Some days I wonder if I'm reaching that age where the world is moving faster than I am willing to travel. How long before I don't have the energy to keep up?
It seems as if everyone is either wildly desperate for AI to succeed or absolutely convinced it will fail. I don't understand why more people aren't simply curious and following along.
If a company decides that it prefers to have people come into the office to do some or most of their work, that is a reasonable decision to make. If, as a result, quality people don't want to work there, that is also a reasonable decision. We keep pretending that one or the other is correct for all cases and that's simply not true. We act as if every person can handle remote work. Or that they can't. It depends, right?
While many wring their hands and whine about the failures of AI, millions are using it every day to do all sorts of useful, real-world tasks. They're just doing it instead of over-thinking it. I find myself in both camps.
I know, I'll run about a dozen queries in ChatGPT and then write about my wide-ranging, conclusive proof of whatever I wanted to be true about it in the first place.
I came this close to moving this blog back to Eleventy. I'm deep into Emacs this week, which means I want to write everything there. I started copying recent posts from Tinderbox and after about 10 minutes realized that I've got a pretty good thing going with Tinderbox and I should leave well enough alone. So, for now, š!
I have anxiety around watching people who might suddenly embarrass themselves in front of a crowd, so I am unable to watch awards shows. I'm pretty happy with the set of Oscar winners, but can understand how some might not be. I've avoided social media since Sunday because I don't need to hear all the bitching about why the Oscars are terrible, stupid, biased, and wrong. I'm spending my mental energy celebrating the winners.
I went to bed late, so when I woke up and looked at my Apple Watch I
was pretty excited that Alice had slept until nearly 5:00 am before
begging to go for a walk. Then I glanced at my (analog) wall clock and
realized the time had changed.
Iām realizing that I never think about my single-user Mastodon
instance at Masto.host. This is great, but I also notice that I donāt
ever want to think about it. Considering a low crawl back to
Fosstodon.
If your only moderation rule is: ā1. Must Possess a Sense of Humorā
it tells me that thereās a good chance that the youāre a jerk that
doesnāt like it when people react poorly to the stupid/offensive things
you say. Just me?
Ten years ago, Steven Johnson wrote The
Spark File, in which he describes his process for keeping track of
hunches, ideas, etc. in a single text file.
I, of course, thought this was a great idea and immediately started
keeping my own spark file. It began in 2012 and I was reasonably
consistent with it until 2016. After that, there was a lull, but it
picked up a again for a short time in 2021, after which I sort of forgot
about it.
I ran into the file today and reviewing it has been quite a trip. The
short version is that Iāve only done a few of the things Iād written
down. This is fine, since many of them are things Iām either no longer
interested in or were too ambitious anyway. I have, since I last
checked, completed a few of them. Crossing them off the list was fun.
There are others that are still good ideas and that I may pursue.
Since the file is an org-mode file, Iāve added a capture template to
my Emacs config that lets me quickly capture new entries. Now I just
need some hunches or ideas to capture.
Iām experimenting with using Markdown as markup for my Tinderbox
posts. Tinderbox has some support for Markdown, even though the note
editor is always using rich text āin the backgroundā. The trick is to
create a prototype based on the built-in Markdown prototype and make a
few tweaks specific to the way I work. For example, my prototype uses a
monospaced font and pandoc for
rendering. This post is the first to attempt it. Just for fun, letās add
an image using Markdown formatting1
Alice. (Leica MP/HP5)
A nice side effect of using Pandoc is that images like the above are
automatically rendered as figure elements, with a figcaption generated
from the Alt text. Itās handy.
Each new day I reset everything and begin again, from scratch. At
least thatās what it feels like. I throw away the things I learned
yesterday and try something else. Can you imagine how far along Iād be
today if I hadnāt been doing that all this time?
For example, Iām writing this post in Tinderbox because this morning
thatās where I feel like writing blog posts. Yesterday, I felt like
using Drummer for a while, then I was back to Emacs for the
afternoon.
I also spent hours yesterday learning some new Tinderbox tricks. Iāve
been using Tinderbox on and off for like 15 years now. What if there
were no āoffā periods? Can you imagine how good at it I would be? Iād be
holding classes.
Itās the same with Emacs. Iām going on, what, 10 years in Emacs?
Youād think Iād be good at it. Iām not, because I keep trying to quit
using it for some reason. Why? Because maybe Obsidian would work better
for me?
Last week, I would have hand-written this post first in my notebook.
The week before that, on a typewriter. Or maybe the iPad.
Every time I reset and say, āTHIS is how Iām doing it from
now on!ā I lose hours or days of progress. I donāt know how to stop.
I like rubber bands, push pins, paper clips, and pencils and paper. They all work on their own with no help from other tools (maybe the need for a sharpener disqualifies the pencil, but I'll still allow it). I dislike staples because they require a stapler, need a second tool to remove them, and cause ugly, irreversible damage to paper.
Sometimes I'm reading the Tinderbox forums and just have to stop and marvel at how ridiculously clever it can be. A simple example of how to automatically link based on tags. Oh and I'm also always impressed by how ridiculously clever Tinderbox users can be.
I have Tinderbox configured so that each individual entry here is a new node, where the text becomes the post. This means that each node needs a name/title. With short-form posts, like this one, naming them becomes tedious. It's friction I don't enjoy. On the plus side, each node then also stands on its own in, say, the Archives.
I've written 3 daily notes today, on three different blogs. You'd think that I only had two blogs, baty.net and daily.baty.net, but NO!, I have baty.net and three different versions of daily.baty.net that I constantly waffle about.
What if I just automatically add a default title to each post using the current time? Nice to not come up with titles for everything. Then, on the Archives page, I could add an excerpt of the first, say 10 words to the listing. (UPDATE: Done).
A roll of 35mm film is in the scanner. So far, the images from the roll are boring, mediocre snapshots. But, the fact that they are boring, mediocre film snapshots makes them worth the effort.
I came close today, once again, to moving this blog back to either Drummer or Eleventy. I didn't have a good enough reason, so we're still here. For now.
I don't know how to limit the things I pay attention to. My days are filled with seeing a link on Reddit or whatever and thinking "Oooh! I want to try that!" and then losing a day or three tinkering and then never looking at it again.
I'm enjoying one of those days during which I try to decide, once and for all, whether I will be using Denote or Org-roam for my notes. And by "enjoying" I mean "suffering through". I like aspects of both of them enough that it's preventing me from committing to either of them "forever".
Hard rain mixed with snow during my 3:45 am walk with Alice this morning. We cut things short because it was rather unpleasant. She's now curled up on a blanket on the sofa while I wander the internet looking for something to distract me from doing my taxes.
I continue to struggle with deciding what to post here and what to post over on the main blog. At this point I'm basically just choosing one at random. That's probably fine.
I'm still undecided between Tinderbox and Eleventy for this blog. Tinderbox is currently the front-runner, but I can't seem to convince myself that it makes sense long term. I've had a good day in Tinderbox, so right now I feel like it's exactly what I need. But I've also had fun in Emacs today and want to standardize on it as my authoring tool. So, stay tuned, I guess.