(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.

May 28, 2023 Social Reply by email

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?

May 28, 2023 Journal Reply by email

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.

May 27, 2023 Journal Reply by email

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.

May 26, 2023 Journal Reply by email

Bike 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.

May 22, 2023 Workflow Software Reply by email

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.

May 21, 2023 Journal Reply by email

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

May 20, 2023 Journal Reply by email

Software notes (in my Tinderbox daybook) from October 19, 2022:

• I was invited to the Tana early access release
• Tinderbox released a beta with a new file format that looks interesting
• TheBrain v13 was released
• Obsidian went 1.0

What do I want in a note-taking tool today? Usually anything other than what I had yesterday.

Riccardo Mori on self-driving cars:

Self-driving cars advocates will tell you that the noble goal is to reduce car accidents and make people safer on the road. That’s nice and all, but I think a more pragmatic (and cost-effective) solution would be to educate drivers better.

We know that Level 5 autonomous vehicles are hard to make. Maybe impossible. But “better drivers”? A noble idea, but who are we kidding?

May 19, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I recently found my original Fujifilm X100 in a box in our storage unit. I have such fond memories of the camera, so I knew I would enjoy using it, even today.

I was surprised to learn that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. It still feels great to carry, but it’s not quite as nice to actually use as I expected.

It’s kind of slow. Slow to power on. Slow to focus. Slow to navigate. This shouldn’t bother me, as I often use old, manual-focus cameras and I’m used to working slowly. I guess the difference is that if I’m going ask the camera to do things, it should be faster than I am. The X100 isn’t. It’s not unusable, but it takes a bit of the joy out of using the camera.

I can live with slowness, but what I’m finding the most troublesome is the tiny, awkward controls on the rear of the camera. Specifically, the Menu/OK button. I cannot seem to press that button without accidentally pressing one of the surrounding buttons first. It’s maddening.

What about image quality? It’s fine, I guess. Honestly, I prefer the look of the files from my little Ricoh GRIII. Coming from the 50MP of my SL2 makes the 12MP X100 files feel a little limited. I’ll keep tinkering in Lightroom to find the right mix of adjustments, which will probably help.

I do like the black and white conversions I’m getting, though. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but they have a certain grit to them that I like.

Will I use the X100 every day? Probably not. It’s a fun, cute, small, rangefinder-style camera with an optical viewfinder, so I’m sure I’ll bring it out occasionally.

I’m mostly stuck at home this week while our kitchen is being remodeled, but I did take a few snaps with the Fuji. Here are some samples.

May 18, 2023 Photography Reply by email

I’ve been head over heels in love with Arc for a long time now. So far, the only thing I don’t like about it is that there is no support for bookmarklets.

Convert bookmarklet to Chrome extension to the rescue.

I’ve tested it with two bookmarklets so far, and it seems to work fine.

May 18, 2023 null Reply by email