Jack Baty Daily

I'm trying something. This post is being written at daily.baty.net and should syndicate as-is to Mastodon (social.lol). I'm sending just the text, as if it's a native Mastodon post (no links).

20 years ago when I was feeling fancy, I bought myself a nice Maxwell Scott briefcase. At some point the strap loop failed so I patched it with a wire. Yesterday I emailed them to see about a fix. They responded today that they'll be sending me replacement parts, free of charge. Nice. I guess they weren't kidding about that 25-year warranty.

Firing up my micro.blog again has confused things a bit around here. Where do the little posts go, on daily.baty.net or on Micro.blog? Most, but not all, of the time, I want both, so I've dusted off the micro.blog specific RSS feed here and will pull that into micro.blog. Let's see how that feels.

Every court ruling news headline sounds like this to me:

"Court refuses to overturn rejected ruling not banning those refusing to undo denying a double negative."

Part Four of My Battles with Emacs - Bicycle For Your Mind

It is not my fault. I blame Jack Baty for this. He goes on and on about how Org-mode has improved his sex life and given him purpose and direction. Okay, maybe he hasn’t quite said that. But he is enamored with it and I am curious to find out what he is on about.

I don’t know whether to say “You’re welcome” or “I’m sorry” 😁.

The new record from Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds is called "Wild God" and it's fantastic. Nick Cave in a good mood is a rare and wonderful thing.

I just want to write it down and find it later. Everything else is gravy.

I don't want to futz with things, but I still want the option to futz with things.

John P. Weiss quotes Jim Harrison: "A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms". It hits right where I'm feeling lately.

Obsidian is the WordPress of note-taking apps: Ubiquitous, powerful, extensible, complex, free (or not), a bit janky, and with a repetitive community of people seemingly desperate to become influencers. That last part might seem unfair, but I struggle to wade through the fluff while looking for good, honestly helpful information.

I'm kind of tired of blogging today. This has been happening pretty regularly lately.

OK, so Obsidian and I have never gotten along well. I know it's the 800-pound gorilla but it just doesn't click with me for some reason. After using SilverBullet for a while, I think I might know why. It's the file tree and sidebar. SilverBullet doesn't have one (by default) and so I spend no time "organizing" things. I just make a new note and move on. If I hide the sidebar in Obsidian as much as possible, could I make it feel the same?

OMG I'm absolutely catatonic about notes apps again. Playing with software is usually fun, but lately I've grown to loathe all of it.

We're all just looking for excuses to change apps, aren't we. We call them "reasons".

I have moods during which I'd like to cancel all of my subscriptions to everything. No more streaming services, no more fancy software, none of it. Then I review the list and find myself saying, "Well, of course I need that one!" for just about everything.

Nick Cave wrote that his notebooks are "...predominantly a collection of failed ideas." I'd be thrilled if that were the case with my notebooks, but I don't have any ideas.

Oooh, I can't wait to hear what all the newly-minted antitrust experts have to say 🙄.

I reached down to take the leash off Alice after our walk this morning and threw my back out so bad that I am having trouble walking or moving much at all. Great.

Update: Dave's doing the right thing. I need to lose at least 25 pounds but I've been doing nothing but adding them instead.

I remain infatuated with SilverBullet for many of my notes. One concern I have is that the forum is full of feature requests for things that would make SilverBullet work "more like Obsidian". That's the opposite of what I want.

Some mornings it seems like everything is broken. My computer is acting up. Currently, the worst of it is that DEVONthink is crashing and my database "cannot be repaired". Super fun. I went to the forums to look for an answer but the list of topics won't load for some reason. Oh, and a recent "brew upgrade" installed a version of Emacs that I'm not using and don't want. How's your morning?

The thing about building this blog with Tinderbox is that the whole thing is one nice, tidy outline. I can easily see the things I wrote previously. Or not, if I collapse the headings. Over on baty.net, I feel like earlier writing gets lost somehow. I don't know if this makes any sense, but it makes me want to do daily notes here.