Bijan Sabet:

Photographs made with film aren’t necessarily better but they can be beautiful and meaningful. I think tagging exposes the merits of film and encourages people to try it. And the more we shoot with film, the longer it will be around.

This is exactly how I feel. I hear things like “It doesn’t matter what was used. The only thing that matters is the photograph”. Yeah yeah, whatever you say, Mr. Serious Artist. I like knowing what film/camera/lens combination was used to create a photo. It’s inspirational and encouraging. I tag mine because I like it when others tag theirs.

January 28, 2019 photography analog Reply by email

Om Malik on Ello:

It is the antithesis of the likes-fueled, influencer-juiced world of Instagram and its algorithmic overlordship of creativity. If Instagram is the machine and crowd-powered enemy of creativity for the sake of creativity, Ello is just a place where there are fewer judgments about the art. It is not just about photos. There is art, fashion, music, design, architecture — and it feels like the East Village long before the faux-pubs, condos and the Whole Foods turned it into urban-suburbia.

I had high hopes for Ello but Om is right that it has sort of faded from view.

My most recent post was from 2 years ago, so I added another one today. I love that Ello feels different. I’m just not sure I have a place for it. Just in case, I’m @jackbaty there.

January 27, 2019 social Reply by email

Jamie Todd Rubin:

I want a classic barometer that I can refer to for changes in the weather. I have three different weather apps on my phone, none of which agree with one another, nor with what I can see outside my window on a typical day.

I want an old-fashioned address book. Each year, come the holiday season, it seems that my Contacts are always missing information. I diligently update them each season, and yet, information still goes missing. Perhaps there is a leak somewhere and the information seeps through a crack in the foundation. Good old fashioned address books don’t have this problem.

He lists a few others, but these are the ones I can most easily relate to.

I have an old-fashioned address book and I use it regularly when writing letters. I like seeing addresses edited, crossed out, or otherwise modified over time, showing when people have moved or changed phone numbers, etc.

There was a very old barometer hanging in the basement of my house. I didn’t take it with me when I moved and I wish I had. It’s something I’d like to replace.

January 27, 2019 analog Reply by email

I don’t care what editor you use for source code — you can use Quickbasic for all I care — but look, you have to know that Magit exists. Even if you don’t use Emacs in any other capacity, you may want to use it for Magit

He lists Magit, of course, and a bunch of other great reasons you should consider Emacs.

(via Ireal)

January 26, 2019 emacs Reply by email

Oh goodie, another post about TiddlyWiki¹.

There was a recent thread on Micro.blog about surfacing older content in order to find things that might have otherwise been forgotten. I love this idea, so I added a Random Quote tiddler to my wiki. Here’s how I did it.

Installed Matt’s ‘Shuffle Operator’ plugin²

Then, I created a new tiddler, Random Quote, to display the random quote.

Last, I added the following to the Random Quote tiddler:

<$list filter="[tag[Quote]shuffle<now>limit[1]]">

    { {!!text} }

</$list>

(Remove the space between sets of curly braces, those are there so they render correctly here)

That’s it! Now the Random Quote tiddler will display a single, (relatively) random tiddler selected from all tiddlers tagged with “Quote”, although any Filter expression could be used to determine the list of tiddlers to pull from.

January 26, 2019 tiddlywiki Reply by email

Phil Nunnally is deep into TiddlyWiki these days. I know the feeling!

Here’s Phil

i had a TW-shaped hole in my heart for years and didn’t know it.

😊

I love what he’s doing with his wiki. Phil’s path sounds quite similar to mine. It’s been a while since I’ve had this much fun.

January 25, 2019 tiddlywiki wiki Reply by email

M.G. Siegler, First Draft #150:

It’s weird. If you wanted to start something as simple as a link blog these days, there’s no good way to do it. Sure, you could set up a WordPress site, but it will undoubtedly be overkill. Medium has gone in another direction. And other things such as the newer Micro.blog are almost too predicated around mobile and simplicity. There’s just no good way to do what you could do on Tumblr.

I read M.G. Siegler because he’s interesting, even though I don’t always agree with his take on things. In his latest newsletter, he laments the downfall of Tumblr. I’m confused by his near-dismissal of Micro.blog here. He starts with wanting “…something as simple as starting a link blog…” but then shrugs off Micro.blog as too simple. I agree that Micro.blog isn’t a direct replacement for Tumblr, but if one wanted to start a new link blog today, Micro.blog would be a damn fine way to do that.

Update Jan 25. In his subsequent blog post, Siegler changed the Micro.blog sentence to read “And other things such as the newer Micro.blog are almost too spartan.” (via @kordumb)

January 24, 2019 blogging Reply by email

I nearly forgot about wttr.in. Curl wttr.in in a terminal with a few parameters and you get a nice “graphic” weather forecast.

I use it in my Org-Journal to show the weather for the day

Here’s the bit I insert at the top of new journal org-mode files:

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

Just execute that block (Ctl-c Ctl-c) and it inserts something like this:

    _`/"".-.     Light Snow
     ,\_(   ).   21-30 °F
      /(___(__)  ↘ 12 mph
        *  *  *  9 mi
       *  *  *   0.0 in
                            .

January 23, 2019 emacs orgmode Reply by email

Don’t build a notebook, build a tool that lets you build notebooks.

– Jeremy Ruston

“Intertwingling the TiddlyWiki” is a fascinating talk by Jeremy Ruston (author of TiddlyWiki), and Joe Armstrong (author of Erlang) about the design of software like TiddlyWiki and how useful it could be if separate wikis could “talk” to each other. It’s a take on federation and also hits on ideas behind creating a Zettelkasten.

Jeremy’s bit starts at around 16:30.

I took some notes.

January 23, 2019 Tiddlywiki Reply by email

Mike Johnston on shopping, The Online Photographer:

I wonder if people ever start shopping for one thing and then shop themselves into something entirely different, and then find themselves placidly regarding the lovely thing they just bought while it slowly dawns on them that it’s perfect except for one thing, which is that it isn’t at all what they need. And that whatever they needed, they still need. I’m not saying that’s ever happened to me, but I could see it.

I’m sure I have no idea what he’s talking about.

Update, 3 hours later: I just ordered a Billingham Hadly Pro, Small in black.

January 22, 2019 photography Reply by email