BSAG on Emacs as life project:
You don’t go back to zero each time. Every cycle teaches you more about how you want your personal Emacs to work, about what you need and what you think you want but don’t actually use. On every cycle, the curves of Emacs get smoothed and shaped a bit more to match your grasp.
Absolutely. And as I’m going through a different cycle myself, I appreciate this post even more.
Man I’d love some beer from this truck… 📷
It’s great when you can sink an hour into your online reading list without even noticing. Great blogs + good writers = an inspiring morning. Should remember to do this more often.
Listing Homebrew programs and tools
Homebrew was the first program I installed on my Mac after wiping it. This is because the second thing is my org files, which get copied over with Syncthing, which I install with Homebrew.
Listing the apps Homebrew installs is important then. Here’s how I list what I need in a file (in this case, on my Desktop):
brew leaves > ~/Desktop/this.txt && brew list --cask >> ~/Desktop/this.txt
First, what are formulas vs casks, in an over-simplified way:
Formulas are terminal command tools, like ffmpeg or yt-dlp. Casks are generally more complex and come with a UI (“full” apps). These include apps like Signal and LibreWolf.
Now, what does the command above do:
brew leaves lists top-level formulas, meaning no dependencies. Since Homebrew installs dependencies as needed, we’re probably not even aware of those (but it’s not a bad idea to get more familiar with them), and we don’t need to install them on their own.
brew list –cask lists casks.
In the example above, we output the data of brew leaves into this.txt, and then if (if the first command is completed successfully), we’re upending brew list --casks into the same file, using >> instead of just >.
I wiped my Mac earlier today, and everything seems to be in working order, more or less. I noted a couple of my tweaks before on my wiki, and I forgot some other hidden settings that I like to have.
Two of my favorite tweaks: Increase the mouse sensitivity beyond what macOS allows, and get rid of the delay on the dock before it appears, when it’s set to auto-hide.
For the mouse, read the current sensitivity: defaults read -g com.apple.mouse.scaling in the terminal. The max allowed through the settings is 3, but I set it to 5 with defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 5 as I have a small area to move my USB Bluetooth mouse.
And for the no-delay Dock, two commands: defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-delay -float 0 and defaults write com.apple.dock autohide-time-modifier -float 0. Nice and snappy. Use killall Dock to restart the Dock for this to take effect.
Do you have any hidden tweaks for your Mac?
I’m planning to wipe my Mac this weekend. The main reason for this is Microsoft’s nonsense, but I also got a bit “spoiled” using Time Machine. It’s like knowing how to change a tire or check the oil in your car: you need to know how to do certain things so when you need to, you know what to do.
Rethinking and organizing my life with org-mode (part 2)
The other day, I mentioned how my projects file in org-mode is basically a huge mess that makes it difficult to be on top of things, and then an idea occurred to me during a shower, as all good ideas do: organizing is important when I save and store things, not when I’m working on them.
When I work on something, I deal with a dynamic environment with tasks, reminders, attachments, comments, and a bunch of other things. This is the information-gathering phase. The main point is to collect everything quickly so I have it available later. It’s when I’m done with a project that I need to clean it up and store it in its place so I can find it later.
I was considering (still in the shower) the “now page” phenomenon. What if I change my project.org file to now.org? Technically it will look the same but conceptually it will be different. A place for things I’m actively working on in the present moment.
The real change should take place in the org files I save my projects into. Work projects will go into dedicated files, depending on the kind of task. Personal things will fit into their own files. As a matter of fact, the work-personal separation is not as important as it used to be, as each activity (work or personal) gets a separate file anyway.
For example, if I’m working on a vacation in now.org, I have a project with the location, the hotel, a map of the area, a couple of places to see, and a packing list. When the vacation is over, it will go into an events.org file under a “vacations” header. When I place it there, I will also include a link to the photos I took, tag it with “journal” if I wrote about it in my journal, and add a couple of annotations to the map, depending on where I’ve been.
In the future, when I want to reflect on the vacation, I will know exactly where to look. Keeping these files small is important so they don’t become overwhelming. An indicator for that could be casual reading: Can I just open the file, read through it, and enjoy it? Maybe even make it into a PDF and print it? The answer to these questions should be yes.
The trick is to know when a certain “thing” happens often enough to have its own file. For example, would I need a vacations.org file, or is events.org (which also includes going out to restaurants and movies) good enough?
For this, I think the size of the file itself could be a good indicator. In org-mode, the files contain only text. So if a file contains more than, say, 50KB, it means it has 50,000 characters. This roughly translates to 7,000 - 10,000 words. Since the characters in org-mode are also symbols for syntax for meta information, I think this is a roughly good number for now; I can always adjust it later.
This concept also works when I’m happy with the category the file captures, but as it grows, I can split it by months or years. For example, if events.org is good enough to capture vacations, restaurants, movies, and other social gatherings, and I want to keep it this way, I should have event_2024.org, and then make events_2025.org, etc. It’s possible some things, like certain work activities, will need to be broken down every couple of months while other personal tasks only every year or even only a couple of years.
I started storing some of my completed tasks yesterday, and I slowly chipping away at my big projects.org mess. As I go through it, I will get a better idea of how it’s working and if I feel like I am back in control again. Since I need to wipe my Mac and start fresh (this is a story for a different time), I will have a nice clean start this weekend. That’s the goal, anyway.
Anyone who has ever worked in IT has some horrible-funny stories about printers, right? …yes, even if it prints pancakes.
I’m reading The SIGMA Surrogate by Jt Lawrence 📚, my first recommendation from StoryGraph. Strong women lead in a cyberpunk world, light erotica (sans heavy romance) thriller by a woman writer. Refreshing and fun.
Rethinking and reorganizing my life - with org-mode
I used to be more organized. At least, that’s what I think.
When I was working as a desktop technician, I added all my tasks into a file called “Oh Snap,” which I cleared every week. Every Monday morning, I would go over my Oh Snap file and archive done tasks, remind myself of and write notes of existing tasks, and make sure a weekly backup was created.
In my current role, my tasks mostly grow into projects. Besides some quick things, like creating an announcement or an alert for our website, these projects usually take weeks; some even take months. Going over my Oh Snap file every week stopped making sense.
But when I stopped my weekly routine, I also stopped organizing tasks. Now I have one big file mixed with personal and work tasks, some active and some complete. It’s an intimidating blob of “stuff,” and just looking at it makes me want to run away to a video game instead.
I also write less about what I do in my personal life unless it’s complicated enough with several todos and a packing list or if I have the itch to write, which is when I pull out my journal. This means that a lot of useful information never gets saved. Things like map snippets with locations (easy in Emacs), links to pictures I took with descriptions, and the people I got to know - all of that is not written and gets lost.
This made me realize that the weekly routine around my Oh Snap file was one thing; organizing different tasks and events into categories is also important. I don’t mean just “work” and “personal,” which are too vague and big to work with. Categories should be a rough outline of familiarity, a way to frame and save things for better retrieval later. For example, “vacations” might be a better category than “events” (too general), and both are better than just “personal” (way too general).
A good category is like an apartment building where I know certain past events happen. If I want to see pictures of my niece from last Thanksgiving, a “family” or “holidays” category would make sense; at work, if I want to recall when I created certain announcements for the website, then “website” or “announcements” is a good category for that.
So now I’m trying to figure out a couple of things. First, when should I visit my projects file, which is a dump of everything I do, and move things out into their categories. Second, what are these categories? We shall see what I come up with.
Microsoft vent num. 104
My Work-related 365 Microsoft account has been acting up for months. The error message showed me the server that refused to sign me in, citing some security concerns, and there was another problem: that server was not the one my account was supposed to connect to.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, Microsoft Edge started to refuse to let me sign in and sync my account, citing the same error and the wrong server address. That was the final straw since I wanted to keep my work environment in Edge.
Microsoft support has been unhelpful, as always, but they went a step further this time. When the representative followed up, I informed them that I ran a reset script buried inside their app package for OneDrive. They replied: “Yes, that’s what I told you to do.”
Being unhelpful is one thing. Taking credit for my research and solution is another. I didn’t see an option to rate the agent, and I have more important things to do than keep a grudge, especially since the error returned one day after the reset, but I should have probably written a scorching email 😡.
This morning, I removed all Microsoft accounts and any associated Microsoft configuration files on my Mac (com. Microsoft, etc.) I re-installed Edge, and so far, it lets me sync.
I’m not planning on going back to OneDrive or to any desktop application from Microsoft any time soon if I can help it. This Mac being my work computer though means I need to test and write documentation for such applications.
Maybe I can run a virtual machine, another Mac, to keep Microsoft in a cage. The thought of it makes me feel better.
The problem with having an espresso machine at home is getting spoiled.
Instant coffee tastes horrible. Starbucks coffee is either too watered down or too bitter.
On my walk, I passed by a local firehouse, where they cleaned and prepared one of their fire trucks.
Nat’s dad’s surgery went fine, and everything turned out OK. I find myself sitting on a sofa I haven’t set on for over 5 years since Nat moved in with us.
The father is originally from Ukraine, and there’s food that reminds me of my childhood. The best part is the homemade pickled tomatoes. He knows how to make them just with the right amount of garlic, sugar, and vinegar. I had to stop eating more of them or risk stomach pain.
I walked the dog, a passive-aggressive mix of a Corgi and a Jack Russell. She had to be carried downstairs, and I could tell she was holding herself back from snapping at me when I grabbed her. She understood that if she wanted to go outside, I was the only option she had today. I understood that if I wanted to go somewhere, I needed to forget about it because she was in charge. It worked out OK.
What’s left at this point is to grab a good cup of coffee somewhere, as instant coffee doesn’t' agree with me (that’s OK - I don’t agree with it either).
Why should more FOSS enthusiasts check out Stable Diffusion
I’m enjoying my exploration into AI image-generation quest. It’s been a rewarding experience, but I can’t shake the feeling I need to start each post like this with an apology because, you know, AI image generation.
Unlike other OpenAI’s DALLE or Midjourney, Stable Diffusion is open source and does not require using the cloud. You can run it at home, on your own hardware, provided you have enough juice for it (an average gaming rig should be good enough to start).
Stable Diffusion gets a bad wrap because… well, Let me ask you this: What happens when you give a boy a tool that can create any picture he wants? What do you think is the first thing that boy will create the second the door closes and the lights are off?
But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for other things. Having AI image generation as open source makes a big difference. It’s up to you to use it as you see fit. It’s up to you to train it and provide it with images (you can create a model based completely on images of yourself or your artwork; stealing copyrighted work is not necessary). It’s up to you to learn how to use it, and man, there’s a lot to learn.
If you’re a fan of FOSS and Linux, you’d probably like to know that Stable Diffusion can run on Linux. In fact, that’s its native environment. It’s not as nearly as simple as typing a prompt into Imagen, Google’s AI image creation tool, but if you’re a Linux veteran, I doubt that’s a problem for you.
And I hope you’ll try it. We need more people who can develop and understand AI technology that is independent of big tech AI poison that is everywhere. We actually have a chance to develop a moral, responsible, and private AI tool - all the good stuff we FOSS techies appreciate. And now is the time. Before the entire field is swallowed completely by capitalistic greed.
There are some interesting links on Mastodon this morning, but following them is impossible. Paywall here, turn off your ad blocker there.
Can I at least see if I’m interested first? Let me come in, sit down, take my coat off, something… yeesh.
We woke up at 4:30 this morning to go to the hospital for my partner’s dad. Nothing too bad, but unpleasant. So instead, a picture from yesterday’s sunset. We really get some beautiful ones sometimes.
Reddit: 2FA log-in is blocked when using VPNs. I had to disable my 2FA on Reddit.
Giving my IP to Reddit is worse than having enhanced security for one of my accounts there.
A pleasant surprise: a community garden at a local school on my evening walk. 📷
Micro.blog did it again: sneaking another good thing unnoticed. Everyone’s recommendations are in their profile.
So people I already follow and find interesting automatically recommend other interesting people I should follow. In a way, this comes to remedy my grump from yesterday, which amounts to not finding enough people to follow.
Another excellent update from the online community I enjoy being a part of.
It seems like I slept more than 7 hours today, but I don’t believe it. I don’t remember any of it.
…Which is a very good sign. Days like these are like small miracles 🛏️