I signed up for Readwise again. The idea is that I’d like it to be easier to save, read, annotate, and archive articles. I have fancy ways to do that already, but they’re too fancy, if you know what I mean. I’m hoping to just click something and go find it later, without the need to figure out where to put it or what to name it or where I might want to read it.

I’d like to work on a long-form article->reMarkable tablet workflow, but haven’t begun looking at that yet.

Kobo book highlights are imported automatically, for books purchased via Kobo. Any sideloaded books require a small app on my Mac.

I kind of missed the daily highlight summary emails, too.

It’s $8.99/month and I’m paying monthly because I change my mind a lot and in the end it’s often cheaper to pay monthly.

May 14, 2024 Reply by email

Yesterday, I thought I’d try building a movie review bluebrint and templates for baty.net. Kirby CMS makes things like that relatively easy to implement. And I even had a giant leg up from Kev Quirk, who had shared his book review templates with me earlier. All I had to do was tweak them and integrate them into my site.

After a short time, I lost energy for it. It’s not that it was terribly difficult, but I just didn’t feel like doing it. I didn’t feel like remembering how Kirby’s controllers and collections and templates and snippets and models worked. I originally set up my original Kirby site using their starter template and after a week or so of figuring things out, I stopped messing with it and just posted stuff. I lost interest in how it worked. I would type and hit the Post button.

But Kirby is so flexible it’s nearly impossible to resist trying to build something with it. I don’t feel like building something with it right now, so I’m writing this on my Blot.im blog instead. Although Blot does have a templating system and can do some clever things, for some reason I’m only rarely tempted to change or add anything.

I’m having similar feelings about daily.baty.net, which is built using Tinderbox. It’s powerful, flexible, and I break stuff in there kind of regularly. Not in the mood.

So here we are, typing a simple Markdown file in a Dropbox folder using Obsidian and letting Blot deal with the rest this morning. Tomorrow I may use Emacs instead. Or maybe BBEdit. Point is, it feels uncomplicated and that’s what I’m looking for right now.

May 14, 2024 Blogging Blot KirbyCMS Reply by email

Since I’m already typing in Obsidian this morning, I figured I would test my Blot workflow in the new vault. If you’re reading this, it worked.

Yeah, I’m still trying to wrest some of my writing free of Emacs’ gravitational pull, but it’s not easy. And I’m not convinced I even want to.

May 14, 2024 Obsidian Blot Reply by email

My Blot.im subscription just renewed for another year. I haven’t been using Blot much recently, while I continue to try consolidating my stuff under one blog at baty.net. I renewed because I still like using Blot and who knows where I’ll want to post stuff next week :).

May 9, 2024 Blot Blogging Reply by email

This is handy: GitHub - rtrppl/cleandesk: rapid renaming and sorting for dired

It’s an Emacs package which adds some convenience functions to dired-mode that help keep one’s ~/Desktop folder clean.

Here’s my config (mostly just copy/pasted from the README):

(load "~/.config/emacs/lisp/cleandesk/cleandesk.el") ;
(setq date-string "%Y%m%d-")
(global-set-key (kbd "M-s-u") 'cleandesk-open-inbox)
(with-eval-after-load 'dired
  (define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "J") 'cleandesk-jump-to-folder)
  (define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "M") 'cleandesk-move-files)
  (define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "z") 'cleandesk-prepend-date)
  (define-key dired-mode-map (kbd "r") 'cleandesk-rename))

I do M-x cleandesk-open-inbox to get a dired buffer of my ~/Desktop folder. Then I rename and/or prepend a YYYYMMDD to files I’m going to keep (“r” or “z”). Then I move them to a target folder using M-x cleandesk-move-files (or “M”). Target folders are pre-defined and I can use fd with completion, so they’re super fast to get to. This is the part that normally slows me down.

Maybe now I’ll keep my ~/Desktop cleaner. OK, probably not, but at least I have a better way to tidy things up.

April 22, 2024 Emacs Reply by email

I’ve gone pretty much all-in with Obsidian this week. I don’t remember how it started. It’s like a blacked out sometime on Tuesday and woke up this morning finding all of my files, notes, and “stuff” in one giant Obsidian vault.

While I was here, I thought I’d look into using Obsidian to manage the markdown files comprising baty.blog.

My Blot blog uses Dropbox for sync, but my main Obsidian vault is in ~/Documents/FileCabinet. Turns out that Obsidian can handle symlinks¹, so I created a link in my vault to the actual Blot folder in Dropbox.

So far it feels fine, even though I’m somewhat allergic to symlinks (and abstractions in general). It’s worth a shot, though. If something gets wonky I’ll back out of it.

To make posting easier, I created a Templater template for new posts. It looks like this:

---
<%* 
let title = "New"
let dateprefix = tp.file.creation_date("YYYY-MM-DD");
let date = tp.file.creation_date("YYYY-MM-DDTHH:mm:ssZ");
title = await tp.system.prompt('Title: ');  
let slugged = tp.user.slugify(title);
await tp.file.rename(`${dateprefix}-${slugged}`);
-%>
title: <%* tR += `${title}` %> 
date:  <% date %>
tags: 
summary: 
draft: Yes
---

# <%* tR += `${title}` %>

<% tp.file.cursor(1) %>

The template prompts for a title, slugifies it, and renames the file using YYYY-MM-DD-slug.md. I have this template applied automatically for any new note created in Blot’s “posts” folder. The Templater plugin is really useful.

I’m composing this post using Obsidian², so if you’re reading this, it worked.

April 20, 2024 Blogging Blot Obsidian Reply by email

Another bit from Gruber today.

But Jobs was right too: people are smart, and they can — and should be allowed to — make their own decisions. And many people are more comfortable with sharing data than others. The privacy zealots leading this crusade in the EU do not think people are smart, and do not think they should trusted to make these decisions for themselves.

I wouldn’t say I’m a zealot, but I think John mis-characterizes people here. It’s not that people aren’t smart, it’s that they don’t care. If we can’t get them to care about doing things that might be harmful to themselves or others, maybe the government should step in and care for them. The argument should perhaps be about how harmful consensual tracking actually is.

April 20, 2024 privacy Reply by email

Hooboy, it’s happened again. I made the mistake of falling in love with too many tools. Combine that with my short attention span, and I’ve spread myself too thin, blog-wise.

The problem is that one day I want to burn it all down and find One True Blog. Other days, most days, I want to use them all. Why force a decision when I can waffle between a half-dozen playgrounds?

I guess the need to upgrade Kirby this morning has me thinking about how many sites I actually want to maintain. It’s not all just fun and games, you know. There’s work to be done 😄.

So how do I feel about things right now? The combination I’m enjoying is this blog (using Blot) for longer (serious?) posts and daily.baty.net for the little daily notes. I like Blot because it’s so simple and I like Tinderbox because the rendered blog works how I want my daily notes blog to work.

Where does this leave the Kirby and Scribbles? I don’t know, honestly. I like scribbles for quick images posts, since it makes them easy and they look good on the home page. I have a lifetime subscription, so I can use it (or not) any time I like. Kirby, though, is a question. If I don’t live in Kirby, I forget how things are made. This means I need to re-learn stuff whenever something needs fixing or changing. It can be fun, but not always.

Let’s be honest, I’ll probably change this again tomorrow.

April 10, 2024 Blogging Reply by email

Well this is backwards. Shouldn’t the new Scribbles blog be where I put these little journal entries? Maybe, but today I think I’d rather just have this Markdown file open in an Emacs buffer all day.

Hate reads | ~/.unplanned:

In the tech blogging world, a vanishingly small minority seems to just have an iPad. It must be explained.

I’m guilty of this, but I’ve been over it for years. I have an iPad. I’ve had one since day one. I barely use it because it’s like working with one hand tied behind my back. It’s a video display on my treadmill at this point. Oh shit, did I just explain it, again?

April 4, 2024 Journal Reply by email

I’ve been preoccupied with testing Scribbles over at scribbles.baty.net so things have been quiet around here.

After completely rejiggering my Emacs config, I thought I’d make sure my Blot functions still, er, function. If you’re reading this, they do. And also Maestral is still working.

March 31, 2024 Blogging Blot Reply by email