There won't be much time for farting around today and I'm already feeling twitchy about it.
People who can do stuff like this are not the same species of human as me. Redbull downhill urban biking POV
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]]>Paul Ford is always so impressive and smart and sensible. I love reading and listening to him.
]]>my hunch is that we should prepare ourselves for way, way too many apps.
It's already happening, and that's just the ones I make for myself.
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I was able to prove my ownership of a copy of DaVinci Resolve Studio so they finally sent my activation code. That was A Whole Thing, but B&H and Black Magic came through. Now to properly test the new RAW editing features in v21.
I thought I would get along fine with Ubuntu, but I've found it unreliable on my Framework 13. Same with Mint. Anyway, I'm back to Fedora/KDE, which I've come to prefer anyway.
I should probably write a long, excuse-riddled blog post about it, but I have been committed to using Obsidian on macOS for nearly a month. Thing is, I have not been able to let go of either Emacs or Linux. I can't quit them. Using macOS again has been nice. It has the software I love and, Tahoe aside, the macOS is great. What's weird is that I prefer using the Framework 13 instead of the M4 MacBook Air, so I tend to grab that when away from my desk. The final straw has been that Linux doesn't (by default) use Emacs key bindings system-wide, like macOS does. I can't live like that, so I dragged Emacs along and here I am, writing this post using Emacs on Linux.
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I am rebuilding the old jackbaty.com. I've been hand-editing the HTML but I think I'll go back to using Markdown and building using Pandoc. I'm updating the Leica timeline to make it easier to update. I'll cleanup up old attempts and abandoned ideas.
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Drew Truslove uses a dip pen and ink to create intricate portraits and landscape drawings. I don't understand how the mind of someone who can do this works. It's amazing.
(via Dense Discovery #385)
]]>After a while I forget that I had problems with Fish and decide to bring it back. I did that today, after ending up neck-deep in my .oh-my-zsh configuration. Fish does nearly everything I need right out of the box: really good completion, directory jumping (via cdh), abbreviations, etc. No plugins necessary.
One issue I've had is that I'd change my login shell to Fish and that can cause trouble. Instead, I added a line to my Ghostty config...
command = /opt/homebrew/bin/fish
This way, the login shell remains zsh but in Ghostty it's fish. So far it feels nice and clean.
]]>Magic Postcard allows you, the sender, to attach a piece of media — photo or video — that your recipient can view immediately upon delivery. It works with any phone that can scan a QR code; it requires no special app or account.
Robin Sloan is kind of my hero.
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I was reminded today by a mention in the JTR interview at People And Blogs that I've been neglecting daily.baty.net ever since I rebuilt this one. This is not a surprise to anyone, but I feel badly about leaving things hanging like that.
Being snarky is lazy and you should avoid doing it.
Hoping the slight changes to <hr> elements within posts and the dividers between posts helps when scanning the page. They were so similar before that I didn't bother with separators within posts, but I didn't like the way different topics within a daily post look all smooshed together without them.
eBook readers should not have touch screens.
I've been alternating between 1Password and Apple Passwords and you can probably guess what the problem with that is.
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A beautiful and functional email client for your terminal, built with Go and the charming Bubble Tea TUI library. Never leave your command line to check your inbox or send an email again!
I'm a sucker for anything TUI. Matcha was easy enough to install and configure, but it doesn't feel ready quite yet. Something to keep an eye on if you're looking for a terminal-based email client. I'll stick with Mutt or Aerc for now, though.
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There are a lot of things I should be doing today, but I don't feel like doing any of them.
Speaking of not feeling like doing something. Taxes are due today. I have a service take care of the heavy lifting, which is great. All I needed to do was write checks, put them in envelopes, and get them to the post office in time. I owed much more than expected, and the 2026 estimates are shocking. I felt blindsided, but looking through the documents I can see why. Then, while putting the paperwork away, I noticed that the copy of the check (yes, I still send them checks) was missing the dollar amount. I wrote the long form, just not the number in the box. That's going to come back and bite me. Time for some bourbon.
I just noticed that I forgot to annotate today's image. It's fine. Day's nearly over, anyway.
]]>I’ve been vibe-coding proofs of concepts at work to help things along. I’ve never thought harder or more densely and to less effect.
I also have been vibe-coding a bunch of little utilites and whatnot. It can be exhilerating or exhausting, depending on the day. Most days it's both.
]]>Installing Linux on an old Thinkpad is “middle aged dad decides to get fit by doing toe touches in his boxers” except you don’t get disgusted & give up. Instead you blog about how awesome it is until it’s not and then you stop blogging for six months in hopes everyone forgets.
That's not me. At all. Nope.
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I can't find my activation code for Davinci Resolve Studio and I'm furious with myself about it. I tried the new v21 beta with built-in RAW photo editing. It's a bit primitive now, but it will improve. If I were primarily a videographer, this would be a welcome addition. Also, it's one more option for photo editing on Linux, which is nice.
]]>SilverBullet+ is a knowledge management platform (fancy term for a “notes app on steroids”) built on markdown files. It combines a live-preview editor with wiki-style linking, a built-in database and query language, and a fully integrated Lua scripting environment — turning your notes into a programmable system that grows with you. It is private by default: your data lives on your machine as plain markdown files, always portable, always yours.
SilverBullet is cool, and turning it into an app makes it more accessible to people who don't want to self-host a web app.
]]>This little bit of news is going to be a huge moment in digital photography, and another blow to Adobe.
Davinci is powerful and complex to learn. I think this will make it unwieldy for MOST photographers.
Pretty cool, but if I wanted to use something complex and unwieldy to edit photos, I already have Darktable. What slice of the market would use this? I can't imagine it being more than a sliver. You know I'll try it anyway.
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⚠ Content warning I talk about using AI to do stuff in this post. I know some of you want nothing to do with that. The parts actually written by AI are indicated.
I worked with Claude Code, using the amazing Impeccable skills, to clean up the layout and typography here. We spent about an hour and a half and I'm pleased with the results. Things are cleaner and more consistent.
After asking Impeccable for a /critique, it presented a list of issues and suggestions. We spent a few rounds reviewing and trying things. Claude would edit templates and CSS on the fly and I'd watch the (11ty) page reload and update in real time. Impeccable is geared specifically toward design. It's "Design fluency for AI harnesses".
I found the entire process to be a delight. I was giddy at times. It makes me feel like I can do anything.
Here's what it came up with (copied and pasted as is). It's long, but damn:
Claude Code's critique...
Design Health Score
- Visibility of System Status (Score: 3)
Pagination state is clear; nothing else needed - Match System / Real World (Score: 2)
"Permalink #" is developer-speak; content types not visually distinct - User Control and Freedom (Score: 3)
RSS, search, pagination all present - Consistency and Standards (Score: 2)
--color-mutedand--font-size-mdreferenced but undefined; cover images lose styling outside.post-body - Error Prevention (Score: 3)
Static blog, minimal to prevent - Recognition Rather Than Recall (Score: 2)
Notes look like broken posts, not a distinct type - Flexibility and Efficiency (Score: 2)
Welcome block repeated on every page-1 visit for returning readers - Aesthetic and Minimalist Design (Score: 2)
Welcome header competes with content; uniform card treatment flattens everything - Error Recovery (Score: 3)
N/A mostly - Help and Documentation (Score: 3)
Social links and bio help new visitors
Anti-Patterns Verdict
Not AI slop. The page is clean and doesn't trigger the obvious AI tells — no gradient text, no glassmorphism, no hero metrics, no glowing dark cards. The problem is the opposite: too generic in the direction of "blog template" rather than a specific design with personality.
Automated scan flagged one issue — "single font family" — which is a false positive. It analyzed the .njk files, saw only Hanken Grotesk referenced explicitly, and missed that Vollkorn is applied via CSS classes. Both fonts are active.
Overall Impression
The page does what it needs to do, but it makes no choices about how the three content types feel differently from one another. Posts, journal entries, and notes all render in the same container with the same spacing and the same treatment. That works structurally, but misses the character of each type. The biggest win available here is giving notes especially a visual identity that's distinct from posts.
What's Working
- The excerpt pattern. Using
<!-- more -->to let the author control what shows in the feed is smart and produces a natural-feeling stream, not a wall of truncated cards. - Post meta. Date + tags at the top of each card is clean and well-weighted — it doesn't compete with the title.
- Content routing. The three-way
if/elif/elifin the template is handled correctly, including suppressing note titles on the feed. Good information architecture underneath.
/ end of Claude Code's critique
Then it listed what needed fixing and how we'd fix it. We decided to do the following:
- Welcome header: removed entirely
- Social links: relocated to footer (permanent, visible on all pages)
- Footer: restructured to 3-column layout (copyright / social icons / nav links)
- Notes: compact card — smaller meta (0.72rem, 70% opacity), smaller body (font-size-sm), narrower measure (52ch), tighter separator (space-md vs space-xl)
I mean, there's no way I could do this on my own. I wouldn't even try. And I would not have hired a professional to do it. It's just my blog. The world is different now. It's equal parts exhilerating and scary.
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