, I’ve created a small elisp function to do it for me:

    (defun jab/markregion ()
      "Add a 'mark' macro to the current region (for Hugo)"
      (interactive)
      (if (region-active-p)
          (progn
            (goto-char (region-end))
            (insert ")}}}")
            (goto-char (region-beginning))
            (insert "{{{mark("))))

Now, I can simply highlight some text and call the jab/markregion function and I’m done.

It’s easier and faster than it sounds, really.

June 12, 2022 Blogging Emacs Reply by email

I’m typing this post in the WordPress editor. I don’t enjoy writing here unless I’m adding an image gallery or some other fancy embedded content. It just feels off. “So write in MarsEdit or Ulysses or something instead,” you implore. Nah. I’ve tried that and decided that if I’m going to write in one place and publish somewhere else, I may as well just write in Emacs and publish a static website.

Speaking of static websites, this site was static just three weeks ago. It’s always a relief moving from a static blog to WordPress or Ghost. Everything becomes so easy! No futzing with rendering or deployment scripts. Images are just there, and properly sized and cached. Mmmm, good. But, easy doesn’t mean fun or nice. There’s no way around the fact that WordPress is big and a bit janky to work with. It may have everything one needs for maintaining a blog, but it also has everything one might possibly ever need. Those things inevitably get in the way and make the experience less fun.

There’s also the permanence thing. For example, my 20-year blog archive just runs on a simple, static, cheap Digital Ocean droplet. I never think about hosting it. I don’t worry (as much) about security or patches or upgrades. It just sits there, idling, almost entirely on its own. And, I always have a rendered version locally, right next to the original Markdown (and Org mode) source files. Everything is managed in Git and backed up easily with a simple file copy.

WordPress, while easy to host, needs to be watched closely and constantly. Things can break. Backups are more complex. Everything is more complex, really.

What it comes down to for me, I think, is that having a static website feels better to me. It feels right.

I love tinkering with different blog engines and methods. I’ll probably always switch between them. It’s fun! But for the long haul, and for peace of mind, I find that running a static site is better for me in the long run.

So don’t be surprised if your RSS feed is pummelled with duplicates again, soon. Sorry again for the noise.

June 9, 2022 Blogging Reply by email

For years, I’ve kept a paper notebook at hand. I always have a Moleskine-style bullet journal or a Field Notes pocket notebook or a Hobonichi Techo nearby. Sometimes all three.

Lately, I’ve been feeling hampered by keeping my journal on paper. My handwriting is terrible unless I write very slowly and deliberately. I worry that personal journaling suffers from slow, deliberate writing. I spend too much time deciding between and playing with various writing instruments. I love my fountain pens, but I’m left-handed, and fountain pens are not ideal. The ink and paper must be just right, and that’s hard to arrange.

Eleven years ago I started using Day One, a journaling app for macOS and iOS. Day One is a fantastic app, dedicated to journaling. I’ve used it intermittently ever since.

What this has meant is that I’ve been keeping a journal in both paper and digital formats. This doesn’t make sense.

I love (I mean, love) having the artifact of a paper journal. Just seeing all those filled notebooks lining my shelves is comforting. It may be comforting, but it’s not useful. I’m starting to feel like I need more usefulness in my tools.

Journaling offers different benefits to different people. For some, the simple act of writing down one’s thoughts is enough. I love that part of it. However, I also love searching for things my past self has written. Not browsing, searching. They’re different. Browsing old paper journals is a favorite pastime of mine, but more often it would be handy to be able to look for specific things I’d written. I could keep a detailed paper index, but I’m not even close to disciplined enough to maintain that. I’ve tried. It’s awful.

Being able to paste in texts or emails from family and friends is another bonus with digital journaling. Or quotes, or tweets. Sure, there’s a certain romance to transcribing quotes by hand, but in reality, I rarely do it.

And then there are images. I have a big Moleskine notebook that serves as both a journal and a photo album/scrapbook. It’s beautiful and, again, a wonderful physical artifact. But, I need to be in the right mood or it doesn’t get updated. Day One pulls photos in from my photo library and fits them nicely into the day’s entry. Hard to beat that kind of convenience.

As for artifacts, I print my digital Day One journal every month and put the pages into a binder. It’s not quite as lovely an artifact as a hand-written paper notebook, but it’s pretty good. And Day One lets me print a real book from entries, which I’ve started doing annually. The books might be even nicer than paper notebooks.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop writing in paper notebooks completely, but for the moment, most of my writing will be digital. I’ll pick up the notebook now and then and write a little. One thing I’ve learned is that no matter how infrequent the entries, the result is still valuable. This way, I’ll have most of my writing in a convenient digital format, backed up on paper. I’ll also have beautiful, timeless paper notebooks so that future generations can throw them away, unread.

June 5, 2022 Journaling Workflow Reply by email

Tweet about tweeting

All of social media…

June 3, 2022 Reply by email

Hot dogs over firepit

May 31, 2022 Reply by email

I just sold my wonderful Leica Q2 Monochrom. This was the second time I’ve owned a Q2M and the second time I’ve sold one.

The Q2M is a nearly perfect walk-around, everyday camera for someone who wants to focus purely on making black and white images. That describes me perfectly, for a while. I love B&W photographs and the Q2M makes them as good or better than anything available. I love how using a B&W-only sensor forces me to think in tones, shades, and lighting.

But, and there’s always a “but”, my use of the camera is mostly while hanging around with family or out at dinner, etc. As an everyday carry camera, I am often asked by family members if they could “see the color version” and they are disappointed when I tell them there is no such thing. After a while, I start to feel like I want the option to shoot black and white, but not always.

I also have a beautiful M10-R which is always just begging to be used. The decision about which camera to bring is crazy-making for me, so I now have fewer choices, which I am telling myself is a good thing.

My “kit” now consists of the Leica M10-R and Leica MP. It’s great being able to use the same lenses on both film and digital bodies. And there really is nothing that compares with an M.

The biggest gap this leaves is that I still need something for casual carry. Something with auto-focus and macro capabilities that I can shoot one-handed. The M cameras leave me without any of that and I often miss it. For now, I’m filling that gap with the little Ricoh GRIII. It’s a great, tiny, easily-pocketable camera that should do just fine.

I’ll miss the Q2M, but for now, I’m going to work with what I have, and what I have is pretty great. But don’t be surprised if my next post discusses something entirely different.

Leica MP and Leica M10-R

May 27, 2022 Photography Leica Reply by email

Long story short, I have successfully rationalized the purchase of a new iPad Pro and keyboard.

After a week or more of non-stop tinkering with nearly every bit of software on my Mac, I had a fit and decided to switch things up. I now have an iPad Pro (11-inch) with Smart Keyboard. The idea is that the software I use on iOS is less prone to tweaking. Plus, I’m not always futzing with shell aliases and other CLI tools just for fun. I’m not tempted by a 32-inch screen peppered with windows just begging me to play with them. I’m still thinking Reset to Defaults.

I just want to read and write. Maybe doodle a little. And I want to do it digitally and on paper. Hence, the “hybrid” idea.

So I have a limited-capacity device alongside my paper notebooks and index cards. I took over the unused upstairs bedroom (which used to by my office anyway) and cleaned out everything I don’t need. This is the first iteration. I’d like to keep it minimal so I’m not adding things until I feel I need them.

May 24, 2022 Workflow Reply by email