I have tried several alternative Dropbox clients and they’ve all failed. The latest was Insync. It behaves oddly, shows a bunch of folders that shouldn’t be there, and my messages to support have not been responded to. I run this blog using Blot, which relies on Dropbox. This meant I had to install the Dropbox app on my Mac. It’s even more gross than the last time I tried. I’m looking into migrating my Blot sync method to Google Drive instead.

I’ve hit another wall with Emacs this morning. I ran doom upgrade as I do several times each week, but after that Emacs wouldn’t launch and none of the doom commands would work either. I re-installed from scratch but it still failed unless I used a completely fresh and empty configuration. I don’t feel like dealing with this shit today, so I’m typing this in iA Writer, which always works.

Some days living in text files and a terminal feels like I’m working underground and I want to come out into the sunshine once in a while.

I am sitting in a lovely space surrounded by quality tools and expensive devices. I have no excuse for my lack of decent output.

The voices in my head, they don’t care what I do, they just want to argue the matter through and through.

Leonard Cohen

I want Ghost’s editor combined with WordPress’ ecosystem combined with Hugo’s hosting requirements.

September 25, 2022 Journal Reply by email

September 25, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Apple Studio Display

I splurged on a new Apple Studio Display for my home office. It’s only been 24 hours but I couldn’t be happier. I wish it wasn’t so expensive. Even the “base” model is too expensive. And no way I’m paying another $400 just so I can adjust the height. That pisses me off a little, but the display is gorgeous, so all is forgiven.

Here’s why I bought one:

• My 32-inch LG was too big. I know that sounds crazy, but too much screen real estate is a distraction for me.
• I wanted 5k. Whenever I switched between the (4k) LG and my internal Retina MacBook Pro monitor, the difference when reading text was pronounced. Moving to the internal Retina display felt like putting on glasses.
• I wanted built-in speakers and camera. I keep the MBP in clamshell mode, so I needed to have extra speakers on my desk and didn’t like the clutter.
• The hardware is beautiful. I stare at my monitor nearly all day, every day. The Studio Display is simply nicer looking than anything else I’ve seen. This alone doesn’t justify the purchase, but it sure helps.

I’ve taken the LG to my temporary office in our old building, so it’s not like it’s going to waste. The new Studio Display is a great upgrade, though.

Apple Studio Display in home office

September 24, 2022 Apple Hardware Reply by email

September 23, 2022 Journal Reply by email

I’m trying something with TiddlyWiki. My public wiki has over 3,000 entries. As much as I try keeping notes in my array of Org-mode files, I almost always find what I’m looking for in the wiki instead. I’ve also kept a local, private “Lab Notebook” wiki in TiddlyWiki. It competes with my Org-mode daybook and journals, though, so I’ve neglected it.

It occurred to me that I’ve enjoyed using TiddlyWiki for public notes. However, I can’t only keep a public wiki, because not everything belongs “out there”. Just most of everything. That’s where the Lab Notebook comes in.

For example, I recently sold my Leica M6. Here’s the wiki entry. I wanted to record that it was sold, so I did that. But, I also wanted to record who I sold it to and where I shipped it. Those details don’t belong on the public wiki, so now what?

I dusted off the Lab Notebook wiki and started making entries there again. This isn’t a “Zettelkasten” or anything fancy like that. It’s just a stream of entries for recording technical notes throughout the day, with some links between them. And it’s all in a single HTML file. But here’s the kicker. If I have a private note that I want public, I just drag and drop it from my private wiki to my public one. In TiddlyWiki, that means simply dragging any link to any note (aka “tiddler”) between wikis. That’s a super handy feature.

Even better, in the Arc browser I open a split window with both wikis. I can write in either of them, and quickly drag content between them. It looks like this:

TiddlyWikis

That’s it. That’s the entire UI in Arc.

As always, this is mostly an experiment. It means taking fewer notes in Emacs, and that rarely lasts. On the other hand, this is easier and prettier and I have the magic of TiddlyWiki to keep me interested. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

September 22, 2022 TiddlyWiki Notetaking Reply by email

I’m taking notes over on the wiki today. Things may be sparse over here for a minute.

September 22, 2022 Journal Reply by email

Yep, still thrilled with Blot.im for running this blog.

I have a lifetime subscription to Roon and it’s easily the best music player/streamer/library there is. The one big drawback with using Roon is that it only works on my local LAN. If I’m, say, in the car, I can’t listen to my Roon library or playlists, etc. Yesterday Roon 2.0 was released, and it solves this problem. There’s a new app, Arc, which connects to my Roon Core (running on an old Intel NUC) and lets me stream anywhere. So far it works great.

TiddlyWiki turned 18 years old this week. I wonder if we’ll be saying the same thing one day about Notion, Craft, Roam, etc. I have doubts.

September 21, 2022 Journal Reply by email

I use Notmuch in Emacs for managing my email. It’s fast, powerful, and (once used to it) easy to use.

There are a few oddities I’ve learned to work around. The first is with deleting messages. The manual for Notmuch states:

notmuch does not support, nor ever will, the deleting of messages

I’m ok with this, since Notmuch provides a way to essentially bury deleted messages using tags. I don’t necessarily need to actually delete the message file. Any message tagged with +deleted is hidden from searches unless explicitly included. Ignored tags are set in ~/.notmuch-config like so:

[search]
exclude_tags=deleted;trash;

This works fine, but the problem is that my new messages are also automatically tagged with +unread and +inbox, so in order to properly flag a message as deleted, I want those two tags removed as well. There seems to be no built-in way to do this. I found this odd, since there is notmuch-archive-tags, which lets me configure which tags are added or removed when archiving a message. Here’s my config for that:

(setq notmuch-archive-tags '("-inbox" "-unread" "+archived"))

There is no such configuration for deletion, so I made my own. To do this, I borrowed some code from Spacemacs and integrated into my Doom Emacs config.

(setq notmuch-message-deleted-tags '("+deleted" "-inbox" "-unread"))

(defun jab/notmuch-search-message-delete (go-next)
  "Delete message and select GO-NEXT message."
  (notmuch-search-tag notmuch-message-deleted-tags)
  (if (eq 'up go-next)
      (notmuch-search-previous-thread)
    (notmuch-search-next-thread)))

(defun jab/notmuch-search-message-delete-down ()
  "Delete a message and select the next message."
  (interactive)
  (jab/notmuch-search-message-delete 'down))

;; My own delete key
(map! :map notmuch-search-mode-map
        :n "D" #'jab/notmuch-search-message-delete-down)

Now, pressing “D” in any notmuch search buffer deletes the selected message and moves to the next one. This all seems like it should be built in, but if it is I couldn’t find it. If anyone knows a better way to handle this, please let me know.

September 21, 2022 Emacs Email Reply by email

How I spent my morning

Someone suggested, “Publish your thoughts, not your notes.” Also something about leaving it up to someone else to publish your notes after you’re dead. Which they’ll do, but only if your thoughts are worth it. This seems like good advice.

September 20, 2022 Journal Reply by email

1946 Leica IIIf (converted from IIIc)

If I’m not taking notes about the thing that I’m reading or watching, it’s only entertainment.

The draw of paper for me is twofold. First, it’s wonderfully, frustratingly immutable. Second, I firmly believe that writing by hand helps with recall.

How is it that I’m just now discovering Henry Wessel? Awesome work:

September 19, 2022 Journal Reply by email