~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Some design improvements here at baty.net - Baty.net

2026-04-13T15:58:11.000Z

Before and after

⚠ 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-muted and --font-size-md referenced 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  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/elif in 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.

✍️ Reply by email

What's scary about LLM use - Baty.net

2026-04-13T15:11:29.000Z

The thing that scares me about how good LLMs are getting, is that before long, everything is going to look good, and sound good. Everything will be well-written. The world is gonna be boring as hell.

✍️ Reply by email

Monday, April 13, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-13T11:39:10.000Z

Contact sheets (2026).

I used Kevin's Boring Weather app instead of my janky shell script for annotating today's image. It's 90% of what I need. I might beg for the remaing 10%.

I'm a little ashamed to admit that I may have finally done it. I've been using Obsidian for notes/planning for a couple of weeks and it's working really well. I don't love the UI or editing a lot of text there, but the tooling around it makes it quicker and easier to get to useful than Emacs and Org mode. For me, anyway. Although I'm writing this in Emacs, so I'm obviously still working through the details :).

I'm testing MacWhisper for dictation and translations. Sometimes I don't feel like typing. You're soaking in it.

I really need to clean up some of the typography and layout around here. It feels off in a bunch of small ways. Remember that time like a week ago when I completely rebuilt this blog and then stopped posting here? That was pretty much the definition of me.

✍️ Reply by email

Emacs: new modus-themes-exporter package live today @ 15:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-13T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

Today, the 13th of April 2026, at 15:00 Europe/Athens I will do a live stream in which I will develop the new modus-themes-exporter package for Emacs.

The idea for this package is based on an old experiment of mine: to get the palette of a Modus theme and “export” it to another file format for use in supported terminal emulators or, potentially, other applications.

My focus today will be on writing the core functionality and testing it with at least one target application.

Prior work of mine from my pre-Emacs days is the tempus-themes-generator, which was written in Bash: https://gitlab.com/protesilaos/tempus-themes-generator.

Sunday, April 12, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-12T11:40:38.000Z

Bamboo Sculpture (2026). Yashica-Mat LM / HP5

I guess I'm posting this here, today. The past few days have been all about Ghost over at Coping Mechanism so that's enough of that, right?

I don't suffer from burnout, but I might die from fizzle-out, though.

✍️ Reply by email

Ghost theme editor - Baty.net

2026-04-12T10:47:52.000Z

synapsmedia/ghost-theme-editor:

Edit theme files directly inside Ghost Admin with a completely client-side editor.

This solves a real problem with running a Ghost blog and just wanting to make a few little tweaks to the theme.

✍️ Reply by email

A lunch without alcohol - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-12T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal. I describe a small part of life in the mountains as well as my experience at an Easter celebration.

On Sundays it is common for people here to prepare souvla (barbecued meat on a long skewer), if the weather is good enough. Other dishes are also available, so there is something for everyone. Though meat is the main serving. Winter in the mountains is usually too cold or rainy for souvla. But the other months provide ample opportunities.

Today was one such day. I was invited to attend a lunch not too far from my house. Nominally, it was about celebrating Easter. Though in practice we were all there for the food and the companionship. Few ever bring up religious topics on such occasions.

There were lots of people present, all of which I have met before in other gatherings. Last time I was there all the people around me consumed vast quantities of alcohol. Beer, wine, zivania, and whiskey. I abstain from alcohol, though I never tell anyone in person why. When somebody asks if I want some, I simply respond with something like “no, I quit long ago—thank you!”.

What helps my case is that the tone of my voice and body language communicate an unequivocal view. This is basically the opposite of how a shy person responds, where they say one thing while they invite others to tease out something else.

People are respectful when you draw clear boundaries. Those who are not qualify as bullies, which you can then deal with more forcefully. That I do with alacrity. But in the vast majority of cases everybody means well.

When someone appears pushy yet has no obvious bad intention, it is because they get mixed signals from you. They will nudge you to answer affirmatively, perhaps by appealing to your sense of camaraderie: “here, have a shot in the name of our newfound friendship”. And if you do not know how to respond firmly, you will eventually yield, thus positively reinforcing the original push.

I do not talk about my life choices. I am not interested in converting anyone to my views and the manner of my living. Why I abstain from alcohol is my own business: in short, I prioritise longer-term health over scoring meaningless points at the lunch table. Plus, I am perfectly sociable without pampers. If others choose to consume it, I respect their choices. I was a bartender for many years, after all.

The table today had all the usual offerings of alcoholic beverage. There were bottles of wine, cans of beer, a freezer packed with zivania, and plenty of ice cubes for those who wanted to blend whiskey with cola. Some folks who were sitting further away from me were drinking as usual. Though those around me chose to abstain for once. Someone remarked that “we are already having a good time, we do not need the drinks”. I nodded without saying a word.

My lifestyle can be summed up as “do, not tell” or, better, “master it first, teach it afterwards”.. If I believe in something, I embed it in my activities. And if it is benign, then I am the embodiment of its efficacy. I do not need to preach what is obvious. Others will notice the effects and try the same. And if they do not discern the pattern, then they are not ready for it, anyway. I find talk that is devoid of action to be disempowering. It inevitably devolves into a vicious cycle of overthinking and attendant restlessness.

There are no deep conversations at such gatherings. Topics range from political commentary, to one’s adventures at the hunt, to matters of farming, to some construction work that is being planned. Whatever lacunae are filled in by blanket generalisations. You learn to not take anything seriously. It is innocuous chit-chat. Its function is to strengthen the sense of trust among those present. Anyone who has a strong urge to be pedantic will suffer at such an event.

Even though I am on good terms with everyone here, I do not have any friends. Nobody knows exactly what my interests are and how much in-depth I am willing to go in any given exchange. They have a vague sense of what I do, but are otherwise not curious to learn more. I have long accepted that my interests lead me down the path of loneliness. It is virtually impossible to meet like-minded people in a sparsely populated region. This is partly why I spend more time hiking than mingling with the locals.

I am also dismayed to observe, time and again, that the local communities are dying of old age. There are no young people here and no prospect of there being any in the foreseeable future. The women I met an aeon ago gave me lectures about baby machines and the familiar talking points. To think of the greatest power of all, to birth a new form of life, in such demeaning terms… I remained silent and left.

Millenials in my part of the world grew up with the promise of the comfortable life, having been fed the tale of inexorably expanding economic prosperity. Well, except those of us who were already poor—we were earmarked for the meat-grinder. When the 2008+ financial crisis hit them, they joined the various Occupy/Indignados movements to announce to the world how angry they were for not getting what they thought was their birthright.

We are still reeling from that crisis. It was, at its core, a dismantling of the underlying value system and the expectations that went along with it. Many of those people never moved on. They were broken and defeated; a “lost generation” as the media was correctly portraying it.

I am a man of action. With severely limited means, yes, but with the attitude to fight until the bitter end. I like to make things happen and get bored when thinking leads to nowhere. In this case, however, I have no solution. Maybe I have not been daring or creative enough in my approach, in which case I shall change my ways and try anew.

There goes another Easter - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-11T00:00:00.000Z

This is an entry from my journal.

The church bells were ringing in the distance. The first explosions echo in the valley. It is almost Easter in this part of the world. In about ten minutes there will be fireworks. I finished a long day’s work and then went for the nightly hike with my dogs. Walking with my canine friends is among my favourite activities.

The season is pleasant in secular terms. We are at the tail end of winter in the mountains. It is still cold during daytime, though it starts to get sunnier. The last heavy rainfall was on Thursday. Another is expected next week, as days become more dry. Flowers are popping up everywhere, while the grass reaches its maximum height at about half a metre tall. Most trees need a few more weeks to blossom. The oak trees take their turn fairly late at around May.

In religious terms, however, we are asked to go through induced grief. All around us there is life yet our mental state revolves around death. The week of Easter is about pretending to suffer along with Jesus. “Pretending” is the operative term. If you are actually suffering, you do not have to wait for this time of the year to go through the torment. And, conversely, if you are not suffering, then you likely have the luxury to put on a show.

Unlike Christmas, Easter has always had a more religious undertone in my experience. Christmas is practically not a religious period. There is the myth of the flying grandpa who brings gifts galore, trolls that seek to cut down the tree of life only to be lured away from their mischief by treats, and children going around the neighbourhood singing songs in exchange for pocket money. In short, it is whimsical and fun. I love it!

As for the religious story, it essentially is about a child being born. Every stable family considers that a gift from the heavens. Theodoros and all such variations (Diodoros, Diogenis, Herodotos, Apollodoros, etc.) are ancient names, after all, describing the newborn as a gift from a certain deity or the divine at-large. This goes back millennia. We do not need to search much further than the gratitude of the parents to appreciate the symbolism of baby Jesus.

By comparison, Easter is the reign of darkness. The social pressure to behave in certain ways is much more pronounced. It starts fourty days in advance and culminates on this day. There is increased church-going or, at least, exhortations to that effect, and the emphasis is on doctrine. There exists the Easter bunny and such lighthearted elements but their role is marginal. The focus is on propriety and the correctness of the creed.

It must be nice to be part of a group. To not push back and simply go with the rest. You always have friends and attend all the parties. I cannot be that person. I tried it once and it almost broke me. Part of my personality is to not give in to social pressure. If I do not feel a certain way, and if the matter affects me personally, I will not do it solely to please others.

Fundamentally, nobody has control over me. This goes back to when I was a child, though a more poignant example comes from my teenage years. All my friends and virtually every boy my age was a smoker. I did not try it once. Not even out of curiosity. My mates never attempted to pressure me into smoking because they knew it was a lost cause.

I am the same with the performative aspects of religiosity. I will not pretend to feel pain when I am not. I cannot act like I am suffering when I am feeling as energetic as ever. And, more importantly, I do not check the calendar to decide when to do what I consider right: I just do it without exceptions.

I am, nevertheless, considerate enough to not argue for the sake of arguing. Intellectual matters require a level of commitment to the topic that the vast majority of people do not have. For those cases, I remain silent, wish everybody all the best, and mind my business.

My attention is on the here-and-now. The temperatures will rise next week before dropping back to normal for the foreseeable future. I have lots of plans for my land and am confident that my hard work will be fruitful. The only pain I feel is the one I bring unto myself by committing many hours of my day to manual labour. I find it empowering to witness the compounding effects of my industry; to know that I can rely on the infrastructure I have set up and to continuously build on top of what I already did.

I have done so much already and am eager to continue with the same intensity. However, the rapidly deteriorating economic situation has hindered my house-related initiatives. I will not do anything here at least for another year or two. It is a pity, though I must wait for the next opportunity. Such is life. We deal with the circumstances as they evolve. Our duty, in the meantime, is to retain our vitality and be poised to act.

As for Easter, everybody will revert to business as usual within a few hours. We all know it is a shadow play of spirituality, yet find it expedient to act as if something grand is happening.

Frank Meeuwsen - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2026-04-10T11:00:00.000Z

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Frank Meeuwsen, whose blog can be found at blog.frankmeeuwsen.com.

Tired of RSS? Read this in your browser or sign up for the newsletter.

People and Blogs is supported by the "One a Month" club members.

If you enjoy P&B, consider becoming one for as little as 1 dollar a month.

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Frank. A somewhat older, beardy, less grumpy digital Gen-X'er from Utrecht, the Netherlands. Since October 2025 I've been self-employed. I work as a trainer/coach/writer on using AI in a creative and responsible way and I help knowledge workers with their digital awareness, digital skills and personal knowledge management.

My whole career has been online. Since I stumbled on this internet-thing in 1993, graduated in 1996 and joined one of the first free Internet Service Providers in the Netherlands. We would now call it a startup. Back then we were cowboys doing crazy stuff.

In 1997 I started at an internet agency with two of my close friends. I left in 2009 to become self-employed, had some incredible adventures as a freelancer at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, telecom companies, publishing houses. An IoT startup brought me back into agency life, went bust in 2019, and I ended up back at my old agency for 6 years. In October 2025 I went solo again.

I live in Utrecht with my lovely wife and two kids. We are obedient to the true master of our family, Bowie the cat. We spend time reading, watching movies, visiting concerts, going on walks, playing D&D as a family and mostly just chilling through our lives.

I recently became a member of the Metal Business Club. A business club for anyone who also likes their music loud. Which gives you an idea of my musical taste.

What's the story behind your blog?

In 2000 I stumbled upon a Dutch site from a guy who was just describing his day-to-day life. Sharing links, publishing short posts. I worked at an internet agency where we made our own CMS but I had never seen this thing called a blog. I clicked through on an orange button with the word Blogger on it, signed up, made my first post of a site I just visited... and that was that. I was hooked. Even though we made CMS systems for our clients, it hadn't occurred to me I could do this myself. I didn't need an editorial team, a studio, a radio tower. I could just... blog. I named my first blog Punkey, which was my nickname on IRC in the years before. And that's how it all started.

I fully engaged in the Dutch blogosphere. Since it was so small, we all got to know each other pretty fast, also because of the meetups we organized at least once every six months or so. I got active in a Dutch online magazine called about:blank, where we wrote about the Dutch blogscene. We also hosted weblogawards called the Dutch Bloggies.

In 2010 I wrote a book "Bloghelden" (Blog Heroes) about the history of the Dutch blogosphere. You can still read it for free online if your Dutch is OK.

My first blog Punkey.com lasted only five years, from July 2000 to July 2005. But after that I had plenty of other blogs:

Frank-ly (2002 - 2009) was the first agency blog in the Netherlands. I started it, left the agency in 2009, the blog continued without me. It's no longer live. What does live on is my infamous post from 2006 where I write off Twitter as a fad. One of my better mistakes.

Whatsthenextaction (2004-2008) was my English-language blog on Getting Things Done. A forerunner in what later became the productivity blogging industry. At some point it got picked up by CNN and Time Magazine. Web Archive Link.

Lifehacking (2007-2015) is the one that still stings a little. With a growing group of authors we put this term on the Dutch map. I tried to turn it into a sustainable online and offline publication. That didn't work out the way I wanted. In 2015 the site and all the posts passed to new ownership.

Digging the Digital (2014-2023) is the longest running blog I had. I changed the plumbing a few times (Ghost, Jekyll, WordPress) and it's the blog where I wrote a lot about the indieweb and owning your own platform.

Digging the Digital (2023 - present) Same name but a different URL. No more difficult titles (for now), just my name in the URL. Simple. WordPress became too heavy and too much for me. I wanted to get back to the basics of blogging, writing. Simple pieces of typing and not too difficult with themes, plugins and formatting. So I run everything on the great Micro.blog service.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

It is not a really strict set of rules I follow. Actually, it never was. I always have a swipe-file with ideas in Obsidian, I've collected through the years. But to be honest, that's a big pile of files I hardly look at. Since 2025 I use Sublime as an Idea Discovery Engine. Sublime is the lovechild of Pinterest and Obsidian. You can save links, texts, video, images, audio, podcast-snippets. Put them on a canvas, connect them, find related ideas from other Sublime users and mold your own thoughts. I love to use Sublime to find new ideas, connect them and use it as a jump-off point for my own writing.

Besides that, blogposts also appear when I just have a thought. Or something I see and want to respond to. So nothing fancy. Just writing.

Sometimes I have Claude Cowork interview me on a subject or idea and use Hex (open source speech to text tool) to talk it oud loud. The unfiltered mess that comes out goes into Obsidian, where I puzzle the pieces into an actual post. It's surprisingly effective for me.

I don't have AI write the post for me. I tried this in the past, it never worked out really well. The voice is off, the thinking isn't mine. AI helps me shape my thoughts, but I stay in the driver's seat to publish the finished post.

And then there's the post-publish ritual: Somewhere between 10 seconds and 10 hours later, I spot the typos. Every blogger does this. Don't let AI ruin that experience of post-publish-typo-spotting!

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I need it to be quiet. That's it. I need to focus on what I write and how the story evolves on screen. It doesn't matter if I'm in my studio, in the living room or somewhere in a coworking space. A physical space doen't influence my creativity. I've been blogging for so long, I don't need a specific creative environment to get me started. Just the energy, time and half of an idea.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?*

Right now, everything runs on Micro.blog. It's a Hugo based blog with some specifics for the Micro.blog service but that's it. Locally I use Obsidian to write, with the Micro.publish-plugin from Otávio. I also use Drafts for shorter posts sometimes, in which I use an action to publish directly on my site.

For images and screenshots, I use the Bulk MB Image Uploader MacOS Shortcut from Jarrod Blundy's Heydingus Shortcuts Library and tweaked it a bit. It's not a perfect setup but it works. I might vibecode a better setup in the near future with these building blocks. Maybe create my own editor with shortcuts and workflows that are tailored to my way of working.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I would definitely stay focused on one domain and one name. I've had so many different domain names for different types of blogs, because I thought I needed all these different platforms and focus. Sometimes it is useful, especially when I use blog software for commercial purposes. But my personal site, from the early 2000-days to now, I would try to keep it more focussed on the same domain. While changing weblog software on the background. You could say I'm Jack-Batying Light ;-) (all the love to Jack, he is pushing the possibilities of blogging software!)

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I only pay for my domains and hosting. I try to keep old domains as long as possible. The yearly costs of domains in total are €55. Micro.blog is $50 a year (€42). So give or take €100 a year. I don't create direct revenue from the blog. But because I've been around so long it gave me an extensive network of interesting people who want to work with me on digital fitness, AI and new technology. So there are indirect revenues, which I think is the best way in the long run. If people want to monetize their personal blog, go ahead! I don't mind you sell your zine, stickers, workshop and other stuff through your blog. Just don't put ads on them. Or do it the Dense Discovery way, with artisanal, value-aligned sponsors who fit in the format.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I am so happy to see a renaissance of the personal internet. New search engines, cross-overs to digital gardens and personal knowledge management. That said, let me first drop some bloggers who have been around as long as the web.

Dave Winer's Scripting.com, the OG. The Blogfather. Without him, blogging, RSS and podcasting would not be as open as it is today.
Ton Zijlstra's Interdependent Thoughts, my dear friend who did keep his domain and blogging setup going for all those years.
Peter Rukavina's blog, whose posts I love to read because of his stories on Prince Edwards Island, printing, art, his family and just... life!

Some others worth recommending

Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden, I love her style of writing, her thinking and her weeknotes.
Felienne Hermans, her published newsletter with critical notes on AI and education. Scroll down in an edition for the English version
Austin Kleon, his books, blog and newsletter are interconnected. I love how Kleon works and publishes.
Mike Sass, his Shellshark Scrolls are a weekly roundup at the intersection of the indieweb and the fediverse.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I have been quiet on my blog lately, something that happens to most of us. For me, it is because of work and a sideproject I'm working on. This is called CreativeNotes, in which I interview creative professionals in the Netherlands about how they use paper notes in their creative process. I'm exploring that pivotal moment when creatives consciously choose an analog tool over a screen. I want to document how paper notes not only help bring focus and flow, but often serve as the essential building blocks of the final creative product.

By collecting stories and notebook images from a wide range of creators, I'm looking for patterns in how ideas develop on paper. What I find may be useful for anyone who thinks for a living.

You can learn more about the project (in Dutch) here: https://notes.frankmeeuwsen.com/over-creativenotes

Keep exploring

Now that you're done reading the interview, go check the blog and subscribe to the RSS feed.

If you're looking for more content, go read one of the previous 136 interviews.

People and Blogs is possible because kind people support it.

Emacs modus-themes live stream today @ 14:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-10T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

At 14:00 Europe/Athens I will hold a live stream about Emacs. Specifically, I will work on my modus-themes package.

The idea is to write more tests and refine the relevant functions along the way.

I am announcing this -45 minutes before I go live. I will keep the chat open in case there are any questions.

Interpretation of “The Elves” by Socratis Malamas & Ioulia Karapataki - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-09T00:00:00.000Z

For this entry in the series, I have picked a beautiful song which evokes that curiosity we have about the otherworldly. The Elves is a song written and composed by the much-beloved Socratis Malamas. My favourite version is performed at a live concert together with Ioulia Karapataki: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU9UDuiqHOU.

Below are the original lyrics, my faithful translation of them, and further commentary on my part.

Τα Ξωτικά

Ερμηνεία:  Σωκράτης Μάλαμας & Ιουλία Καραπατάκη
Στίχοι:    Σωκράτης Μάλαμας
Μουσική:   Σωκράτης Μάλαμας


Σε ποια σκιά τα μάτια σου θολώνουν
Μικρό πουλί σ'αγάπησα πολύ
Τα βήματα στα κύματα βουλιάζουν
Να'σουν εδώ να σε βρει η ανατολή

Μέσα στα ρούχα μου σε κρύβω σαν φωτιά
Να'χουν να λεν πως δε σε γνώρισα ποτέ
Όνειρο είναι η ιστορία μας καρδιά μου
Τα ξωτικά γυρνούν τις νύχτες συντροφιά μου

Δωσ'μου το φως κι ας κάνω πως δεν είδα
Δώσ'μου νερό να σβήσω τα βαριά
Ό,τι έχει μείνει μέχρι εδώ απ'το κερί μου
είναι τα μάτια σου που καίνε σαν φωτιά

Μέσα στα ρούχα μου σε κρύβω σαν φωτιά
Να'χουν να λεν πως δε σε γνώρισα ποτέ
Όνειρο είναι η ιστορία μας καρδιά μου
Τα ξωτικά γυρνούν τις νύχτες συντροφιά μου

The Elves

Singer:  Socratis Malamas & Ioulia Karapataki
Lyrics:  Socratis Malamas
Music:   Socratis Malamas


Under which shade do your eyes blur
Little bird I loved you so much
The steps sink in the waves
I wish you were here to be found by dawn

In my clothes I keep you like fire
So that they may say that I never met you
Our story is a dream my heart
The elves roam around with me at night

Give me the light although I pretend not to see
Give me water to erase the heavy parts
Whatever remains here of my candle
are your eyes that burn like fire

In my clothes I keep you like fire
So that they may say that I never met you
Our story is a dream my heart
The elves roam around with me at night

At the surface level, this sounds like yet another love song. It is how I used to think of The Elves for the longest time. Though now I am of the view that there is an alternative explanation, the hint for which we already get from the title.

Elves are a figment of humanity’s artistic genius. As with all myths, they are a metaphor for phenomena we bear witness to. This one, in particular, pertains to experiences that are at once relatable yet decisively alien. We can recognise in them patterns that the human psyche resonates with while realising that they cannot fit into the narrow confines of our quotidian affairs.

One does not encounter the elves at their 9-5 job. No. What we do for a living is typically a matter of need. It has a logic of its own as we have to suppress at least some of our individuality or altogether sacrifice a part of who we are to the altars of expedience and necessity.

The elves are exotic creatures. They are found well beyond the milieux most of us operate in and seldom escape from. They inhabit ancient forests and pristine lands. These we describe as “nature”. Nature is always close to where we live. A short trip is enough to take us to the nearest grove, mountain, or water element, for example. Proximity, however, does not necessarily imply a connection of any meaningful depth.

People can be physically close to “nature” yet clearly beyond reach of it. This happens because we need time to get accustomed to the new realities. Humans are products of their environment. They cannot just switch contexts without requiring a period of adjustment. Life outside the bustling human world unfolds at a slower pace than what we are conditioned to accept as the baseline of interpersonal relations. The stimuli we get in the great outdoors are much more subtle. There are sounds and musicality all around, though they are subdued enough for us to get the initial impression that the place is eerily quiet.

Furthermore, we fail to have situational awareness whenever we turn inward and forget to come back out. This is our default modus operandi. It reduces us to androids; cogs in a society-wide machine. Much of what we do is to just get by. It happens mindlessly as we sink into routines and thinking patterns that we eventually take for granted.

The elf as an artistic device, then, reminds us that the magic all around us is accessible to all of us provided we change our ways. It does not matter that something is close. What is of import is to develop the capacity to appreciate it. This requires that we free up resources from cognitively burdensome but ultimately needless preoccupations.

With those granted, we can understand the lyrics of The Elves as an appreciation of nuance: to discern that which hides in the open. This is not a typical love song because there is no lover involved. In the first verse, the poetic “I” figure wishes that some abstract “you” were present, while walking alone along the beach (where waves would wash away all the footprints on the sand).

In the refrain we learn how knowledge of this seemingly dreamy otherworldliness is kept within. It is not materialised as a person, as the partner to love, but as the impersonal fire that fuels one’s actions. Others will never notice because they did not get out of their own inward-looking routines. Had they done so, they would have encountered the elves themselves.

Selfie: a casual afternoon - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-08T00:00:00.000Z

Selfie picture of me on a walk wearing sunglasses

Music, story(ies) - James' Coffee Blog

2026-04-08T00:00:00.000Z

I was inspired by, of all things, a video monologue by a Scottish surfer [1] who said that the future for them was challenging themselves in new ways. My guitar was close by and I thought maybe I should give myself a bit of a challenge too. I picked up my guitar and looked up a tutorial on how to do finger picking.

The first video I found was a bit challenging. I looked for another that was easier. The one I found was a tutorial showing how to play How did it end? by Taylor Swift, a song with one of her best – and dare I say most solemnly passionate – bridges. For the next fifteen minutes or so, I followed the tutorial dutifully, trying, making mistakes, and, along the way, hearing something that resembled the song. The more I practiced, the closer I was to the melody of the song. [2]

Earlier today I was doing a few creative writing exercises as part of an introduction to creative writing at school. Admittedly, the prospect of creative writing was a bit scary. I never knew where to begin. With all the possibilities, where should I start?

The exercises have surprised me in how approachable they are. One exercise involved making a character and writing a few bullet points about them based on a list of questions. The next step was to turn the bullet points into a paragraph or two of text. I was surprised by how much fun I had. The exercise wasn’t as scary as I thought. And I started to figure out how to bring in some of the elements of the introspective writing style I enjoy so much into a creative writing exercise. I could bring in part of me into a fictional character. I’m looking forward to the next exercises.

Meanwhile, this week I have been tinkering with a new design for my gallery page which lists a few paintings I like. One idea I want to explore is a layout that shows one image at a time, which would make it easier for viewers to focus on a painting. I also want to add in a little bit more metadata, such as a link to the original painting and, if applicable, a link to any blog post I have written on the painting.

I have also added a talks page to my website which lists several talks I have enjoyed. The list is far from comprehensive but I accept that as a limit. Like my gallery page, there is no way I could list all of the talks I have watched and enjoyed. But I can add a few that were especially memorable, and keep gardening it over time. Thus is the nature of having a website. If you make a talks page, let me know. I am always looking for more talks to watch.

[1]: h/t Joe for sharing the video today. I was mesmerised by how the surfer weaved through the waves.

[2]: Side note: I have really enjoyed playing the Out of the Woods x All You Had to Do Was Stay mashup. I did try to start making a web page that listed Eras Tour mashups I especially enjoyed, but with time I realised such a list would encompass every mashup and thus be more of an index. Now that I think more about it, it might be worth making that page nevertheless as a more direct means of accessing the recordings of mashups posted to YouTube. Every little web page can make a difference on this big World Wide Web.

Joe gallery page talks page Out of the Woods x All You Had to Do Was Stay video monologue by a Scottish surfer

Tuesday, April 7, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-07T10:46:29.000Z

Tongue (2026). Olympus OM-1n / Zuiko 85mm f/2

Now that I have the various post types sorted here, I'm pretty sure I can live without the daily blog. The wildcard now is Coping Mechanism. I like using Ghost. I like the ActivityPub integration, built-in comments, emails, and analytics. I even like the editor, most of the time. And I really like just dragging images into it. I'm not sure I want to give it up, but I'm even less sure that I want two blogs that do essentially the same things.

✍️ Reply by email

Poem: From the age of myth - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-07T00:00:00.000Z

From the age of myth
you arrive as thunder
and whispering fountain
As the vivifying warmth
of a luminous star
Intensity you are
of a special kind
that moves hearts
and reshapes the land
In the dragon's year
grey became blue
green turned to amber
Indeterminate
Captivating
Potent
Manifest you now make
the collective will
of the sages
in yet another
awakening

Monday, April 6, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-06T16:56:47.000Z

Sculpture in waiting room (2026). Olympus OM-1n. Zuiko 85mm f/2

I plan to avoid most news and all social media for a week. It's to the point where, between the daily barrage of horrible, incompetent people doing stupid, horrible things and the incessant misinformed chatter about all of it on social media, I'm going to lose my shit. I need a brief respite in order to reset.

Since I'm mostly only using macOS right now, I've punted on the NetNewsWire <--> Miniflux connection. There has been something off about it for a while. I've moved all my NNW feeds into the iCloud synced collection and it's working better.

✍️ Reply by email

2026 Roll 008 (Olympus OM-1n) - Baty.net

2026-04-06T16:35:08.000Z

Jane Bown is one of my favorite photographers. She commonly used an Olympus OM-1n with the Zuiko 85mm f/2 lens. I happen to have that exact setup, so I went Jane Bowning with a roll of HP5.

I'm no Jane Bown! As much as I love the viewfinder in the OM-1n, I could not seem to get a handle on focusing that lens. Nearly every frame was out of focus. To be fair, 85mm at f/2.0 or 2.8 doesn't leave much room for error, but still.

Mirror self-portrait

Shuffleboard table in waiting room

Sculpture in waiting room

Grandson showing off while I screwed up the photo

✍️ Reply by email

Alan Jacobs on the comment section - Baty.net

2026-04-06T13:48:05.000Z

Alan Jacobs on the Iron Laws of the Comment Section:

Those who have read and understood the post, whether they agree with it or not, will email you if they have something to say.

All of the rules sound right, but that last one nails it. It's one reason why I have a "Reply by email" link instead of comments.

Emacs live stream for writing Denote tests and more on Monday 6 April @ 20:00 Europe/Athens - Protesilaos Stavrou: Master feed with all updates

2026-04-06T00:00:00.000Z

[ The stream will be recorded. You can watch it later. ]

Tonight I will work on my denote package. There is a feature branch I implemented this morning and am now ready to continue refining the code. The immediate goals:

Update unit tests that are still calling deprecated functions.
Write new tests, starting with the denote-dired command and all its ancillary functions.
Review all the commands that filter the query buffers (which are produced by commands such as denote-grep, denote-backlinks, denote-query-contents-link).
Edit the manual accordingly.

I expect the stream to go on for 2-3 hours, but we will see.

I will keep the chat open in case there are any comments. I am happy to respond to them.

Sunday, April 5, 2026 - Baty.net

2026-04-05T16:50:41.000Z

Stella's Lounge (2015). Olympus Stylus Epic / Fuji Superia

"README-driven development" is a phrase Simon Willison used and it's kind of perfect.

I'll never understand why people get such a boner over ridiculing someone else's code. It's not a good look.