A blog about everything, by Jack Baty

Mimestream early impressions

I am quite enjoying Mimestream for managing email. It’s fast, looks nice, and feels good to use. However, there is one thing I miss and one thing that irritates me.

The thing I miss is smart mailboxes. I want, at minimum, a smart mailbox for Unread”. Smart mailboxes are on the roadmap, at least.

The thing that irritates me is that when I process (Archive/Delete) a message, the message immediately below is then selected. I process my email from oldest to newest, so, from the bottom up. There’s no option to sort messages showing oldest first. I scroll down and start reading unread messages and when I hit Delete, the next older message is selected. I’ve already dealt with that one, so I’d prefer if the next newer message was selected. I either need to start at the top (newest), which I don’t want, or I have to click/move up a message every time. Drives me nuts.

Otherwise, I like Mimestream enough that I think I’ll pay for a year during the discount offer.

Roll-108 (Leica MP. HP5)

Memorial Day with family with the Leica MP, 50mm Summilux, and a roll of HP5.

Mimestream

In another example of solving a problem I don’t have, I’m testing the Mimestream email client for Gmail. I’m a sucker for new ways to use email, and also for rave reviews, so I’ve made a few changes to my email setup in order to test Mimestream.

The problem” for me is that Mimestream is currently only a wrapper for the Gmail API. It doesn’t do IMAP, so in order to test it, I have to use my Gmail account. Since I don’t get email to that account, I am forwarding my Fastmail email to Gmail. I’m using Fastmail’s SMTP service to send from Gmail so that my From: address remains .

So far, I like Mimestream. It’s got that clean, fast, fully macOS feel that I love. I don’t receive enough email to merit spending an extra $50/year on a subscription, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. I like nice things, and Mimestream is a nice thing.

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

You may have noticed that these daily journal posts have been expanding to include what would normally be separate blog posts. This has been an organic process, and continues to evolve. Part of me prefers this one-a-day writing process. It’s easy to manage and lets me combine short and long-form content as well as images, quotes, etc. This can all be in a day’s journal. On the other hand, I no longer have an easily-parsable list of posts. It makes the Archives less useful. At least the PaperMod theme automatically generates links to each heading.


I switched to Arq backup a couple weeks ago because it feels like I have more control of things using Arq. However, after a few days of successful backups, I’m no longer able to either back up to Arq’s cloud, nor can I see the current backups. Support is working on it. I’m able to back up to a Backblaze B2 location, but not to Arq’s cloud. See what I get for improving” my process?

Withdrawing from social media

(I had originally posted this on Sunday’s daily notes but it’s kind of grown, so I split it into a separate post. Apologies if you’ve already read it there.)

Oh goody, another Why I’m leaving social media post”! Feel free to skip this one. We’ve all read many like it.

For a week or so I’ve been back to posting on Micro.blog and syndicating to Bluesky and Mastodon. It has reminded me that although I enjoy sharing things on social media, doing so requires that I spend time on social media, and that no longer gives me much joy. In fact, it’s often the opposite. I’m just so tired of being told who I’m supposed to like and what’s OK to enjoy. Or worse, what or whom I simply must be angry about this very minute. There’s a lot to be troubled by and angry about in the world, but spending my time listening to people pointing it out to me and yelling Look how bad this is, yo!”, but not actually doing anything about it, is not something I’m interested in. No amount of feed curation seems to help.

Another component is that I find myself reaching for social media the second I’m not doing anything else. Any pause in real life” and I’m back to doom scrolling or looking for something to entertain me. This seems unhealthy, so I hope to tame it by forcing myself to ignore social media entirely.

I don’t know if it’s possible for me to just quietly write things here on the blog and never share them where they might actually be read, but I’m in the mood to pull things back and just live quietly by myself for a while. I reserve the right to change my mind at any time.

Sunday, May 28, 2023

I expanded the paragraph I’d written earlier about social media in a separate post: Withdrawing from social media


Instead of posting directly to social media, what about posting a short summary and a link on Micro.blog each day? That might feel too much like advertising, but should reduce the need to monitor replies quite so frequently, but still allow me to more likely share things. Something to think about.


Creative tools based on generative AI are amazing and feel like technological miracles. They allow people who may not have an intrinsic ability to create things using existing tools to express their creativity in all sorts of new ways. This opens up so many doors. On the other hand, I find that when scrolling through feeds, I skip over images that look (too) amazing because they’re probably just from Midjourney”. And now, after playing with the Generative Fill features in the new Photoshop, I am impressed but also melancholy. Nothing is real anymore. The urge to tamper with an image and the ease with which it can be done is going to mean that fewer and fewer images will remain authentic. It doesn’t matter how cool a photo is, if it’s faked, it’s fake and therefore meaningless to me.


Some say that only providing an email link for comments on a blog will prevent readers from benefiting from any conversations that might be had on a topic. I agree with this, but it doesn’t offset the negative effects caused by the performative nature of public comments. So, send me an email. If I feel like others are missing something valuable from our conversation, I’ll update the post with a summary. How’s that?


Saturday, May 27, 2023

I’ve started unsubscribing from feeds/people who offer little other than barely-informed hot takes, snarky commentary, or That’s BAD!” finger-pointing.


Om Malik on the Leica Q3:

No matter how you look at it, the Leica Q3 design team made a classy product feel cheap and inelegant.

Well, that seems like quite an exaggeration, no?

Some folks are not going to like that Leica introduced a flippy screen on the new Q3, and Om is one of them. I haven’t handled the Q3 yet (has Om?), but I’ll reserve judgement. There’s no arguing that a tiltable screen isn’t handy, but it’s fair to argue whether one is necessary. Leica apparently thinks it is, as does every other manufacturer.

Late in the article, Om writes:

I am not a Leica Q guy. I have never liked the Q range of cameras…

Well then, thanks for your take I guess. I’m a big fan of Om and his work, but this all seems a bit reactionary. All this talk has me really missing my Q2, though.

Friday, May 26, 2023

I’m starting to feel like the world is not interested in the same things I’m interested in.



Photomator exports photos using .jpg rather than .jpeg (like Apple Photos) and that alone is worth the subscription price.

Bike Outliner

Bike OutlinerBike Outliner

The other day I wrote this:

Knowledge should reside in the notes, not in the software used to manage the notes.

I’m feeling like software has been hindering me more than helping me. I spend too much of my time building overly complex workflows in Emacs or Tinderbox or Obsidian or whatever. These crazy workflows often introduce dependencies and push the actual knowledge up into the process/software. This seems like a bad idea.

As a respite from all the complexity, I’ve been putting notes and logs into Bike Outliner. I tested Bike when it launched last year, but I was so deep in Emacs-for-everything mode that I quickly dismissed it. Too quickly I think.

I’ve always preferred writing in an outliner, and Bike is just so damn nice to work in. And it’s ridiculously simple. This simplicity might normally turn me off, but for the moment it is keeping me focused on the notes and not the tooling. I mean, there’s nothing much I can do in Bike other than write notes. This is a feature.

Sure, complex software can be used simply. Just ignore all those unnecessary features, right? Maybe, but there’s always the background hum of what if I just…”, and I often underestimate how much that noise undermines the work.

Sunday, May 21, 2023

I read bsag’s post about Neovim again recently so of course I spent hours configuring LazyVim and LazyGit and friends. It’s a nice setup, and feels a bit like Doom Emacs. But I can’t do it without Org-mode.


I’ve been sitting in front of this computer for a week1 doing nothing but clicking things hoping to find something to play with. Maybe it’s time for a break.


  1. More like a decade, if I’m being honest.↩︎