~hedy's blogroll - BlogFlock

Tuesday, July 8, 2025 - Baty.net

2025-07-08T22:37:20.000Z

I had a few chores and appointments today, but I still found time to think about how I might do things differently. Then I did some things differently. Then I went back to how I did things before.

I'm thinking I can only trust the people I met online before, say, mid-2024 or so. Unless of course I don't care if they're actually human or not.

The bookmark - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-08T22:08:00.000Z

This week my edition of the good internet magazine arrived, a fantastic web-focused print publication. I am delighted to hold stories of the web in my hands; this web we weave is real. The edition has been sitting on my coffee table since it arrived, enticing me with stories like Falling in love with the internet again and The web we lost was here all along. This evening I sat and read the first two articles: both wonderful. I learned a lot from the first, and saw myself a lot in the second. I look forward to reading more.

After having finished, I sought a bookmark to hold my place. I am hopeless with bookmarks: I always lose them. This evening, I decided to make one. I looked around and saw my memo pad from which I tore a piece of paper and wrote “A bookmark :)”. I placed my made-by-hand (with affection) bookmark on the last page I read: ready for when I next want to lose myself for an hour in thoughtful stories about and of the web.

A little TUI for updating exif data in photos - Baty.net

2025-07-08T10:24:09.000Z

I like having Make and Model information available in film scans. I use exiftool for this. Even though I wrote a couple of lisp function in Emacs for this, sometimes I want to do it from a terminal instead.

So I asked Claude for help. The result was camera-exif-tui. It’s a tiny Go app that launches a TUI that allows me to select a make/model and a folder full of image files. It calls exiftool and updates the images with the selected camera info.

There’s a cameras.yaml file in ~/.config/camera-exif-tui/cameras.yaml with my cameras configured.

cameras:
  # Leica Cameras
  - make: Leica
    model: MP
  - make: Leica
    model: SL2
  - make: Leica
    model: M3

  # Nikon Cameras
  - make: Nikon
    model: FM2n
  - make: Nikon
    model: FE2
  - make: Nikon
    model: F100

  # Olympus Cameras
  - make: Olympus
    model: OM-1n
  - make: Olympus
    model: OM-2n
  - make: Olympus
    model: Stylus Epic

  # Hasselblad Cameras
  - make: Hasselblad
    model: 500C/M

  # Rolleiflex Cameras
  - make: Rolleiflex
    model: 2.8D

These quick, handy little scripts are ideal for AI. People seem to ignore this when railing against LLM use. The whole thing, including writing the README file and setting up the git repo took less than an hour. I would never have bothered with this without something like Claude. It was fun! I don’t want to learn the details of Golang, but I’m happy to tweak whatever Claude spits out. Now I have something that I wouldn’t have had before, and it was easy to do. I don’t care if it’s “correct” or not. It works for me.

Monday, July 7, 2025 - Baty.net

2025-07-08T10:00:22.000Z

Ghost is nice, but it still makes me feel like I’m living in someone else’s space. There’s a sort of background hum of “this isn’t really yours”, and it bothers me. I haven’t decided yet if it bothers me enough to do anything about, though.

The July experiment: week one - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-07-07T09:35:00.000Z

I decided to write the updates for July's experiment on a Monday this way I always have the full previous week's worth of data to discuss. The goal for this month is to fix the muscle memory my brain has built over time that makes me reach for my phone even if I don’t have any reason to do so. The plan was to leave the phone in my bedroom, next to the meditation cushion and only pick it up if I had to go outside. The target was < 1 hour a day of phone screen time.

After one week I can say that I set a goal that’s almost impossible to achieve—for reasons I’ll get into in a bit—but that this challenge is also way too easy. Easy to the point I had to tweak it already. But let me first give you some data. Screen Time on my iPhone is reporting conflicting numbers because what I see reported as total doesn’t match the sum of the various categories in the breakdown. I’m gonna list both numbers, just for the sake of completeness.

Monday    : 2:33 (2:07)
Tuesday   : 1:44 (1:12)
Wednesday : 1:22 (0:49)
Thursday  : 1:50 (1:24)
Friday    : 1:30 (0:57)
Saturday  : 1:31 (1:07)
Sunday    : 2:19 (1:56)

These are the reported totals for each day and in parentheses I added the sum of the breakdown inside the various categories. I suspect Screen Time is including the time I’m doing meditation in the total even though the screen is not actually on—and I have my eyes closed most of the time anyway—which is why the first number is consistently higher than the second one. So I’ll focus on the second number.

As you can see, two out of the seven days I did manage to stay below 1h, a few times I was close and Monday and Sunday I was way over. To be fair to me, Monday wasn’t even July and Sunday was my birthday and I spent some extra time replying to people who wrote to wish me happy birthday so it was not a normal day.

You might be wondering why I said that getting sub 1 hour a day is almost impossible since I can clearly do it and this is why: I use Telegram to stay in touch with my significant other. Every morning I spend some time chatting with her before she starts her work day and we do the same late in the day. Those two moments alone are often almost an hour combined. Which means to stay sub 1 hour a day I’d have to either cut those moments short—and I have no interest in doing that—or I’d have to not use my phone and go use my Mac which is frankly an idiotic thing to do. Telegram—and to a lesser degree Apple Messages—are always the two most-used apps on my phone. As an example, let’s pick Thursday. 1h and 24 minutes of actual usage: that’s 84 minutes. Out of those 84 minutes, I have 44 on Telegram, 28 on Messages. That’s 72 minutes right there. That means that I used my phone for a grand total of 10 minutes that day for literally everything else.

Now, Telegram usage might be high. But I know for a fact that the reason why it's high is because I am not currently living with my partner. And I say that I know it for a fact because when we are together, telegram usage drops to almost zero. And so I consider that a non-issue.

Ok, that was the almost impossible part of the experiment but how about the “way too easy” part? Well, the plan was to leave the phone in my bedroom, on the floor, in an attempt to fix the muscle memory. The problem with that plan is that it makes fighting against that automatic behaviour way way too easy. Because I’m not an addict. I’m not going to stand up and go in the other room to check my phone. That’s just not going to happen. And so it became an “out of sight, out of mind” type of situation. It felt strange the first two days and by the third one, I was already leaving the house without my phone. But again, that is not a challenge to the automatic behaviour because I can’t fight against the urge to pick the phone up if the phone is not there. Which is why by Thursday I decided to make it harder and I’m now carrying the phone with me. I pick it up, I lay it face down on the table or on the desk and I carry on with my life. But it’s right there, I can reach it if I wanted to and that makes it at least a tiny bit harder because my brain does have that option.

But to be honest with you, I don’t think it will make much of a difference. I think next week’s numbers are gonna be pretty much the same, probably lower. I might have overestimated the effect of this issue on my life or maybe I have underestimated my ability to deal with it. That said, I do plan to carry on with this setup for the rest of the month and I’ll keep posting weekly updates because it’s fun.

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 - Baty.net

2025-07-06T13:08:14.000Z

Polaroids taped to my wall

I'd much rather look at these janky Polaroids on my wall than any too-perfect-super-sharp-high-megapixel digital image.

The Clear theme I'm using right now in Ghost is quite nice. Also, much like nearly every other Ghost theme I've looked at, it's a little boring. One could easily mistake it for a Substack site, or any given WordPress theme. This bugs me a little.

A gift to myself - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-07-06T10:30:00.000Z

According to my mother, I was birthed into this world late in the morning, on the 6th day of July in the year 1989 (a small part of me is bummed that I didn’t arrive into this world at precisely 10:11 am). That means today is my 36th birthday.

Contrary to other people, I never cared about posting something on July 6th here on the blog. Since 2017, the year I stared this blog, I only posted twice on July 6th: back in 2018 I wrote a blog post about typography and spacing in CSS—something I have to revisit considering my approach has changed quite a bit—and last year I posted a picture from my weekend getaway. In that post, I wrote:

There will be a time to share and elaborate on all the mental struggles and the inner difficulties. But that day is not today.

Well, that day could be any day, so it might as well be today. I am currently sitting at my desk, typing this blog post. I won’t spend a weekend away this year to celebrate my birthday. In fact, I’m not celebrating my birthday at all. For reasons unclear to me, thinking about my 36th birthday has put me in weird moods over the past week or so which is probably why I don’t feel like celebrating.

That said, I did spend some time thinking about gifts. And more specifically, what I should gift to myself. I found that to be a fun mental exercise. Like many people—most people?—I do have things I want. Some are things I want but can’t afford to buy as a present to myself: a house, a piece of forest. Those will have to wait.

Then I have other things that I could buy and are currently saved in a wishlist. And yet none of those items felt like an appropriate gift to myself this year. Ultimately, the answer to the gift question came to me while sitting in meditation. There are two things I should gift myself: kindness and time.

I am very self-judgmental and there are many, many aspects of who I am that I don’t enjoy. I look at myself and all I see are the failures and shortcomings. I see the things I didn’t manage to do. I see the things I did poorly. I see the times I disappointed others. I see the times I let others down. I see my inability to take proper care of my body. I see my inability to take things seriously.

I see many things that I don’t like. And I judge. Judging is what I do when it comes to myself. That is something I’m apparently very good at. I know it’s bad. I know it doesn’t improve the situation. And yet I still do it.

But that is why I want to gift myself those two things. I want to gift myself the same kindness I’m usually capable of extending to others, because deep down I know I deserve it. And I want to gift myself the time to change things, without putting needless pressure on myself. Because I’m not already 36. I am just 36.

My current life experiments are all focused on the mind but I noticed that I’m very unhappy with my body, for a variety of reasons. But unlike my mind, I know that is not something I can fix quickly. Which is why I’m gifting myself time, in addition to kindness. Time to do things properly, time to take care of myself. I’m going to gift myself one year to turn things around and I can wait to write about this again on July 6th, 2026.

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Rewiring the brain - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-07-05T18:05:00.000Z

It’s been almost a week since my June experiment ended and I’m starting to notice some interesting and unexpected long-lasting effects. I’m saying unexpected because this was not some crazy long experiment—28 days doesn’t seem like a lot to me—and yet it was apparently long enough to cause some rewiring in my brain.

In June I didn’t read news of any type. And even though we’re now in July, my brain has no interest in staying up to date with, well, basically anything. Not world news, not local news, not even tech news. I’m not actively avoiding them like I was doing in June—if someone sends me an article I read it—but I’m not actively seeking them. Which is interesting. Especially for tech news that is more on the entertainment side of things compared to world news.

Let’s digress a moment briefly to discuss the privilege of not reading news. I understand the sentiment behind the whole idea that having the choice of ignoring the news is a privilege. Part of me even agrees with it. At the same time though I also know that I have one and only one life to live and there’s no good reason to make myself needlessly miserable. The only outcome is that I become crankier and angrier with the world and I’m a worse version of myself for the people around me. So yes, it is a privilege, and I’m taking full advantage of it because the alternative is actually worse.

My brain has also stopped searching for audio content. I’m not missing podcasts one bit, precisely zero times I felt the need to reinstall my podcast player app. The other day while scrolling through the thousands of entries that had accumulated in my RSS reader during my digital fasting I stumbled upon a link to Matt Mullenweg’s interview on Decoder. This is obviously content that’s very close to my interests and so I said to myself “Let’s give this one a listen”.

As per my self-imposed rule, I stopped what I was doing and decided to do some stretching for my back while I was listening. I think I lasted around 10 minutes before getting incredibly bored. Hearing them talking did nothing for my brain and so I hit stop and got back to work.

And it’s not just podcasts. I’m typing this and there’s no music in the background. To give you some context, my Spotify Wrapped of 2024 reported 94108 minutes of music and 49832 minutes of podcasts (and I was also using Casts as well to listen to a bunch more). Now I’m working with no music in the background, I’m driving with no music, I’m not even listening to music while I’m downstairs cooking. This is so incredibly interesting to me.

It’s interesting because I’m now wondering what other things in my brain I can rewrite this easily. Because this was not hard to do. And maybe it’s because my brain was already primed by my weird lifestyle or maybe it’s because I’m also now meditating 35 to 50 minutes a day. And it’s possible that this is just a temporary effect. Still, I find this development fascinating especially because I’m conducting my July experiment—not going to tell you how that is going—and I’m wondering what else I can experiment with. If you have ideas let me know.

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Evening - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-04T20:09:00.000Z

Looking around in thought, I notice one of the trees outside is swaying from the wind. It has been a bit cooler in the latter half of the week — most welcome after the warm weather of late. There are a few raindrops on the window from when the rain was falling earlier, but are only noticeable if you look from one perspective.

I have been listening to the sounds of the trees a lot lately. In summer, I can keep my windows open more, amplifying the sound of Nature outside. I hear birds singing; the occasional car passes by. One day earlier this week during a spell of rain, I thought about how soothing the sound was (and, in hindsight, I find myself reflecting on delight of able to stay indoors while the rain passed).

I have been playing piano this evening, focused on songs I have not yet played. Sometimes I sit at my piano and feel like I need to challenge myself; to try something new. I think about the songs I have been listening to lately, or favourites that have been on my mind. Can I play this on piano?, I ask myself. I mentally filter some songs that would be hard. Then I try to play one.

This evening I tried playing Birdy’s cover of Skinny Love by Bon Iver. I found the melody, but I anticipate many more practice sessions before I find a good rhythm.

Skinny Love is one of those songs that are sung with such passion you can feel it. I hope one day I can sing.

I got a new pair of jeans today. They are light blue. I spent some time earlier today trying them on, then decided to wear them for the rest of the day. I’m hoping to pair them with a white t-shirt. I will need to iron one. I tried on a flannel shirt which worked with the outfit. There are surely many more combinations I can try; many more outfits to try. I am excited to see what works. To explore my style.

Impressions of Be Kind When You Can by Eliza Cook - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-04T17:08:00.000Z

Jo and I are doing a poetry exchange collaboration. We have each selected a poem for each other that we have never read, about which we will share our impressions. Below are my impressions from reading the poem Jo selected for me to read and write about You can read Jo’s entry on her website.

Be kind when you can, though the kindness be little,

‘Tis small letters make up philosophers’ scrolls;

The crystal of Happiness, vivid and brittle,

Can seldom be cut into very large bowls.

Reads the opening lines of Eliza Cook’s poem “Be Kind When You Can“, written in the 1864. The poem is about the impact of small acts of kindness, and, as the first stanza notes, how these small acts build up.

This poem resonates deeply with me, for small acts of kindness have brought immesurable joy to my days. Whether someone holds a door open, helps someone out, asks a kind question, remembers a detail from a previous conversation – all these acts leave me with a feeling of joy. Every act of kindness matters, and its impact radiates in its environment.

The poem builds on the idea of small acts of kindness making a big difference through repetition of the idea in different words. In the second stanza, Cook shares four examples of small things that build up to bigger things:

Tis atoms that dwell in the measureless mountain,

‘Tis moments that sum up the century’s flight;

‘Tis but drops that unite in Niagara’s fountain,

‘Tis rays, single rays, from the harvest-sun light.

When I read this stanza, I imagine the drops of water in a waterfall; I think about the days when you can see individual beams of light peeking through the clouds.

Later in the poem, Cook notes the “word or a glance which we give “without thinking” // May shadow or lighten some sensitive breast;”, which alludes to how the things that we think are insignificant can be important; how the kind word may brighten someone’s mood.

In the last stanza, Cook says “Don’t wait for the larger expressions of Love;” I think this lesson can be applied to more than just kindness: don’t wait for the big things. Life is made up of so many small moments; the serendipitious conversations that one has each day, the times that make us laugh, the times when we realise that we are excited by something new. To focus only on the big changes leaves out the moments in between where so much of life happens.

Source: https://books.google.de/books/about/New_Echoes.html?id=DUQXuVzNx3sC. Thank you to Jo for helping me find the exact date!

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It’s possible, maybe useful; but is it necessary? - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-04T15:28:00.000Z

When I started visiting art galleries, I would take pictures of the placards of pieces of work I liked. I would take pictures of the art, too; just enough so that I could map the placard to the painting. I wanted to document the art I really liked; to be able to go back and remember paintings that I really enjoyed.

After one trip to a gallery, I looked back at my photos and didn’t do much else. I made a text list of the paintings but didn’t go back to them.

In hindsight, the experience of visiting the gallery was much more significant to me; of seeing the paintings in person, of wandering through new-to-me and familiar styles of art; of walking into a room and one painting catching my eye. With time, I found myself recognising styles of some artists I liked a bit; I remembered more facts about their art practice.

Now, I rarely take photos of paintings in galleries. I much prefer to read the placards and wander around in the real world.

This experience has me thinking about the role of technology in our lives. It’s possible for me to take pictures of art, and to recognise them with my phone. It’s maybe even useful, too. But is it necessary? I think I’d much rather do a tour of an art gallery and get up close with pieces and to learn as I go. To the extent I can keep my phone in my pocket during the gallery experience, the better, I think. ¹

On reflection, the aforementioned philosophy influences how I am designing technology too. It’s possible for Artemis, my web reader, to show pictures; there could be a picture mode that lets you see photos published by your friends. It may even be useful! But is it necessary for me given how I want to experience the technology? Is there an alternate solution? The solution I have now is to show alt text in my reader, which is something I don’t think I would have arrived at if I had stuck with the paradigm of a photo-based reader.

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Keyboards and mice - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-04T14:19:00.000Z

My wrists have been a bit tense lately so I have decided to try to use my desk more. I had grown comfortable sitting in my armchair using my computer but, if I am to be using my computer several hours per day, perhaps I need a more ergonomic setup.

This week I have changed to using a vertical mouse and ergonomic keyboard, and going back to using an external display. The keyboard and mouse should help me rest my writsts, and the display should help me keep my back straighter. In addition, I finally stopped procrastinating and swapped to use the standing desk that I finished building last year and ended up using as a bookshelf.

On the first day of using the vertical mouse, I almost knocked it off the desk several times; it is taller than any other mouse I have used. With that said, it feels more comfortable than the trackpad. I can rest my wrist and it’s hard to angle my wrist in the myriad ways one might using a trackpad. I’m now almost knocking my mouse off my desk many fewer times than when I began. Progress!

The keyboard, a Logitech “wave” keyboard with a macOS layout, was not as different as I thought it was going to be. I was expecting a keyboard that may drastically reduce the rate at which I type, but this is not the case. I am still able to type fast. I am making more typos than usual, but the keys are in slightly different positions after all. I don’t touch-type; I am unsure how to describe my typing style, although I just realised that I rarely use my pinky finger to type. I hope the way I type is compatible with this keyboard long-term.

Using a different setup, I have come to realise how much I relied on various features of the trackpad on my computer. I haven’t figured out how to zoom like I did with my track-pad, and I can no longer swipe to change screens like I used to. I’m sure I will pick up some tricks over time. I seldom use any more than the most common keyboard shortcuts; perhaps this is the time to learn one or two more.

Having a wrist rest on the keyboard is game-changing. My wrists have something to rest on! This is definitely more comfortable.

As for the standing desk, I have been trying to use it in standing mode for the first 30 minutes to an hour of the day, then I go back to sitting. This is the time during which I usually have my first cup of coffee. I can drink my coffee and get started with the day. I have not yet tried to write a blog post while standing. That could be interesting. Would I be as productive? My aspiration is not to stand all day so much as to have the option to stand and to spend a bit less time sitting every day.

Notes from the world, part two - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-04T13:08:00.000Z

When I am out and about, I like to take notes when something makes me wonder, smile, or otherwise makes me think.

Here are a few notes I have taken over the last few weeks.

“How did you find out about us?”; “the internet,” I say. The clerk responds, playfully, “sometimes it can be useful!”

From a conversation I had purchasing tickets at a museum.

“What do you stand for?”

Is written in bold, colourful text in a museum exhibit.

The words of “Ain’t it fun“ by Paramore are sang by a talented singer on a downtown street.

I later write:

The narrow walkways; the brick buildings; the restaurants and cafes — all catch the eye but what really brings elation is all the people; the people make the city alive, as the Shakespeare quote in the restaurant said.

On another day:

“Creative people need time to do nothing.”

Reads the shirt of someone walking by.

In a park:

Sounds: teams cheering at each other are playing baseball; birds singing.

A tote bag reads: before coffee, I am 17% alive, with a cute illustrated cat.

I appreciate the pride love hearts on the train.

Duplication - Baty.net

2025-07-04T11:40:11.000Z

For posting to baty.net, I first create the post as a Markdown file in Emacs for the Hugo version of the blog. Which, as of today, I’m not even using. Then, I copy the rendered post from a browser and paste it into a new post in Ghost’s control panel for publishing.

I tell myself that this is so I have a local, plain-text copy of my posts. While this is true, it’s also so that I have a Hugo-ready copy of everything, for when I inevitably switch back to Hugo from Ghost.

Another case of duplication involves photos. I edit photos using Capture One, where I use “Sessions” rather than their catalogs. For my main catalog, I’ve been relying on Apple Photos. Whenever I finish editing photos, I export a copy to Photos. As a result, I have many photos—some, not all—stored in two places. I don’t see a way around this duplication, as I prefer not to use Lightroom, and Capture One’s cataloging features are lacking.

For personal journaling, I’ve used Org-journal in Emacs for years. However, there’s nothing like Day One for dealing with photos, geolocation, and resurfacing past entries with the “On This Day” feature. Plus, mobile.

So I’ve continued using Org-journal, but at the end of each month, I import the entries into Day One.

What else? Oh, right, speaking of journaling, I try to write in my paper notebooks every day. This is like meditation for me, and I adore having the handwritten artifacts. Except I’d like certain things to be easily searchable, so I rewrite(type) those entries into Org-journal. So yeah, now there’s 3 versions of some stuff.

Anyway, I don’t know if there’s anything I want or need to do about all this, it’s just something I noticed.

P&B: Nick Simson - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-07-04T11:00:00.000Z

This is the 97th edition of People and Blogs, the series where I ask interesting people to talk about themselves and their blogs. Today we have Nick Simson and his blog, nicksimson.com

To follow this series subscribe to the newsletter. A new interview will land in your inbox every Friday. Not a fan of newsletters? No problem! You can read the interviews here on the blog or you can subscribe to the RSS feed.

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

Hello! I’m Nick, a graphic/interaction designer and blogger. I currently live in Albuquerque, a desert city in the Southwestern United States. I’m married to a visual artist and together we are raising a preschooler and a small dog.

I grew up in Upstate New York as a bit of a misfit creative kid. I spent hours by myself in my room every day, messing around on a Commodore 64 and drawing my own comics. My parents bestowed two incredible gifts to me in my youth: an electric guitar and amp when I turned 13, and dial-up internet.

Somehow I attended university on an academic scholarship, and declared a major in graphic design (actually, it was called “visual communication” back then). I started working as a graphic and web designer at another state university in 2011. I owe so much of my career to that first web manager who sent me a link to Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design article and said “your job is to help us figure this stuff out.” 14 years later, I am working somewhere else, but still figuring stuff out.

Outside of work, I am trying to get better at guitar. My wife plays violin, and we have a few people here in Albuquerque we like to play music with. I also enjoy following sports, especially New York Mets baseball and New York Liberty basketball right now. My other teams are the Bills, the Knicks, and the Sabres. If anyone knows of a professional ⚽ club that can break my heart in equal measure, let me know.

What's the story behind your blog?

A requirement for graduating with my degree was to turn in a website version of my design portfolio. So I registered the domain name nicksimson.com in February 2008 and went to work.

V1: A graphic design portfolio of student work. Hosted website builder tool Squarespace also has a little blogging feature. I make a “News” section. A recession happens and I do not generate much “news.” I carry this website around with me for a few years, picking up a little freelance work here and there. I eventually get hired in an entry-level staff designer role.

V2: Imposter syndrome! I’m embarrassed by my XHTML squarespace site and all my earnest blog posts. I replace the site with a proper HTML5 responsive one-page lander (no blog) while I hit the books, learning to be a proper Web Designer.

V3: I fork a Jekyll template in 2014 and make it my own, hosting a site for free on GitHub Pages. I am following people like Jen Simmons and Brad Frost, and want to share all the cool webby stuff I’m learning on the job. The blog goes dormant again between 2016 and 2020.

V4: I’m stuck at home, due to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic, and decide to rebuild my blog, this time with Eleventy and Netlify. I start attending Homebrew Website Club meetings and meet a bunch of other web builders and bloggers. I grow tired of Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads, and try out Micro.blog as a replacement to these things. Now I’m maintaining two blogs.

V5: I use WordPress to tie my microblogging and long form blogging all under one roof. I am all in on the Block Editor and full-site editing. I install most of the IndieWeb plugins. My blog is connected to the Fediverse and the social web.

V6 (current version): The WordPress founder and project lead sues the company hosting my website. I question how much of my future I want tied up in this software. I simplify things a bit: back to static site generation, back to Netlify. I also disconnect from a number of social media platforms.

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

The need to blog comes from a desire to share. I have two types of entries on my blog: notes, which are around 300-500 characters, and posts, which are usually longer and have a title. My notes are often links or quotes I want to share, and sometimes fleeting thoughts or jokes. Posts take me longer to write and publish, which is why there may only be one or two per month.

If I see something on the web I want to bookmark on my blog, for example, I will start a new markdown document in VSCode and use a YAML front matter tag of “Bookmarks” Since its all done manually, I have to remember to put my tags in alphabetical order. I use tags pretty liberally on my blog, and they do help me find and reference my older stuff.

When I get an idea for a new post, I start a new note in Apple Notes, where it might start out as a bulleted list outline and get refined over time. This allows me to start typing out a post on my phone in bed, or on the go, and iCloud sync lets it appear on my laptop where I can polish things up. Apple Notes is not a Markdown editor and the autocorrect feature is quite annoying. I should probably look into Obsidian or something to upgrade my workflow.

Everything happens in one draft usually. When I feel like a post is ready in Apple Notes, I copy and paste the plain, unformatted text into VSCode and use Markdown or HTML to format things, add hyperlinks, etc. I proof read in the browser (localhost) before I publish. I don’t use AI tools to write and I don’t have a human editor besides me. The best tip I ever heard for bloggers is to “write the way you speak.” I really aim for plain language but I have my own idiosyncrasies, like heavy use of ellipsis (…) or using words like “idiosyncrasies”.

Often I get inspired to write a response to something I’ve read, or something that happened in daily life. While my blog is very much a journal, I'm careful to make sure details I’m sharing publicly are just about me. I try not to write about stuff from my job or publish photos of my kid’s face. Sometimes I participate in writing challenges. In February 2024 I wrote about type every day of the month, and that series is still one of the most popular things I’ve done with my blog.

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

I am lucky enough to have a home office—a spare bedroom in our home that I work out of. I’m able to justify this since I have a remote job during the week. Having a dumpy little room with easy access to one’s books and guitars and trinkets is a joy and a privilege I want more people to have.

Physical space totally influences creativity: I spent years of my life working in a windowless basement room with a leaky ceiling at the “deferred maintenance” corner of our university campus. It was quite challenging to come up with creative concepts and solve other people’s problems when you have the background noise of water slowly dripping into a bucket or a car hitting a speed bump directly over your head because someone decided to build offices into the same level as a parking garage and put you in the middle of it.

I was blown away by my own productivity once I started working at home. I now sit in front of a window that lets in just enough light and has a great view of my apricot tree and the Sandia Mountains all year long. I can close the door and put up a 'do not disturb' sign while I’m taking a call. My office is where I get most my work done, but I do enjoy moving my laptop into our dining area, or on the couch with my stinky dog to surf the web and work on my blog.

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

The whole website is a static site programmed and generated with Origami, an open source project run by Jan Miksovsky. Jan was incredibly generous with his time, helping me set up the site exactly the way I wanted it to work, and giving me the room to start learning the language in the process.

My blog is a collection of markdown files in a Git repository. There’s no CMS. I have a local version of my site on my computer and when I commit a change to GitHub, Netlify builds the site and deploys a new version. For a taste of how Origami works, you can check out this file, called site.ori. It's the nucleus of my website: There’s RSS and JSON feeds in there, markdown to HTML, and a directory of slash pages. If you’re familiar with NodeJS or running npm commands, or using a static site generator like Eleventy, you can probably figure out what’s going on under the hood.

My domain is registered through Namecheap, but I use Netlify for DNS. The only other dependency besides Origami is a JavaScript-powered search library called PageFind. Contact forms are also Netlify, with Akismet for spam protection. I’m also exploring adding map images to geolocated posts with the MapBox API.

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

The web is this inherently noisy, chaotic place. Trying to tame it into a genteel, country club atmosphere never works out well either. I wish I learned this lesson much earlier and wasted less time in various walled gardens and silos that only looked nice on the outside. I’m so much happier on my front porch on my little block of our noisy digital neighborhood.

That said, writing on your own website can get a bit lonely. Ever since reading Leon’s "Blogging collectively" post from last year, I have a desire to invite a few others into my world and make something new, like a collaborative bloggy zine.

As far as platforms are concerned, I only trust systems that let you easily import and export your content, and don’t add a bunch of junk to your markup, so you can move around easily. I’ve been so fickle with my tech choices over the years that I’ve repeatedly broken links and feeds on the various versions of my site. There is such an art to good URL design.

I don’t know if I would register a .com again when so many expressive alternatives exist today.

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?

My domain name is registered through Namecheap, where the price of a .com is already up to $17 USD a year, plus the ICANN fee. For email I pay $6 +sales tax each month for a Google Workspace account, which I’m not proud of, but it does a decent job of filtering out guest post inquiries and SEO services spam. My setup with Netlify is simple enough that I do not need to pay for hosting, but I feel like I should pay the company something, so I started using their basic server-side project analytics for $9 a month.

I used to pay a lot more for managed WordPress hosting, and put a support this website link in my footer back then, with links to my Bookshop.org affiliate store and ko-fi profile. I just added a simple membership tier and I’m in the process of designing some fun stickers to sell through a ko-fi shop. I know very well that the tens of dollars I could earn each year won’t replace income from my day job, but it goes a way toward covering my various costs, or could even help me fund future side projects.

I do take issue with others monetizing their personal blogs, since they are my competition and this is a zero-sum game. 😜

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

So I have a lot of people and blogs listed on my /following page, several who have been featured on People and Blogs before. I tried to check out the P&B archives and come up with some names and blogs that haven’t seen featured here before:

Susan Jean Robertson is not on any social media; just her wonderful blog where she shares her reading and the things that she makes with her own two hands.
Mandy Brown has two great blogs: A Working Library is about reading and work; and Everything Changes is about… work and reading. Mandy is an essential voice in the blogosphere.
artlung.com: Joe embraces the “share what you know” ethos of the early web more than anyone else in my RSS reader.
LMNT.me: an entertaining and creative blog by digital artist Louie Mantia.
fromjason.xyz: Great writing and a blog design I’m insanely jealous of.
livelaugh.blog: The funniest and most creative approach I’ve seen to “weeknotes”.
thisdaysportion.com: I don’t know Leon personally, but I learn so much from the links he shares.

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

If anyone out there seriously wants to dip their toe into HTML and CSS, check out the website piccalil.li. They publish so much helpful free content and a couple of paid courses, too. I keep this one bookmarked, mostly because I can’t spell Piccalilli.

Check out Mike Aparicio’s wonderful Dogs of Dev to meet the canine companions helping out your favorite web developers each day.

You can check out my wife’s artwork at eleanoraldrich.com. I put her site together years ago, and it probably needs a redesign, but she does a great job keeping it all up to date.

I also built theordinarythings.com for my favorite Albuquerque-based band. My pal Jackie and her group have already written and recorded four albums worth of material. Selfishly, I want to make more websites like this one in the future, so get in touch if you want/need a decent website to show off your music.

Finally, I didn’t make circlejerk.blog, but I enjoy reading this machine-generated satire of some myopic tech bro takes.

This was the 97th edition of People and Blogs. Hope you enjoyed this interview with Nick. Make sure to follow his blog (RSS) and get in touch with him if you have any questions.

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 - Baty.net

2025-07-02T19:17:29.000Z

Our power was out for a couple of hours this afternoon. It was wonderful. I happily finished my chores and even read a book on the deck for a while. I've said this before, but if we could have a couple of hours of scheduled (or even unscheduled) power outages every week or two, I'd get stuff done. Or at least stuff would get done without complaint.

Artemis Changelog #6 - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-02T14:54:00.000Z

Artemis, the calm web reader I maintain, has a few new features. Below is a summary.

You can now use break mode, holiday mode, and night mode to pause your feed.
Catch-up mode lets you review posts published in a specified number of days grouped by author.
You can show up to 30 days of posts on your main feed, up from 15. This is configurable in your account settings.
The settings page has been split up into several sub-pages. All sub-pages are accessible from the sidebar navigation on your account settings page.
- Login-related settings (i.e. change your password, enable two-factor authentication) are now on the Login Settings sub-page.
- Developer-related settings (i.e. your API key) are now on the Developer Settings sub-page.
- Keyword filters are now on the Keyword Filters sub-page in your settings.
Substack feeds are working again.
The private API that lets users retrieve posts from their feed as JSON is working again.

2025 Roll 33 (Stylus Epic/HP5) - Baty.net

2025-07-02T14:00:10.000Z

The Olympus Stylus Epic has a great 35mm lens, onboard flash, a spot meter, and it fits nicely in my pocket. I paid $79 for it brand new in 2004, and I've certainly gotten my money's worth.

Designing calm software with breaks in mind - James' Coffee Blog

2025-07-02T13:20:00.000Z

I refer to Artemis as a “calm web reader”. I have designed the software to avoid common triggers that cause people to periodically check a piece of software. There are no notifications. All post titles are on one page; there are no folders. There is a “read” state, but this status is indicated by whether or not you clicked a link. Link colour changes for read links is a behaviour sufficiently common in browsers that this functionality feels like it’s in the background rather than a state to manage (in contrast to an email inbox where “read” is a state where you can toggle between).

Because one’s Artemis feed may update daily with new links, I have been thinking about what a piece of software designed with breaks in mind looks like. There are many reasons why someone may take a break from the software. The user may be on holiday; they may be studying; they may be going through a life happens moment; they may just want some time away from following the blogs. Whatever the reason, with this in mind I have to ask: what, if anything, can Artemis do to design with this behaviour in mind?

I have been thinking about the idea of breaks from three perspectives:

A user may want to take a break, and the software should facilitate this;
When a user returns from a break, they may want to catch up, and;
A break may be prolonged over a period of days, or be scheduled at a particular time (i.e. to prefer not to read after a certain time in the evening).

These led me to develop three features:

Holiday and break mode.
A catch-up mode.
Night mode.

Holiday and break mode

The holiday and break mode disable your reader interface until you disable each mode. You can still manage your Artemis account. This is intentional because I realised that I may find a cool website I may want to subscribe to while also wanting to pause my feed for a while.

Both modes do exactly the same thing: the reading interface is disabled until you exit each mode. The difference is that holiday mode shows a different message to the user than break mode. I figured customising a bit for both use cases would be ideal.

Here is what holiday mode looks like:

The holiday mode message reads:

🌴

Your Artemis reader is paused.

Enjoy your time away!

You can disable holiday mode at any time.

Disable holiday mode [link] Close Artemis [link]

Here is what break mode looks like:

The break mode message reads:

🧇

Your Artemis reader is paused for a break.

You can disable break mode at any time.

Disable break mode [link] Close Artemis [link]

The “Close Artemis” links take the user to the blank about:blank browser page.

Notably, both modes have a button to disable the mode on the user’s home page. When clicked, the button disables holiday or break mode. The reason for this is that I don’t like using modes that fully restrict my use of software. I may be on holiday but want to read Artemis because, for example, I have a few hours on a train that I want to spend reading blogs.

Catch-up mode

I am back from a break where I mostly skimmed my reader rather than actively reading posts. The prospect of reviewing my reader in reverse chronological order to read posts was a bit daunting; there would be many days to look through. This made me think: what would a specific “catch-up” mode look like that helps me review all the posts in my reader?

I thought about a web page where posts are grouped by author, and sorted alphabetically by author name. I could then skim through the list with the context of everything each author has published over the specified time frame, rather than seeing posts by each author split up by publication date as is the case in the reverse chronological feed.

Catch-up mode is designed with the philosophy that catching up with posts published over several days (or weeks) is a discrete action from checking in on your web reader.

Here is what catch-up mode looks like:

You can specify the number of days over which to catch up, too.

When you disable holiday or break mode, you are asked whether you want to enter catch-up mode.

Night mode

I sometimes find myself staying up too late on my computer, during which time I read the internet, catch up with friends, and watch television. Artemis isn’t a reason I stay up late. But it is certainly one more thing I can check. Because it is designed to work well on mobile, it’s easy for me to pick up my phone and check Artemis before bed.

I created a “night mode” that lets you disable Artemis after a specified hour in the evening, until a specified hour in the morning.

This mode, unlike break and holiday mode, doesn’t show a “disable” button on the home page. The mode can be disabled from the settings, but this is sufficiently far from my main path that I am unconcerned about its impact right now (and use of the feature comes at a time when I am probably ready for bed and don’t want to manage settings).

Here is what night mode looks like:

The night mode message reads:

It’s night time.

Your Artemis reader will be ready again in the morning.

Close Artemis

Conclusion

Collectively, these three features are explorations in the idea of software explicitly designed around taking breaks. Break and holiday mode let you disable your reader while you are away. Catch-up mode helps you catch up after you have been away for a while. Night mode lets you configure your account in such a way that your reader is disabled until morning if you want.

One concern I have is that a feature that can be disabled will be disabled when the feature is an inconvenience, even if the feature is designed to help me have a healthier relationship with the tool. With that said, I want to use software where I can set preferences that adjust to how I want to use the software, and that make it easy for me to change and disable preferences when I am ready. I personally have wanted a break mode, catch up mode, and night mode. That’s good enough for me as a tool maker to experiment with these ideas!

These features are available in Artemis for all users.

Random mid-year update - Manuel Moreale RSS Feed

2025-07-02T06:15:00.000Z

It’s the 2nd of July and this post is going to be about many random things. Over the weekend I was doing some work on this blog—a slightly updated version will go live at some point—and thinking where to put all the various bit of information about the different things I have going and then I realized that the best way was to just write a blog post on the subject. And so here we are, me writing that post, you reading it.

The blogroll

Blogroll.org is slowly but steadily growing, currently sitting at 820 websites listed and it will likely hit 1000 by the end of the year. I pushed an update to the site a few weeks ago, tweaked a few colours here and there, added a number of new pages, and removed a few modals. Nothing massive but it’s fun work and I enjoy doing it. I also implemented a “Recently Added” category to make it easier for recurring visitors to get the new content. If you have a blog don’t be shy, submit it to the blogroll!

Newsletters

You might be surprised to know I have three newsletters. One is technically not really a newsletter but rather my blog delivered to you via email. I know some people love to consume content that way which is why I started this one years ago. Be warned though: right now it is done manually and I sometimes forget to send posts via mail. I do plan to automate it though, so things should be improving on that front at some point.

The second newsletter is From the Summit. This is something I started back in 2019 and so far I have sent 17 missives, the most recent one in November 2023. It’s a very random newsletter and I only send one if I find myself on top of a mountain. I type it on my phone, the subject is thought about during the ascent and I try to also send it from the top of the mountain—sometimes there’s no phone signal though.

The final one is People and Blogs which was technically conceived as a newsletter but is now a series delivered via mail, web, and RSS. And speaking of P&B…

People and Blogs

This is the other side project I have going, currently sailing towards the 100th edition—on July 25th—and the end of year 2—on August 29th. Back when I announced the series I wrote

The goal for this project is to keep up the pace for at least a year. 52 weeks, 52 people, 52 blogs. Should be doable but only time will tell.

I say we stick to the theme of keeping expectations low and I’ll commit to at least one more year. And that is not because I don’t enjoy doing this, I still love reading the interviews, but because doing something week after week, year after year, can be mentally tiring at times. So who knows, maybe after year three I’ll take a break.

FormFeelingFunction

FFF is a quirky experimental lab that Carl and I run. It’s something we turned our attention to after we archived Minimalissimo and the most recent random thing we released is an audio guestbook.

You’ll find it right there on the homepage and it works like this: you click the button, you record a short audio message, Carl and I get to listen to it. That’s it. Very complicated, I know. Why an audio guestbook? Because why the heck not?

Books

I’m quite pleased with the fact that I managed to read 14 books so far this year. I think 20 to 30 books a year is my sweet spot but if you’re someone like Tracy you might be smiling since that’s probably what you read in a month.

I have a Literal profile I try to keep up to date but if you want to know what I read so far in 2025 here’s the complete list:

Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins
Become what You are by Alan Watts
Il Dono del Silenzio by Thich Nhat Hanh
The Way of Zen by Alan Watts
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
La saggezza dei lupi by Elli H. Radinger
Il cosmo in brevi lezioni by Amedeo Balbi
Cronache di un gatto viaggiatore by Hiro Arikawa
Un'estate con la strega dell'Ovest by Kaho Nashiki
The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum
La cura by Hermann Hesse
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Tales from the cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Some I read in Italian, others in English. The rule for what gets read in which language is fairly simple: if something was originally written in either English or Italian, I read the original version. If it was originally written in something other than English or Italian, if an Italian translation is available I read it in Italian, if not I get the English version. That’s usually how it goes. There are books I read in both languages for some odd reason. Don’t ask me why.

The July experiment

In June I experimented a bit with my life and as I wrote before, the goal for July is to break the muscle memory attached to phone usage. What that means is that my phone will stay in my bedroom, on the floor, most of the time. I don’t want it with me, I don’t want it near me. I do plan to completely obliterate that stupid automatic behaviour of picking up the phone for no reason other than boredom. I’m also going to reduce phone screen time to fewer than 60 minutes a day. I do plan to write regular updates about this experiment, it's gonna be fun.

A new portfolio

I have a new portfolio. The other night I had this random idea of coding myself a portfolio and so I did it. I had the .dev domain name sitting there doing nothing and so I thought it was a good idea to create something for the professional side of my life. After all, I am technically a full-time freelancer and so I should have a portfolio, right?

And this should be pretty much it I think. I hope you’re having a great summer. I also hope you’re having a great winter if you’re on the other side of the globe. As always if there’s anything you want to share with me you can get in touch via email and you can also use that same email address to ping me on Apple Messages if you prefer. And if you enjoy what I’m doing here on the blog and the various side projects you can join the other supporters and become part of the 1/mo club.

Thank you for keeping RSS alive. You're awesome.

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