Filtering org-agenda to *exclude* a category
Back in July, I explained how I use Beorg to sync my calendars. To recap, Beorg continuously exports the iOS calendar into a read-only org file, which I then sync to my Mac’s desktop through iCloud.
The calendar.org file shows on my Emacs agenda, where I can see both my Outlook (work-related) meetings and my Gmail (personal) events. This is very nice, but because the calendar.org file is read-only (as it should be—it keeps being overwritten by the Beorg every time the iOS calendar syncs), I can’t use it for anything besides this visual information.
If I want to create a project from a meeting and add notes and sub-tasks, I have to copy the event from my calendar.org file to Now.org, where I keep my current projects and tasks. There, I can add notes and headers.
But then there’s another problem: when I copy my headers over to Now.org, my agenda shows duplicates - one event header comes from calendar.org, and the other comes from Now.org after I copied it there. Here’s what it looks like:
When I start my day, it’s important that I see calendar.org so I can copy over details to now.org. Once I’m done, however (clearing the Calendar tag, adding a keyword like MEETING, and cleaning the text under the header from details I don’t need), I no longer need to see calendar.org, and I want it to disappear.
I was looking around for a solution to this problem, and of course, it was right under my nose. Org-agenda comes with the option of narrowing down (filtering) the agenda to a category at the point with <. What I didn’t know is that C-u < does exactly what I want: the opposite of the above. It hides the category selected. Problem solved.
Pan's Labyrinth, 2006 - ★★★★½
This is the third or the fourth time I watched this movie. It's the first movie by Guillermo del Toro I've seen, and it's masterpiece.
A fairy tale fit for grownups, you won' find a happy ending here (well, kind of, depending on your angle) - it's full of magic and symbolism. There's not much to say about this movie that won't spoil the magic of watching it for the first time, so I won't attempt to do so. Go watch it.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! 🦃😁
Not a lot going on at work today, so I decided to borrow one of our old Windows machines and set it up as a remote workstation. Installed all the Office updates, synced Edge, RSAT, PowersShell 7.1, other good stuff. Now to document everything… But first, a nap. 😴
Now I really want to play this game. Want to wait for them to patch it first, I’m hearing it has too many bugs.
Christmas brain washing needs to stop.
I can’t block stores from blasting Christmas music into my ears or prevent game studios from updating a game with a patch that forces me to watch a Christmas-related intro clip.
I don’t even celebrate it. It’s not December yet. What happened to TG. Go away 😡
The flow of followers on Bluesky doesn’t stop. It’s about to double from the start of the week. Just wish I knew how to turn off now follower notifications on my Android.
greatly reduce video file sizes
For my personal journal videos (which I call jvids for short), the quality is not important since it’s just me talking. I could just get rid of the video, but it doesn’t feel as “real.”
A 10-minute HD video recording on an iPhone can take close to a gig. This method compresses the videos to around 50MB MP4 files, even more if I want to. I use the iPhone directly or as a Continuity Camera with my Mac and Photobooth, but you can use a webcam or whatever other means you’d like.
Run ffmpeg like so1:
ffmpeg -i input.mov -filter:v scale=640:-1 -crf 30 -c:a copy .\output.mp4
Where:
-filter:v: we’re telling FFMPEG the next option is going to be a video filter
scale=640:1: the video filter - this tells FFMPEG to give me the width of 640 pixels, and it will figure out the right ratio for height. This greatly helps reducing the size, but noticeably lowering the quality. For my own talking head, this is fine.
-CRF 30: this is the compression ffmpeg uses, from 0 to 51. The default (if you don’t specify CRF) is 20 for the default codec. I want to shrink it a bit further, so I go for 30.
-c:a copy as for the audio codec, no compression and no conversion, use as is, make a copy
Gotcha:
1 Notice that 640, while being a nice resolution, doesn’t work well for videos recorded on phones. To quickly get something that works, divide the width by 2 and use that number; it will still reduce it greatly.
Big city lights 📷
This spot is calling my name 📷
I think my Apple Watch is making me tired.
I usually wake up at around 5:30-6:00 in the morning, and if my watch says I slept under 6 hours, I get tired immediately as if by a spell and think “actually, I’m quite tired.” This is all psychological.
This has been quite a week… 📷
Raining all day with temperatures of 39-38. It is not a good day to walk between several offices and move a bunch of computers and equipment. Much rather stay in and play video games.
I’m starting to get a few more followers from Bluesky. It’s not even a tiny fraction of the interaction on Mastodon, but it’s enough to make me update my About section there and point people to Microblog 😛
Irreal on my writing habits
Irreal commented on my recent posts about writing (analog vs digital). Irreal doesn’t understand why I’m hesitant:
To be honest, I don’t understand his ambivalence about the matter. He lays out the case for both and shows that, except for a vague feeling of attraction to writing with pen and paper, the digital method is more efficient and satisfying. The digital product is so much more useful and flexible that it seems there should be no question as to which to use.
Spoken like a true sysadmin. But he’s mostly right.
Pen and paper convey an intimate feeling and a connection to what I write that I can’t get out of typing on the keyboard. It’s not about how fast or clear it is. But that’s the thing, it’s a feeling. At the end of the day, if I need to capture information and have it available to me whenever I need it, digital wins by a large margin.
Over the last two weeks, I’ve started to reap the benefits of returning to digital and fully utilizing org-mode.
Meetings notes full of details, organized by date and time; Projects I’m working on are broken down to smaller manageable tasks; floating emails and quick reminders quickly tie into a workflow that I can find later and connect to a system and don’t get forgotten or lost. I can slowly breath again, and I’m starting to find the fun in work again.
Meanwhile, I’m also able to write more on personal events. I don’t have to fully reflect on every event, as I would do in the hand-written journal. Instead, I now have an option of including a list of places I visited with a friend last night or perhaps a picture showing a fun activity. Sure, I could do that in my written journal, but it feels too special: I don’t want to “waste” the page on a simple list of locations. Digital just makes more sense for that, since my agenda with its events listed with details is not the same as my journal.
I don’t know, I guess we’ll see. I do miss the idea of the written journal just enough to pick it up again sooner rather than later.
I got Apple Intelligence to quickly give me a summary of an article so I could include it in a post (it’s built into Safari, which I use to read, so it’s very convenient). I wanted to reference this new feature, so I went to Kagi and found a support article using their AI assistant. Good stuff.
Fixing your own stuff
Over at KevLand, Kevin reported success fixing his Sony ear buds: “I’m thrilled with that! If I managed to get another 2.5 years out of these batteries, I’ll be absolutely chuffed. Fuck, if I get another year out of them, I’ll still be happy.”
Meanwhile, Wired reports that The Right to Repair Movement Will Keep On Fixin'. This article is behind a paywall (I recently subscribed), so here’s the summary (modified from Apple Intelligence’s new summaries):
The right to repair movement advocates for the ability to fix one’s own devices without having to take them to the manufacturer or void the warranty. The movement has support from both Republican and Democratic parties, and is gaining momentum internationally. Despite the challenges of lawmaking in the US, the right to repair movement is optimistic about its future prospects under the Trump administration and beyond.
It’s good that people are optimistic. I agree with the conclusion of some of the folks interviewed in the article, which say that fixing equipment is needed across the board. It’s not a political issue as much as it is a money and tinkering issue, which is where the hope comes from.
My own IT background is heavily based in tinkering (RIP ScarFace, my old HP Chromebook which I tore open to convert to a full Linux computer) and I admire people who know how to create and fix things. I hope the iFixit folks and the rest of the industry are right.
I like effective things, and my big, bulky wallet was up for an upgrade-downgrade. A gift from a talented friend 📷:
Leather. The strap pulls up the cards (no more than 3). A back pocket for cash is sewed in the back.
An afternoon walk is all you need sometimes. 📷
How much is enough money?
How much money is enough money? That’s what I was thinking about the other day.
I watched Hank Green’s video (he talks about it for the first minute or so), which made me consider that, yes, at some point, I will probably have enough money. But what does it mean? Can I put a number on that? That was a point discussed between Daniel and Manton too. I’m sure a lot of people consider this every day.
For me, a New Yorker who pays rent every month and lives with two adults, I guess the goal would be enough money to pay rent and keep my lifestyle (which relies too much on ordering food) while still allowing me to have fun and support my hobbies, like a new upgrade for my gaming computer, or go on a vacation upstate for 2-3 nights without worrying too much about expenses.
The other aspect of “enough” for me is the ability to save up and not use all the money upfront. Saving money is relatively new to me; it’s something I wasn’t able to do five years ago. Seeing that number go up makes me feel more at ease.
Each person probably has a different number, but I’m wondering if the goals I listed above are more or less what other folks think about when they think about enough. Also, is there such a thing as “enough” for everyone? There’s negativity involved with making money for the sake of making money, but maybe that’s a motivator for some. Also, maybe for particular charity organizations, that’s actually a good goal, right?
What do you think?