Yesterday morning, I imported an old-blog post of mine, which discusses org-id and UUIDs in org-mode. It’s a bit of a deep dive into how org-mode works. I find that I don’t do those as much anymore - probably because I mostly use Emacs “as is” with a few packages I use day to day, and my workflow has been pretty much the same (capture templates not included) for the last two years or so.
I was a paid subscriber to 404 media, but I decided to let my subscription run out this year around. They started to feel too one sided and tend to focus only on AI. Still excellent reporting though, for those things.
I found a post on my old blog that I wanted to bring over, but I ran out of time today. I could copy it as is, but I want to read it again and probably update it.
It was a jolt to get back to work today. Feels like my job is to poke different people to do different things, and they poke others. if you have one or two projects like that, that’s one thing. If your entire agenda revolves around email chains like this, nothing gets done.
At least I managed to exercise today, after a nap. Made some tofu and beans after. Nothing special, but nutritious and filling. Tomorrow is an office day.
Using AI to edit and polish posts
Tired of Grammarly ghosting me on Linux and inspired by Doctorow, I hired an AI editor (Kimi via Kagi). It edits my posts, checks for repeat rants, fixes links, and suggests hashtags. Here’s what it looks like.
A good day to have a blog
Since waking up early in the morning (sleep? What sleep?) I’ve been active around my blog and enjoyed dedicating time to this personal work that doesn’t get much attention during my day-to-day. Here are a few things I got into:
About Stable Products
I wanted to write a comment to Pete about his Stable Products post, but it turned into a whole rant, then a post with footnotes. Stable products can and do exist, but the US economy is not meant to support those (I told you it’s a rant).
Kagki just included a screenshot of my blog in their Kagi Small Web news! 🤯
This is a better video than I expected. The main idea is nothing new, but the video games he mentions are perfect examples: I’m also looking for my next game after Hades 2, and I think thanks for this video, I found it. It’s about cats, how can you go wrong?
Staycation. And I’m still connected to my work computer, organizing my tasks and projects, because they are out of control and having a vacation means I can finally organize them…
We were sitting at their bar, but we also had a mocha and a cappuccino toward the end. Something about the flag and the security camera above it makes things feel relevant and eerie. 📷
Diablo IV (2023) - ★
Nope. Nah ah. I tried this game twice, and it failed twice. The first time I didn’t enjoy it. It was too much clicking with little to show for it. No strategy, no method to the madness. I looked for light entertainment, and I thought I found it in this game, just to put it aside after an hour or so of playing.
The second time, about a week ago, I decided ot dust it off and try again. It was the same disappointing lack of wits, only topped with annoying additional in-game purchase requests for all kinds of nonsense, and a complete lack of any challenge. At all. None.
As I was watching the second boss in the game getting destroyed by an army of skeletons that I’m not even sure why I was able to resurrect so easily, looking at messages on my phone, I got pissed. A game should be interactive. What I saw in front of me was a flashy animation that didn’t need me to move a finger. No challenge. No brains. No fun.
At least I can thank Diablo for getting me back into reviewing games just to express my frustration.
A couple of days ago I wrote about my morning checklist, which is a list of reminders and guide of what to do in order. There are a couple of advantages I’m learning to really appreciate about it:
- It keeps me in line by showing me what else I need to do
- When I finish it, I feel my job is slightly less of a chaos than it really is. This is mostly a mental perk, but it helps.
- It nudges me toward writing a journal entry, which in turn allows some creative thoughts out, and those are precious.
Point three above is what got me thinking I should also have a midday list.
I try to break my day into two parts and take a break around 15:00. This break usually includes a nap and some exercise before I tackle my other bigger, more time-consuming projects. Of course, meetings drag on, urgent matters need to be attended to, and the river of emails never stops.
A checklist to help me shift gears would be helpful. In a way, it would be like saving a game before moving on to the next level; it would serve as a soft reset, letting me relax enough to take that nap and exercise, which I need to stay productive and healthy.
I wonder if anyone else uses these sorts of checklists, even if they are only in their heads.
This weather is driving me nuts. I want to go out all the time. To walk, to jog, to just go to the bakery and grab something… but work, but projects, but but but… it wasn’t that hard when it was in the single digits shakes his fist at the wonderful weather
It was annoying to write this post, and that's the point. I think.
I want to engage with more people where they are, but the problem is engaging with more people where they are. Wait, what? Exactly.
I can already tell the espresso puck screens I got are going to become a regular part of my espresso-making routine. Glad someone brought it to my attention.
Display images with Org-attach and org-insert-link quickly and effectively
Did you know: You can insert images you included with org-attach by using org-insert-link; they’re there already by default. You just need to delete the suggested description to have them display inside your org buffer. I didn’t know that.
shutout to TinyLytics and Vincent who helped me figure out why my kudos button didn’t work - I needed to get the right plugin for my theme 😅
TinyLytics is an ethical, down-to-earth version of Google Analytics, managed by a small human team. Love it!
On my way to get some fresh vegetables for my usual soup. It’s a good day for that. 📷
It’s time to do some updating/house cleaning.
The theme I use, TinyTheme, is a couple of versions behind. I also wanted to add a kudos button, which seem to need me to re-build my blog (which usually causes issues, especially with my Movies page). There are a few weird CSS things I need to fix. So, if things seem a bit broken soon - you’ve been warned…
So emacs plus (through homebrew on macOS) keeps giving me this error: Invalid function: org-element-with-disabled-cache.
Does anyone know what this is about, and why it’s happening? No issue with Emacs on Linux (same config) or when I had emacsformacos (same config)
I believe I fixed it this morning (3/11) by removing Emacs-plus completely and reinstalling.
brew uninstall emacs-plus@30brew cleanup(this removes dependencies, where I think the issue was)- Delete emacs.app and emacs-client.app from /Applications (I keep forgetting to do this)
brew install emacs-app(which is now emacs plus, from what I got through Homebrew)
I also ran Brew Doctor between steps 2 and 3 and found a couple of issues I resolved, which shouldn’t be related, but you never know.
What started this whole thing, I think, was that I wanted to try the new org-mode on top of the old org-mode. I am not too sure, but it seems like that was the problem.