TiddlyWiki is a single static HTML file. It does not generate an RSS feed of new entries. It doesn’t generate anything.

I treat my wiki at wiki.baty.net more like a blog than a wiki, so not having an RSS feed feels like an omission. Most of the time I consider this to be a feature. I like that I can write any old nonsense and it doesn’t actively go out and bother anyone. It’s my little secret, that you can read if you want.

On the other hand, I find it annoying when I’m interested in someone else’s writing and they don’t provide any feeds. So, I’ve decided to make it easier to follow me. I suppose if you deliberately subscribe to the wiki’s feed, you want to be bothered by the stuff I write there.

My solution is based on this article . The short version is that I created a new tiddler named “RSS Feed” containing the following:

This tiddler runs a filter finding the last 10 tiddlers tagged with Feed and renders them as RSS-formatted XML.

Extracting the rendered text from that tiddler out to an RSS file is done using my Makefile using the TiddlyWiki node.js module . The command is as follows:

tiddlywiki --load index.html --render "[[RSS Feed]]" "rss.xml" text/plain

This generates a file at ./output/rss.xml containing the rendered RSS text/xml. Later in the Makefile, I rsync rss.xml up to the server along with the rest of the wiki files. Here’s the complete Makefile:

SERVER_HOST=server01.baty.net
SERVER_DIR=/home/jbaty/apps/rudimentarylathe.wiki/public_html
PUBLIC_DIR=~/Sync/wikis/rudimentarylathe/
TARGET=server01.baty.net

.POSIX:
.PHONY: checkpoint deploy

build:
        tiddlywiki --load index.html --render "[[RSS Feed]]" "rss.xml" text/plain

checkpoint:
        git add .
        git diff-index --quiet HEAD || git commit -m "Publish checkpoint"

deploy: build checkpoint
        git push
        @echo "33[0;32mDeploying updates to $(TARGET)...33[0m"
        rsync -v -rz --checksum --delete --no-perms $(PUBLIC_DIR)index.html $(SERVER_HOST):$(SERVER_DIR)
        rsync -v -rz --checksum --delete --no-perms $(PUBLIC_DIR)output/rss.xml $(SERVER_HOST):$(SERVER_DIR)
        rsync -v -rz --checksum --delete --no-perms $(PUBLIC_DIR)files $(SERVER_HOST):$(SERVER_DIR)

All this means is that you can now subscribe to the daily posts at wiki.baty.net using the following URL: https://wiki.baty.net/rss.xml .

The odd thing is that I normally create each daily post first thing in the morning and update it throughout the day. I’m not sure how different RSS readers will handle this, but it’s a start.

I haven’t added the discovery links yet, but should. I also don’t think the RSS tiddler needs all those non-breaking spaces so I may play with that later.

Update March 11, 2022: Saq Imtiaz sent a link to his experimental plugin for generating RSS and JSON feeds . Worth a look!

March 10, 2022 Misc Reply by email

I hate making fiber-based silver gelatin prints in the darkroom. But I love having them to hold and to hang.

Fiber-based papers have this deep, magical sheen, and the surface is smooth yet has a distinct, subtle texture that is missing from resin-coated (RC) papers.

Compared to RC papers, fiber-based paper takes twice as long to process. It requires additional washing and optional toning steps. It eats up fixer and takes more trays than I have comfortable room for. It must be washed for up to an hour. And then there’s the curling, so I have to press the prints under heavy books for a few days before I can do anything with them

Just look at this example. It’s ridiculous.

A recently-dried fiber darkroom print.

I gave up on fiber a few years ago, but have been having second thoughts. A fiber print feels so good in hand. Heavy, smooth, and solid, somehow. And there’s no escaping how great they look. I’ve been asking myself if maybe it’s worth the trouble after all. I made a few prints this week and yes, it is definitely worth the trouble.

A recent print of a favorite negative. On fiber.

March 8, 2022 Film Photography Reply by email

☁️ Overcast +35°F

Writing in Emacs is great. Static websites are great. Using Emacs to manage and deal with content for a static website exhausts me eventually. Doesn’t bode well for this site, although it’s probably just my mood today.

I follow Matt Osbourne (aka Mr. Leica) on Flickr because he plays with just about every combination of lens and camera you could think of. Also, the lovely models don’t hurt. Thing is, with all the fuss about camera/lens combinations, all the images look basically the same. The biggest difference is film vs digital but otherwise I’d be hard-pressed to tell one from the other.

You can see below that I’m experimenting with subheadings within daily posts. This is for things that are more than one paragraph of text or text and images. There’s a way to copy a link to the heading, but it only makes sense on an individual day’s page. Not sure if I’ll find it useful, but let’s try it.

You’re not suffering from ‘vicarious trauma’, you’re tweeting in your living room

Dazed https://www.dazeddigital.com/politics/article/55563/1/stop-making-the-ukraine-war-about-you?utm_source=densediscovery&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-issue-178

Silver gelatin fiber prints

I’m not sure darkroom printing on fiber paper is worth the trouble. I love the way fiber prints look and feel, but they take twice as long to develop and an hour to wash, then this happens when they dry.

March 7, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Derek Sivers suggests, in a much-linked-to post , that all your stuff should be in plain text files, and I (almost) agree with him.

Most of my notes are in some form of plain text format, but not for the reasons Sivers lists. My notes are in plain text because I prefer editors that use plain text by default. I suggest you use the tools and formats that are most useful to you now. If that’s plain text, then great.

The fear of not being able to open or otherwise read files, someday in the future, is overblown. File formats last a long time. Email, PDF, even Word documents can be opened decades later. Mine can, anyway. But what about in 100 or 200 years? My response is, “Who cares?” I mean, c’mon. My digital notes are going to be tossed in a dumpster along with the rest of my shit by my family like 20 minutes after I die, anyway. Your notes may be more important to the world than mine.

The thing I worry about isn’t “lock-in” or lack of portability or any of those. What I worry about is losing the actual files. This happened to me recently. I try to keep methodical backups, but I was careless with a folder full of Markdown files that were used to render a blog and they are all gone. Hundreds of them. I thought I knew where they were and I thought I’d made backups and a combination of cleaning up and switching machines and poof! All gone. Fortunately, I have the rendered HTML files but my point is that, whatever their format, all files are useless if you lose them.

So, back up those Word docs and PDFs and Mindmaps and Powerpoints. And back up your plain text files, too. At least that way you stand a chance of having them “someday in the future”. You can worry about how to open them then.

March 5, 2022 NoteTaking Reply by email

☀️ Clear +16°F

I spent the morning reassembling the turret on the Focomat IIc, then attempting to print from 6x6 negatives. It’s possible, but far from ideal. The head needs to be too close to the base, making for very short exposures. I’m also struggling with the autofocus mechanism, but that’s probably just me. I think I’ll hold off on 6x6 printing until I have the 100mm lens issue solved for real.

This makes me want to take another swing at Standard Notes: Why so many editors? | Crafting Privacy

March 4, 2022 journal Reply by email

☀️ Clear +20°F

The fact that I often cannot tell the difference between someone being smart and someone trying to sound smart gives you an idea of how smart I am.

I’m now running both Alfred and Raycast at the same time. I’m using Raycast for launching, clipboards, etc. and keeping Alfred running for a couple of workflows and “Universal Actions”. Why not? Although I may decide to reverse their roles at some point.

Monday: Ima use TiddlyWiki for everything!
Tuesday: Logseq! I need to put everything into Logseq!
Wednesday: What was I thinking? Emacs is life!
Thursday: ???

One nice feature of using Hugo for this site is that I haven’t felt a need to futz with it in a while. I just write, save, and type “make deploy”.

I love having a big screen, but hate managing windows. I can’t help but be distracted by background windows so I either fart around moving things to spaces or I hide them. As a test, I’m trying Hazeover (HazeOver: Distraction Dimmer™ for Productivity on Mac) to see if just auto-dimming the unfocused windows will help. Otherwise, I unplug the laptop and use the smaller screen and it’s often a relief.

I find myself withdrawing at a time when I should be participating.

Painting with John is a dumb, silly little miracle of a show and it’s still my favorite thing.

I love this blog and wiki.baty.net equally.

Looking at my baty.net stats. Is this what they mean by “trending”?

You can’t make fun of me if I’m not trying.

Fountain pens > Pencils. But not by as much as I thought.

I think we should all go back to Tumblr and Flickr. Who’s with me!?

I see they’ve kicked DHH off the Railsconf keynote this year. Part of me thinks they should have, because he’s being not just being normally dickish, he’s been loudly and repeatedly wrong about so many things recently. On the other hand, let him talk about Rails. Good grief, he still basically is Rails. I think he’s wrong, not dangerous, sheesh. There’s a difference.

March 3, 2022 Journal Reply by email

☀️ Clear +22°F

“Book of Boba Fett” is terrible. He should’ve been left as a cool, mysterious background character.

It seems I’ve settled on wiki.baty.net as the wiki domain. “rl.baty.net” still works, but is discouraged.

Derek Sivers says Write plain text files and I mostly agree with him. Except if the plain text format makes what you’re actually doing more difficult, then don’t. I’d rather have a useful document now even if there’s a chance that one day, maybe, possibly, it could become unreadable. Future-proof-but-shitty is not my first choice.

I’ve modified things so that the home page shows the past 30 days rather than 7. Since there’s no search here yet, I figure CMD-f will let you search the past month. If it’s older than that, it’s probably no longer valid anyway 😆.

I’ve removed Disqus comments from this site. No reason other than it’s overhead I don’t need and I rarely see any comments anyway. Whatzamatta with you people?! Send me an email or something, sheesh.

I don’t usually panic when some random company I use is acquired but goddammit! Bandcamp is Joining Epic Games — Bandcamp Updates. How can that be good? Tell me it can be good. Please?!

It occurs to me that we didn’t name web1 and web2 ahead of time. We just labeled them that later. Now we’re inventing web3 and trying to make everything into that. It’s a bad idea from the start.

Speaking of Web3, there’s now Blogchain.app. I read How Blogchain is different by capsule on Blogchain and I don’t see how it’s meaningfully better or solves actual problems in any unique way. It’s what, WordPress with backups and a social element? Big whoop.

I don’t want to waste time watching a movie that I don’t like but I have no problem just browsing the trailers for an hour and never watching anything

Simon is right: Don’t default to building an SPA

March 2, 2022 journal Reply by email

2022-Roll-55_31

There are things that I dislike about shooting film, but processing isn’t one of them. I actually enjoy it.

I shoot a roll or two of film each week and process it in my bathroom darkroom. Developing black and white film is quite simple. I have gotten to a point where the process is muscle memory. I shoot mostly the same type of film (HP5 Plus) and develop it in HC-110. I know the dilutions and I know the time, temperature, and agitation schedule.

It takes me about 20 minutes to develop a roll of film. I have to pay attention for five minutes in the developer, one minute in stop bath, then five minutes in the fixer. After that, it’s a hands-off ten-minute wash, a quick dip in Photo-flo, and that’s it.

Standing at the sink during the processing steps is meditative. I can stand there and just let my mind wander. It’s usually silent, but sometimes I have music playing. And there’s nothing like seeing the images unfurl when taking the roll off the reel. Magic.

Scanning, on the other hand, is ????.

March 1, 2022 Film Photography Reply by email

Hooboy, it’s March.

Looking at the server analytics (I use GoAccess - Visual Web Log Analyzer) for this site shows that a large majority of “hits” are to the RSS feed. This makes me feel a little bad about posting so much over on the wiki. I know I keep saying that my daily notes are “for me” but that guilt I feel makes me think otherwise.

Oh cool, I posted on my Tumblr this morning.

I put a roll through the IIIC. It was fun. It’s a nice lens.

Self-portrait with Retina IIIC

My subscription to Reid Reviews has expired. I’m off subscriptions right now so I’m not going to renew yet. It’s a great resource, but focuses so much on the micro-differences between lenses and sensors and I’m not really interested in that lately.

Am I thinking about Ukraine? Of course I’m thinking about Ukraine. I’m terrified.

I am, slowly but surely, becoming bored. Not having a job is great, but I’ll need to feel useful eventually.

March 1, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Kodak Retina IIIC

My dad called me from Florida and said that one of his neighbors had died and left a bunch of camera stuff to be given away or sold. He mentioned there was “some old Kodak” and wondered if I was interested in it. I said “Sure, why not” and he said he’d send me a box with the camera and some other stuff that came in the box.

The box arrived yesterday and I was thrilled to find a working Kodak Retina IIIC inside. I didn’t know much about the Retinas except they were around for many years and were very high quality cameras, which isn’t something Kodak is known for.

The last of the Retinas, the “Big-C” IIIC was made from 1957-1960. I assume that mine was made somewhere late in that range, based on the serial number. It doesn’t have the absolute latest changes, so let’s guess 1959.

I was surprised by how nicely the camera is built. It’s dense and feels very solid. All the movements, from focusing to folding the lens, are smooth and dampened well. It’s not quite Leica-level build, but much closer to it than I expected, especially considering the price.

I put a roll through it immediately and everything appears to work perfectly. Not bad for a 60-plus-year-old camera.

One of the lauded features of the IIIC is the 50mm f/2 Schneider-Kreuznach Retina-Xenon lens. I haven’t shot enough to get a good feel, but even after one quick roll I can see that it’s no slouch.

For more details about the camera, there are a few good resources. I enjoyed this Retina IIIC review by Kurt Munger . For everything you need to know, Chris Sherlock has a ton of info on the Retina series .

I don’t know yet how often I’ll use this new camera, but it’s certainly not going to spend the rest of its days on a shelf.

Here’s the camera’s page on my wiki

February 27, 2022 Film Kodak Photography Reply by email