For the few of you who’ve been following along, you’ll have noticed that I’ve changed blogging engines several times recently, even more frequently than my usual pace.

The most recent moves happened over just a few weeks. I went from WordPress to Blot to Hugo and back to WordPress. I wrote this about moving away from WordPress only two months ago:

Mostly, I switched because I don’t enjoy using WordPress. WordPress is powerful and easy and everywhere, but the editor is unpleasant and everything just feels heavy and overwrought. I also tire of plugins nagging me to “Upgrade to Premium!” all the time. I tell myself I can live with it, but in the end I never can.

It’s no different now. I am less than two days into using WordPress and I’m already frustrated. It’s so damn janky and the editor sucks hard. For example, if I select all the text in a block and cut it, only one character is actually deleted, but the whole block ends up in the clipboard. Similarly, after selecting text, hitting the delete key does nothing. It’s maddening.

What about Hugo, then? Hugo is a great SSG. It’s fast, capable, and mature. It’s also difficult (for me) to tweak. I find its go-based templating format to be unfathomable. Yesterday, I couldn’t figure out how to make “page bundles” with relative image paths work in the RSS feed. It’s death by 1,000 cuts.

In theory, both WordPress and Hugo are the best choices for me, depending on if I’m feeling like using easy or hard mode, respectively. But neither work in the long run. I’ve written all this down so many times, but I never listen.

So, after re-reading Blot is just right, I feel like I was right. I looked at the old blot site and the way it looks appeals to me. It’s simple. It’s calm. I like it. I moved to Hugo because I was in one of my moods where I want to be in total control over everything. With Blot, the biggest thing I lose is that I can’t touch the rendered site. But, I have all of my content locally, so what’s the big deal, really?

I’ll miss built-in comment and analytics, the easy management of images, and the infinite supply of plugins. I won’t miss the janky editor, the heavy rendered pages, or plugins constantly upselling themselves.

Stand by while I re-do everything. Again.

June 7, 2023 Blogging Workflow Blot WordPress Reply by email

I seem to be at sea when it comes to just about everything lately. It’s fun trying new apps for notes or photos or whatever and it’s fun to start anew with a different blogging engine. But it’s also cover for a general lack of direction. It’s a stand-in for progress.

When I was debugging some issues while moving the blog yesterday, I noticed that everything I needed to know could be found in the wiki. That’s the universe telling me where to put things. But will I listen?

Yeah, I’m probably going to have to install the developer betas.

June 7, 2023 Journal Reply by email

June 7, 2023 Reply by email

Day 2 of my week long experiment using Obsidian for writing notes and blog posts. I still don’t like it. And yet I’m spending plenty of time farting around with themes and such, so at least it feels familiar 😁.

I just noticed that my posts’ images aren’t showing in the RSS feeds because I’m using Hugo’s page bundles which I guess generate relative links. My old theme handled this properly, but PaperMod doesn’t. Also, cover images aren’t included in the feed. I swear I’m going to end up back in WordPress if this keeps up.

2 hours later: I pulled the plug and moved the blog back to WordPress. I hate myself now, but less than I did this morning.

June 6, 2023 Journal Reply by email

I don’t like Obsidian, and yet here I am typing this post using it with a new vault containing the entire Hugo tree.

Why? I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been having this feeling lately of being “trapped” in Emacs and Org-mode. I mean, Org is useless outside of Emacs, and all of my notes are in Org-mode format. Org files are plain text, too, but they’re pretty ugly and noisy when viewed in any other editor. I don’t know, it’s been making me twitchy, so I fired up a new Obsidian vault. Markdown is everywhere.

After moving my blog back to Hugo recently, and dusting off my ox-hugo config, I’ve been writing blog posts using Org, too. It’s so cool to have one big Org outline and kick off properly-formatted Markdown files from each heading. Except when something weird happens. Then I start wondering why I’m writing in one plain text format just so I can immediately convert into a different plain text format. Seems kind of…unnecessary.

There’s no denying that Obsidian can do nearly anything. Plugins are plentiful and easy to use. Beats the hell out of adding package configuration and then copying and pasting 30 lines of Lisp just to get something to behave properly. I had the Templater plugin generating front matter for Hugo posts in about 10 minutes. Compare that with the hours and hours I spent trying to get YASnippet to do basically the same thing in Emacs. And heaven forbid I need to tweak it.

So here I am, dipping my toes back into the Obsidan waters. Maybe it’ll stick this time. I’m going to run with it for a week and see if I can find a rhythm that doesn’t suck. I have two vaults. One is for PKM-type stuff. And the second is for Hugo. Wish me luck. I already miss Emacs. Maybe I’ll end up back in Emacs and just change my default Denote filetype to Markdown instead.

June 5, 2023 Workflow Obsidian Notetaking Reply by email

Spending my days far away from the incessant chattering of social media has been a welcome step in the right direction. I miss many of the people there, but I am convinced that the gains made around my mental well-being has made it worth the losses.

If Hugo theme developers would standardize the way featured images work, life would be easier for me. Or at least changing themes would be easier.

Yesterday I decided to move my PKM into TheBrain because TheBrain does a good job of letting me see connections and related thoughts. This morning, I gave up on that and went back to Emacs because I’m already sick of having to find the “right” place to put everything. It’s all so familiar. I wonder what tomorrow will bring

June 4, 2023 Journal Reply by email

It’s time to give up on playing video games. It’s not that I waste time playing games, it’s that I waste time trying (and failing) to enjoy playing games. Everyone loves games, so I figure I should too. But I don’t.

I buy every new gaming system that looks fun. Then I read all the reviews on Metacritic and listen to friends rave about the latest Zelda or whatever. Well then, I think, if it’s that good then I should play it! I buy the game, play it for an hour, become frustrated or bored, and never look at it again. This happens every time.

Yesterday, I received a physical copy of “Disco Elysium — The Final Cut” for the Switch, based on many reviews and a recommendation. I played it for less than 20 minutes before becoming bored and knowing I’d never finish it.

I feel like I’m missing out on something great, but at some point I have to admit to myself that I’m just not that into video games and that I should stop trying so hard.

June 3, 2023 Life Reply by email

I am quite enjoying Mimestream for managing email. It’s fast, looks nice, and feels good to use. However, there is one thing I miss and one thing that irritates me.

The thing I miss is smart mailboxes. I want, at minimum, a smart mailbox for “Unread”. Smart mailboxes are on the roadmap, at least.

The thing that irritates me is that when I process (Archive/Delete) a message, the message immediately below is then selected. I process my email from oldest to newest, so, from the bottom up. There’s no option to sort messages showing oldest first. I scroll down and start reading unread messages and when I hit Delete, the next older message is selected. I’ve already dealt with that one, so I’d prefer if the next newer message was selected. I either need to start at the top (newest), which I don’t want, or I have to click/move up a message every time. Drives me nuts.

Otherwise, I like Mimestream enough that I think I’ll pay for a year during the discount offer.

June 2, 2023 Software Email Reply by email

Memorial Day with family with the Leica MP, 50mm Summilux, and a roll of HP5.

June 2, 2023 Photography Leica Film Reply by email

In another example of solving a problem I don’t have, I’m testing the Mimestream email client for Gmail. I’m a sucker for new ways to use email, and also for rave reviews, so I’ve made a few changes to my email setup in order to test Mimestream.

The “problem” for me is that Mimestream is currently only a wrapper for the Gmail API. It doesn’t do IMAP, so in order to test it, I have to use my Gmail account. Since I don’t get email to that account, I am forwarding my Fastmail email to Gmail. I’m using Fastmail’s SMTP service to send from Gmail so that my From: address remains jack@baty.net.

So far, I like Mimestream. It’s got that clean, fast, fully macOS feel that I love. I don’t receive enough email to merit spending an extra $50/year on a subscription, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. I like nice things, and Mimestream is a nice thing.

May 30, 2023 Email Software Reply by email