Here at archives.jackbaty.com you’ll find over 1600 posts I’ve written over the past 10 years. Sometimes it’s good to start fresh, which I’ve done. All the new stuff will be available at http://www.jackbaty.com/

I’m never going to “go completely digital” or “use only film” since I cannot completely give up either. Not that I haven’t tried. One day I convince myself the only thing that matters is film, and I buy the greatest film camera I can think of because that’s all I’ll ever need or use ever ever again. A week (or month) goes by and I decide I’m frustrated with scanning or whatever and I think I’d prefer something quick and easy, so I find some new hot digital camera that will solve all my problems.

It’s never going to end, I know that. But knowing doesn’t help.

For example, I recently had a disappointing week shooting film in low light. Tri-X shot at 1250 ISO and processed in Diafine does pretty well, but even that pushes shutter speeds down to 1/30th or so and inevitably motion blur ruins everything. Tired of fighting it, I looked to digital.

I “solved” the problem by buying a Fuji X-Pro1 and a couple of lenses. How does that solve the problem? Well, I love the hybrid viewfinder, analog controls, and of course the excellent high ISO performance. ISO 6400 is usable, and The Fujinon 35mm 1.4 is plenty fast. Boom! It’s like best of both worlds.

Except then I picked up my trusty Leica M4. There’s nothing like the feel of that camera. It’s visceral. Besides, what else does one need? No batteries or whizbang features to get in the way. Pure photography! And I have an awesome and under-utilized wet darkroom just begging for more film, so I start shopping again.

You see how it is? It’s a grand form of rationalization. Eventually, I’ll need to accept the fact that I really love the very old film process as well as and the very newest digital wizardry. It’ll have to be both. There, that’s settled. Right?

And of course as soon as I find something I really like, it closes.

Announcement: Calepin is closing in 90 days. Consider moving to @scriptogram Thanks for the ride. Sorry I couldn’t maintain it.

— Calepin (@calepinapp) April 17, 2012

That’s unfortunate, because Calepin really is (was) a nice, easy, Markdown and Dropbox based blogging service. Guess I’ll be investigating Scriptogr.am as a replacement.

As much as I like the end result of this blog using Octopress, getting there isn’t as easy as I’d like.

Calepin on the other hand, lacks almost every feature of modern blogging platforms. This is not a bad thing. Also, Calepin fits how I think, and makes publishing so easy it’s silly.

I’ve had a Calepin blog, CopingMechanism.com for a few months now and really like it. The latest post goes into a bit more detail into my Octopress vs. Calepin dilemma.

To the handful of you subscribed to the RSS feed here, I apologize for messing things up again. First, I changed blogging platforms, which modified some of the post titles. Then a couple of days ago, I thought I’d try running the entire blog out of an Amazon S3 bucket. This worked great, but required that I use a subdomain rather than the apex. The feed was pointing at jackbaty.com, which is now redirected to www.jackbaty.com, causing duplicate entries.

I’ll try not to do that again, but as soon as a static blogging platform comes along that works as well as Octopress, but with fewer dependencies, I will probably want to try it, so no promises.

Otherwise, using an S3 bucket for hosting a static site is pretty slick. No need to run or share a server, no Apache config, etc. Since I use Octopress everything is generated locally, so to “publish” changes I use s3cmd to sync things. There are a couple of pull requests waiting to be pulled into Octopress which will take care of that for me with the built-in “rake deploy” task, but for now I do it manually.

I become angry while driving. Not mildly annoyed, but full-on vein-popping, teeth-grittingly furious. This isn’t the exception either. It happens nearly every time I get behind the wheel.

I’m not normally aggressive or prone to violence. In fact, I’d consider myself a pretty mild-mannered fella. Very roll-with-the-punches, I’d say. And yet, I am consumed with road rage during even the most basic commute. It’s not healthy.

I could relax while driving if people would simply remember a few of the rules we all learned in kindergarten.

1. No cutting in line for any reason
2. You are not the only person who matters
3. Don’t be such a DICK!

That’s it. Follow those rules and I’m Mr. Happy. Ignore them and I go all self-appointed-vigilante, tensing up and spewing obscenities. I’m not looking for a fight. Honest. I simply feel the need to let folks know in no uncertain terms that they’ve just made a dick move and should stop doing that. Yelling and getting angry doesn’t help, which is something I should have learned in kindergarten. Despite my efforts, people still drive like assholes. The only likely outcome is that I’m going to die of a heart attack or gunshot wound.

If I can’t fix anyone else, I suppose I’m going to have to fix myself.

For the past week I’ve been practicing. I smile kindly at the guy sneaking out-of-turn through the 4-way stop. I just quietly shake my head when someone decides that turn signals are too much hassle to bother with. Deep Breaths help.

So far it’s only been mildly successful, and I’m looking forward to the day when I arrive at my destination with unclenched teeth.

I’m building an honest-to-goodness photo album this year. Each print is made in the darkroom and each caption is hand-written. Not a pixel in sight.

It’s a hand-made family heirloom, that’s what it is.

Joshua Porter:

And then there is the Point. The problem you’re trying to solve. The thing that isn’t part of a process but is the most important thing you need to focus on as a designer. The thing that, if you happen to solve it, makes the process almost irrelevant. Solve the problem and you’re successful no matter what process you’ve been using.

I have the most fun screwing around with the Process. Most of us do, but none of it matters if we miss the Point.

Jay Parkinson:

SXSW was important back in the day when real problems were still being solved by the internet. Now that the internet has solved the vast majority of real honest to god problems we humans have, it’s floundering. And I just don’t have the time nor the interest.

I love trying new software. My idea of a fine Sunday afternoon is installing updates and checking out every line in every release note. What this usually means is that I find reasons to try all sorts of applications, even if something I already use would work fine. I rationalize this behavior easily, but the fact is I just like messing around with my “system”. Today, while cleaning out my Evernote notebooks, I spotted The Secret Weapon, “a no bs approach to personal productivity”. I read the blog and watched the videos and decided it was a bit too much for me. Besides, I’m a die-hard OmniFocus nerd. Aren’t I?

It got me thinking. What if I were to put everything in Evernote? That’s just crazy talk! After all, I’m the one who always complains that Evernote makes things too difficult to get back out again. It occurred to me that part of my problem is that it’s too easy to switch between apps and that the slight friction that Evernote introduces might actually be an advantage.

And so, operation “Everything Goes Into Evernote” began today. I’m using a modified version of The Secret Weapon’s approach to GTD and put OmniFocus aside for now. I’ve moved my scanned archives from the powerful DEVONthink Pro into a new Evernote notebook. Project notes have been migrated from VoodooPad. I’ve even imported my Simplenote notes. I spent a few hours on all of this today, sitting at the iMac on my home office’s desk. I’m now sitting in a chair using the MacBook Air and Evernote has synced everything up nicely. Plus, it’s all on my iPhone. This required no additional sync servers or setup on my part. Encouraging.

And since I tend to go all-in on stuff like this, I installed both Evernote Food and Evernote Hello. ifttt is bringing in all of my tweets, blog posts, and other favorited/liked content around the web.

This all may become overwhelming to have in one place. I’m a fan of variety, so there’s a concern that I’ll just get bored again quickly. For now, though, everything goes into Evernote.