I’ve been using a Pinned tag as a way to keep my latest Journal entry visible in the story list. It works, but requires that I add the tag to each new Journal entry and delete the tag from prior entries.

I created a new “Most Recent Journal” tiddler and added the following as its text:

<$list filter="[tag[Journal]sort[created]last[]]">
<h2>Journal for <$view field="created" format="date" template="DDD DDth MMM YYYY"/></h2>
<$transclude  mode="block"/>

<small><$link>Open</$link></small>
</$list>

That’s way better. The new tiddler will always show (transclude) the correct Journal entry without me doing anything special. Here’s what it looks like.

Stolen from this thread.

February 5, 2019 tiddlywiki Reply by email

This was my second Jack Reacher novel. I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure how many more I’ll end up reading.

So many handy coincidences. So many conveniently attractive female characters, and of course they’re unable to resist the accidental charms of Mr. Reacher.

Much of it was fun and fast-paced, but the Eye Roll Factor was a little too high.

February 3, 2019 book Reply by email

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)All Systems Red by Martha Wells
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a ton of fun. A nice combination of action, characters, and humor.

February 3, 2019 book Reply by email

I’m trying to learn a little elisp. It’s slow going, so having a specific need is helpful.

I like to insert the current weather in each day’s org-journal entry. Previously, I had a TextExpander snippet that would insert the following:

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :results value verbatim
curl "wttr.in/49301?0pQT"
#+END_SRC

This works, but I have to activate the snippet, put the point on the #+BEGIN_SRC line, hit C-c C-c to run it, then delete the block.

As an elisp-learning exercise I thought I’d try creating a function that would do everything for me. Here’s what I came up with:

(defun jab-insert-weather ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((w (shell-command-to-string "curl -s 'wttr.in/49301?0pQT'")))
  (insert (mapconcat (function (lambda (x) (format ": %s" x)))
           (split-string w "\n")
           "\n"))

Now, typing M-x jab-insert-weather will insert something like the following into the current buffer:

:               Overcast 
:      .--.     14-21 °F
:   .-(    ).   ↗ 8-20 mph 
:  (___.__)__)  12 mi
:               0.0 in | 0%

February 2, 2019 emacs Reply by email

The Outline:

You cannot trust the internet to keep media available, and you cannot trust corporations to commit to supporting film culture.

I love the idea of keeping video stores alive.

Unlike vinyl, there’s really no advantage to the physical media of films. That’s not the part that’s missing.

Here’s what I miss about video stores:

Walking around, scanning the shelves, and picking up boxes to read the back. I could easily see 100 videos at once and just sort of visually scan them. It’s not the same as looking at Netflix or Amazon apps.

More importantly, I miss actually choosing a damn movie to watch. These days I scroll around with the remote and watch trailers and never decide what to watch because it feels like everything ever made is just one click away so let’s check and see. To watch a movie from the video store, you had to pick one. Then you brought it home and that was what you had to watch. What now seems like a limitation was actually awesome.

January 31, 2019 Media Reply by email

Ben Thompson, Stratechary,

Even so, to see that power exercised is pretty stunning. On Tuesday Facebook employees and Facebook the company thought they owned their iPhones: on Wednesday Apple made clear that the ultimate owner — at least if ownership means control — was Apple itself. And so a $400+ billion enterprise was thrown into chaos and made unable to work on their most important product, simply because a different company said so.

And…

In fact, I expect Apple to restore Facebook’s Enterprise Developer Certificate in short order, and I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the long run, the company comes to regret this move: the longer Facebook is disabled by Apple’s actions, the more time there is to ponder just how much power Apple has; the next time Apple’s total control of the App Store is questioned, the more concrete the example of just how damaging that control will be.

Talking or reading about Facebook and Apple isn’t my favorite thing, but Thompson points out what many are missing in this whole “Facebook Research” app fiasco. My reaction was the same as most, “Damn that Facebook! Good for Apple for shutting that bullshit down!” I still feel that way, but the control Apple wields is concerning. Many of us trust Apple, for now, but control is power and perhaps they have too much of it.

January 31, 2019 apple facebook Reply by email

After years of oscillating between wanting and ridiculing Billingham bags, I landed on want and bought a “Hadley Small Pro Camera Bag” in black.

Billingham Hadley Pro, Small

I didn’t need it, I wanted it, and I like it.

I already have a small Peak Design Everyday Sling 5L and it’s a nice bag, but it’s a tad too small. There’s not room for much more than just a camera/lens. The Hadley is not that much bigger in dimensions, but it holds much more. The outside pockets help.

With one small bag and two different “kits”, I found myself swapping things around a lot and thinking about new bags. I don’t seem to need a reason to think about new bags, I just do it.

Mike Johnston’s post about Billingham bags pushed me over the edge, and a few minues later I had one on the way.

I haven’t used it in anger yet, but first impressions are wonderful. The small Hadley Pro is the perfect size for a mirrorless camera and a few lenses, along with the usual supporting knick knacks. It’s built well and looks great. I thought the tan ones were a bit showy so I went with plain black with black leather.

So now I have another new bag. It’s a nice one.

Hadley Pro with Fuji X-T3 and lenses

January 30, 2019 photography Reply by email

My use of Emacs varies with my mood, but this is how I’m using it today.

I’m using Emacs for…

• creating formatted documents (proposals, etc.)
• daily journaling
• logging events in my daybook
• writing blog posts
• managing my finances with ledger-mode
• tracking weight
• recording meals
• and general text editing.

I’m no longer using Emacs for…

• Task management
• Email

I’m no longer using it for email or task management. This is weird, because managing my TODOs using OrgMode is why I started using Emacs in the first place.

Using Mu4e for email is fun and neat, but it’s also quite fussy. It requires syncing with mbsync and running mu regularly, which means I have to wait 30 seconds before I can see my email. It’s also tricky viewing more than one message at a time, which I do frequently. Most emails benefit from seeing the HTML version, so I’m always hitting a V to see messages in my browser. I’m not sure this is all worth it.

January 30, 2019 emacs Reply by email

One benefit of working with so many smart people is sometimes they hear you wondering about things.

I’d been using Paste to Markdown for converting text copied from a browser to Markdown for use in blog posts, etc. It works great, but I thought it would be nice to have something local and executable via a terminal.

Karl overheard me talking about it and so he made something for me.

c2md is a small utility that does exactly what I needed.

Output HTML clipboard contents to markdown in the terminal (MacOs only)

A quick npm install -g c2md and boom!

Thanks Karl!

January 29, 2019 cli markdown Reply by email

My regular reminder:

January 28, 2019 tip Reply by email