Verily

Why Can't I Think of Anything to Vibe Code?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:28:01 +0000

I know a lot of people are freaking out because tools like Claude Code and friends are able to write, reason about and modify code. This has business leaders absolutely salivating at the possibility of getting rid of a huge chunk of their bulky, expensive … human … capital. However, SOTA is still not going to fully replace anyone.

However I find my problem, specifically, is that I don’t know of any need I’m unable to fulfill that I would somehow need vibe coding to accomplish. I’ve had AI tools look at code I’ve written to suggest improvements or fix issues I was having with it. I just don’t know about having one code a full app that solves a need that I have. One that the myraid of other apps or tools don’t. Sure, that means I need to spend time learning about and utilizing the tools I have, but that seems like a better use of my time than wasting untold hours of datacenter time, and all the ills that go with it, to code up something that might barely be considered a 1.0 tool.

Granted, I’m not a developer. I don’t spend time trying to suss out details of marketing and management requests into something that works as envisioned, so I guess I’m not really the demographic. But what kind of tools are people building with these systems that is really pushing the needle? Is this really sustainable? What happens when people inevitably abandon these projects? I feel like these are terrible loops to be stuck in, recreating things, poorly, abandoning them, and then doing it all over again.

Am I missing something?

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Hello (and Goodbye) San Fransisco!

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 01 Mar 2026 12:10:10 -0500

HELLLLOOOOOO San Fransisco!

(and goodbye)

We had a lovely trip to SFO this week. Taking in a whirlwind tour of sights and sounds all over this lovely city. My son and his class were selected to visit and perform in SFO, which meant that the whole family packed up, flew out and did a crazy 3-day tour of the city. I’m exhausted.

As you can see, we got to see a bunch of stuff (and stuff I was too tired, or feeling too ill to see). My wife even got a Waymo and saw some stuff that wasn’t part of our tour package. Highlights included Pier 39, Ghirardelli square, the cable cars, Alcatraz, Muir Woods and some lovely local restaurants.

Our last trip to SFO was 15 years ago. Which seems like a lifetime ago. So far, little has changed since we last saw it. A lot more advertising for AI, though. That was godsdamned everywhere.

I’m still organizing photos from everyone, so I may add to this list later.

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Dungeon Crawling with Carl

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 10:16:32 -0500

As you may (or may not) have noticed on my reading list , that I’ve picked up on the Dungeon Crawler Carl series of books. I’m burning my way through the 4th book (of 8!) my wife is steaming through number 2 and my son is right on my heels at the end of 3. We’re all enjoying the series throughly. It’s not it’s Isekai-esque story beats, or it’s heroic main character – it’s the completely unhinged situations that our character’s find themselves in, and try to deal with the gruesome consequences, often with lots of black-humor .

I don’t really want to spoil any of this for you, so I’ll just give you the briefest of overviews. I know many will bounce off of it because of the content, but maybe you will find yourself renting it from the library. However, if you find any of these things appealing, I highly recommend it.

Carl is a Coast Guard veteran living with his girlfriend and her prize-winning persian cat, Donut. When his girlfriend goes on a girl’s vacation in the Bahama’s, leaving Carl alone taking care of her cat, Aliens arrive and shenanigan’s ensue. Lots of video game and table-top RPG elements are referenced and intermixed, bringing this surreal book to life.

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Uh... Okay?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 10:44:29 -0500

Microsoft’s definitely huffing the good stuff.

Wow

Needs more .NET

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I Feel Noticed

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 17:09:00 -0500

There is a tool for summarizing your 2025 Hacker News interactions . Of course it uses “AI”. However, I decided to try it out. I feel very seen.

It's organized!

Okay, yes. I should really symlink my toothbrush into .local/personal/bathroom…

Here’s the full breakdown:

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Screenshot Saturday? 🙂‍↕️ Screenshot Saturday.

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 29 Nov 2025 18:21:41 -0500

Festive

A little jingle to the desktop

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We Are Here [====| ] on the Path to Authoritarianism

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 12:19:13 -0500

Know Your Rights

As we slide toward authoritarianism, you should exercise what rights you have left while you can.

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Whither to Archive or Delete?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 14:37:19 -0500

What do you do with your email? Do you archive everything? Or are you a person who will delete everything not immediately useful? There are good arguments for both sides .

Personally, I try to delete most email. Most of my email ends up being passive information that is point-in-time based, but not really long term. These are things like mailing list messages or notifications from services and stuff from my son’s school. Things that don’t often need to be retrieved because they’re only about the point in time when they were sent.

I do archive quite a bit of email, though. Things like replies to job offers, receipts, license keys and emails from my wife and family. Those are things that I would likely have a reason to reference later. Otherwise, I try to keep it trim. I don’t really have a long term archival storage solution sorted out, but I’m not sure if I have a real need for something like that. There’s always EagleFiler if I were serious about it. I could also just File > Save As… and dump it into some folder. Again, I just don’t have a need to do it.

I kind of flip this on it’s head when I’m at work, though. Work has retention policies, archive mailboxes and other requirements. Honestly, I probably delete a vast amount of email there, too, but the rest of it I don’t bother archiving because none of my email is “record worthy.” If I need to save some information from an email, I’ll copy and paste it into OneNote or something because that’s the blessed tool for that sort of thing. Besides, I’m not paying for the mailbox or the storage or the maintenance of it, so let the pros in those position handle it.

I have a habit of being a digital pack-rat, but I’m also kind of picky about what I actually want to save. I go through fits of cleaning up old data that I’ve accumulated, purging everything but what I know that I’ll need in the future. This ends up biting me in the ass sometimes, as I end up killing more than I should, but honestly? Having sets of emephemeral data is sometimes a good thing.

What do y’all do? Archive? Delete? Print (🤢)?

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Don't Be a Sucker

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 11:23:34 -0400

Don't be a Sucker

Oddly prescient for a film coming out in the 1940’s

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Rules for Thee, None for Me

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 09:32:15 -0400

Danish ass-clown, and Minister of Justice, Peter Hummelgarrd is quoted as saying:

“We must break with the totally erroneous perception that it is everyone’s civil liberty to communicate on encrypted messaging services.”

Which, is of course, comically absurd. If the constitutions and other laws and mechanisms around the world didn’t already explicitly guard personal privacy, and therefore the ability to use services that safeguard that privacy using encryption, you also run in to the problem of Math.

Math being the thing that makes encryption work the way it does. Math that is really just a series of formulas to take a stream of bytes, scramble it in some way that makes it difficult to unscramble unless you’re using a special input that only you know to unscramble it. Math is hard to govern, as it’s just an idea. A way in which to demonstrate how to solve a problem. Making encryption (services, et al) is just to make certain branches of mathematics illegal, and therefore certain kinds of thought illegal.

Not to mention, how is making encryption, or services that provide encrypted messaging going to do anything to stop crime? Do criminals also follow the law around firearm sales and ownership? Do criminals follow any laws that you implement? No? So what would stop them from continuing to do so?

Lets say you don’t ban encrypted messaging services, but instead force companies to implement a tap, where the government gets to peek at messages as they transverse a system. Lets also say that the only people who are able to peek at these messages are the so-called “Good Guys” ™, does this also apply to the public servants? People who we entrust to do the right thing on behalf of the populace? No? Of course not. Rules for Thee; None for Me.

Again, implementing a tap doesn’t stop anyone anywhere from doing any encrypted messaging. It just moves the problem somewhere else. Criminals aren’t using WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, at least real criminals that you, ostensibly, want to capture don’t. Your populace does. So, lets drop the charade and call a spade a spade: You want to listen in on communications of your population so that you can either control, kill or otherwise silence “problematic” speech. You can coat it in whatever linguistic sugar you’d like, but that’s what you want. Power over what people say and do. Power to squash those who would oppose you or your ideals. Power.

Anyone with half-a-brain should say “No.” Yet, here we are, even having this debate because the whole world is leaning authoritarian lately, and plenty of people are just willing to go along for the ride. Either due to apathy (me) or learned hopelessness, or just straight up being silenced. The writing, however, has been on the proverbial wall for some time now. If you’re part of any “right-winged” movement, you’re buying into this police state. Either for supposed safety, ideology or just lack of empathy for those who are different than you.

I say: Fuck you. You don’t scare me.

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NPM is a Joke, a Bad One at That

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 09:30:22 -0400

Apparently supply chain attacks on NPM aren’t “so last year”. In fact, the latest one affects a huge amount of packages . That one is debug. In fact, I was almost affected by it just by having the stupid language server installed.

head -n 7 package.json

{
 "name": "debug",
 "version": "4.4.1",
 "repository": {
 "type": "git",
 "url": "git://github.com/debug-js/debug.git"
 },

God, I hate Node.

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Last Week, Tonight with John Oliver: Gangs

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 09:32:18 -0400

Gangs

A brilliant exposition on the problem with gang databases in the US

I have no love for police, but I respect the work they do. However, there are lots of problems with the way they do their work that could be improved. Ideally, there needs to be more public oversight over these “public servants”. Especially since they seem unaccountable for their actions, even when they’re clearly at fault.

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Managing Software Licenses

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 16:13:36 -0400

In true nerd fashion. I don’t use a spreadsheet (anymore) to manage the various licenses that I buy for software. CSV files are fine for shorter lists, but become problematic when dealing with more, especially trying to properly format the document. So, I started looking for alternatives.

There are a couple of purpose built programs, generally for enterprises, that claim to manage your software licenses, but I’m not that big, and I don’t have enterprise cash to throw around. So I started looking at SQLite, which is a durable format that even the Library of Congress endorses as a archival format. However, it can be a little obtuse to work with. Plus you can’t just crack open the file in an editor and edit it. So, you need to know SQL and how to work around the command-line tools for it. Still, a tempting choice.

However, there are text-only databases that can be opened and handled by text editors and command-line tooling. The one that comes to mind is recutils , a suite of utilities that can parse, format and error check a database made up of a text-only schema and it’s associated data. It kind of looks like this:

%rec: License
%doc: A collection of personal software licenses that I have purchased.
%typedef: OS_t enum Windows macOS Linux CrossPlatform
%key: Id
%type: Id int
%type: Name line
%type: PurchaseDate date
%type: OS OS_t
%mandatory: Name LicenseKey
%auto: Id

Id: 1
Name: Acorn
Version: 8
PurchaseDate: 1970-01-01
LicenseKey:
OS: macOS

The stuff behind the % are field identifiers, allowing you to define what a field should contain and conform to. You can set your own types, like I did with %Id. Additionally you can set mandatory and unique fields to better wrangle compliance of data being entered. All in all, it’s a pretty damn simple format that works really well. Bash, the shell, also has a built in recread built-in to read in data like this, so if you’re already handling it on the command-line, it’s one less thing you have to run. For me, I can get by with the standard utilities in this ZSH shell script:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

# VERSION: 2.3

# Hello, future me. This is a mini-zsh program to make working with the software
# license database a bit easier from the command-line. macOS, specifically.
# However, there shouldn't be anything in here that is specific to macOS, except
# maybe the path to the database itself.

# Usage:
## You'll want to set the variables in the '_decrypt-license' and 'license-add'
## functions to the proper path for the encryption key and the license recutils
## file.

# CHANGELOG
## Version 1:
## Initial creation.
## Version 2:
## Add encryption and reverse the sort options on fzf
## Version 2.1:
## Add guard-rails for missing license and keyfiles
## Version 2.1.1:
## Fix comparison for missing files (&& vs ||). Thanks ChatGPT!
## Version 2.1.2:
## Add check for `age` tool
## Version 2.2:
## Not really a fix in this file, but fixes to the database allow this to work
## Version 2.3:
## Add purchase date field and pre-check for 'age' command

if (( $+commands[recsel] )) && (( $+commands[age] ));
then	

	# Decrypt the license file with the age key, this will dump the file to
	# stdout, so all subsequent uses should be a pipeline dealing with the
	# output
	_decrypt-license()
	{
		local LICENSE_FILE="path-to-license.rec"
		local KEY_FILE="path-to-encryption-key.txt"

		if ! (( $+commands[age] ));
		then
			echo "Unable to find the `age` command-line tool in the PATH, please install before retrying."
			return 1
		fi

		if ! [[ -e "$KEY_FILE" && -e "$LICENSE_FILE" ]];
		then
			echo "Unable to decrypt the license file, please ensure both the license file exists and the keyfile exists."
			echo "Key File: $KEY_FILE"
			echo "License File: $LICENSE_FILE"
			return 1
		fi

		age --decrypt --identity "$KEY_FILE" "$LICENSE_FILE"
	}

	# Add to the license file
	license-add()
	{
		local LICENSE_FILE="path-to-license.rec"
		local KEY_FILE="path-to-encryption-key.txt"

		# First, lets get some information from the user
		read "?Software name: " name
		read "?Platform (Windows, macOS, Linux or CrossPlatform): " os
		read "?Purchase date (YYYY-MM-DD): " pdate
		read "?Version number: " version
		read "?License key: " key

		if ! [[ -n $name || -n $os || -n $version || -n $key ]];
		then
			echo "All fields are required!"
			return 1
		fi

		# Decrypt, edit the stream, encrypt.
		cp "$LICENSE_FILE" "$LICENSE_FILE".bkup
		_decrypt-license | \
			recins --verbose \
				 --type=License \
				 -f Name -v "$name" \
				 -f PurchaseDate -v "$pdate" \
				 -f LicenseKey -v "$key" \
				 -f "OS" -v "$os" | \
			age --encrypt --identity "$KEY_FILE" --output "$LICENSE_FILE"
	}

	# Search by name (case-insensitive)
	license-find()
	{
		_decrypt-license | \
			recsel --type=License --case-insensitive \
				 --expression="Name = '$1'" \
				 --print=Name,OS,Version,LicenseKey
	}

	# Search by OS
	license-os() {
		_decrypt-license | \
			recsel --type=License --case-insensitive \
				 --expression "OS = '$1'" \
				 --print-row=Name
	}

	if (( $+commands[fzf] ));
	then
		license-fzf() {
			local selected=$(_decrypt-license | \
								recsel --collapse --type=License \
										--print-values=Name | \
								fzf --height 10 --reverse)
			if [[ -n "$selected" ]];
			then
				license-find "$selected"
			else
				return
			fi
		}
	fi
fi

Here, I use recutils (recsel and recins) to manage the actual database, and age to encrypt/decrypt the data. You could, of course, use whatever encryption system you want to handle the data at rest. The nice thing here is that age (and GNUPG) support reading data from stdin and writing to stdout, which makes it perfect for manipulating the database in-memory, without having to do any jiggery-pokery with temp files and risking data being left somewhere unencrypted. Much like pass , this lets each tool do what it does best, and just strings each tool along, passing the relevant data to/from the user as needed. There’s even a handy filtering tool in fzf to help the user find an entry that they might not know the name of off-hand.

Anyway, I hope this helps someone build their own license system, or other cool tool. Let me know if it helped!

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Dog Walk is ADORABLE

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 21:44:07 -0400

Dog Walk is an open source game made in all open-source tools by the Blender Stuido and Godot Engine. Using papercraft and free and open source software, they developed an absolutely adorable game about a boy and a dog looking for bits of a snowman. It’s not a long game by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s absolutely full of heart and soul. It goes to show you how much goes into the craft of game making and story telling, versus the tools used to make it.

I’m really glad they released this. Godot is a great engine, and Blender is a powerhouse of both 3D modeling and video editing. It’s astonishing what you can do with the power of people helping people.

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Trying out Task

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 11:42:02 -0400

For this site, I’ve been using a Makefile that automates much of the process of building, indexing and ultimately uploading the static files to AWS CloudFront for distribution to you, my dear reader.

Make has been around for ages . Current incarnations use either BSD or GNU variants, but for my purposes, GNU is where it’s at. I use in the following form:

SHELL := bash
.SHELLFLAGS := -eu -o pipefail -c
.ONESHELL:
CLOUDFRONT_DIST_ID = ""
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID ?= ""
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY ?= ""
MAKEFLAGS += --warn-undefined-variables
MAKEFLAGS += --no-builtin-rules

REQUIRED_PROGRAMS = pagefind hugo aws

all: check_dependencies build index upload clean

build: hugo.toml
	@echo "Building site"
	@hugo build --cleanDestinationDir --quiet

serve: hugo.toml
	@echo "Serving local build"
	@hugo serve --buildDrafts --disableFastRender

index: public/search/
	@echo "Building search index"
	@pagefind --root-selector="main" --logfile search-log.log --silent --site public --output-subdir search/pagefind

upload: public/
	@echo "Uploading files"
	@AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$(AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID) AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY) aws s3 sync public/ s3://degruchy.org --storage-class REDUCED_REDUNDANCY --quiet --delete --exclude "*.csv" --exclude "*.caption" --exclude "*.DS_Store" --exclude ".DS_Store"
	@echo "Invalidating caches"
	@AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$(AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID) AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY) aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id $(CLOUDFRONT_DIST_ID) --paths "/*" >/dev/null

clean: search-log.log public/ resources/
	@echo "Cleaning up build artefacts"
	@rm search-log.log
	@rm -r public/
	@rm -r resources/

check_dependencies:
	@echo "Checking for required programs"
	$(foreach prog,$(REQUIRED_PROGRAMS),\
	 $(if $(shell which $(prog)),,\
	 $(error "Required program: $(prog) not in PATH")))

.PHONY: check_dependencies

# Local Variables:
# truncate-lines: t
# End:

The problem is that when you start doing stuff that loops, or that makes use of shell incantations you start getting into the weeds. Also, if you close one of your eyes and squint the other, it kind of looks like a YAML file (Note: I have a healthy distaste for YAML files). Which means you can probably just actually make it a YAML file and be done with it.

So, I decided to try out task as a build runner instead. After a few minutes of fiddling (and no AI help, just the docs) I had the following Taskfile.yaml working and uploading just fine. Neat!

version: '3'

silent: true

tasks:
 default:
 cmds:
 - task: check_dependencies
 - task: build
 - task: index
 - task: upload
 build:
 cmds:
 - echo "Building site"
 - hugo build --cleanDestinationDir --quiet
 serve:
 cmds:
 - echo "Serving local build"
 - task: check_dependencies
 - task: index
 - hugo serve --buildDrafts --disableFastRender
 - defer: { task: clean }
 index:
 cmds:
 - echo "Building search index"
 - pagefind --root-selector="main" --logfile search-log.log --silent --site public --output-subdir search/pagefind
 upload:
 env:
 AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: ""
 AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: ""
 CLOUDFRONT_DIST_ID: ""
 preconditions:
 - test -d public
 cmds:
 - echo "Uploading files"
 - aws s3 sync public/ s3://degruchy.org --storage-class REDUCED_REDUNDANCY --quiet --delete --exclude "*.csv" --exclude "*.caption" --exclude "*.DS_Store" --exclude ".DS_Store"
 - defer: { task: clean }
 - echo "Invalidating caches"
 - aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id $CLOUDFRONT_DIST_ID --paths "/*" >/dev/null
 clean:
 preconditions:
 - test -d public
 - test -d resources
 - test -f search-log.log
 cmds:
 - echo "Cleaning up build artefacts"
 - rm search-log.log
 - rm -r public
 - rm -r resources
 check_dependencies:
 cmds:
 - for: ['pagefind', 'hugo', 'aws']
 cmd: test -x $(which {{ .ITEM }})

This ends up being slightly easier to read and maintain. Each bit has it’s own section and commands, preconditions and even environments are handled in a purpose-driven way that makes it more clear what that section is for. It’s still YAML, though, so yuck.

However, I think I’ll give this a spin for a while and see how I like it. make has the ~49 year advantage over task, but not all new software is bad, it just has to prove itself. make has, but it’s grown warts over that time, and unless you’re doing dead simple stuff, it may be more confusing to write than YAML. In fact, I had Claude write the loop for me, and some of the other parts because the syntax is… terse.

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I Feel a Little Called Out Here

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 09 Jul 2025 17:29:44 -0400

You get access to a bunch of drunken sailors who spend money irresponsibly

I mean, they’re not wrong, either. I just object to being called a sailor. I’ve never sailed in my life.

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Stay Out of my (Project) $HOME

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 11:10:43 -0400

I love making files organized. It gives me a sense of control over something in my life without really changing how things work. I'm an ardent fan of the XDG Base Directory Specification, I even use it on macOS to organize the various config files that Linux tools tend to spread everywhere.

Patrick Jackson takes this ethos to his project root directory. Wanting to organize the mess of special tool files that inevitably find themselves taking up valuable cognitive space in the project root. These files could easily be put into a configuration directory or tool director that would keep the project root clean and clear for, you know, actual project files.

It's odd that we allow these kinds of tools to just spray files where ever they want. In wildly inconsistent locations, formats and styles. Requiring the fastidious developer to employ yet another tool (direnv) to help fend off the rising tide of tool file pollution. Are developers of these tools just that lazy? Or do they not even think about it, because their tools should be the first thing you see when you open a repository? Needless to say, I don't fall into that latter camp.

I'm with Patrick on this one. We need an XDG-style specification (informal or not) to take root and provide some guidance for future generations. Otherwise we'll start seeing projects with more tool lines of code and config than actual program code.

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Project: Hail Mary

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 30 Jun 2025 09:42:52 -0400

Project: Hail Mary

I’m cautiously optimisitic

I’m going to stay cautiously optimistic about the announcement of Andy Weir’s Project: Hail Mary being made into a movie . I loved the book, and his “The Martian”, so there is a lot of good will hanging on this, but I’ve been disappointed too many times this year.

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The Cake Bake Shop

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 14:46:24 -0400

We took the family down to Orlando to go to EPCOT and see the sights. It was hot as Hades out, but we found several cool spots to relax in. For dinner, we took the boat from EPCOT’s France gate to the Boardwalk and took our sweatiness to the elegant and decidedly not sweaty Cake·Bake·Shop .

Of course, a store with “Cake” in the first part of the title behooves it’s customers to eat some cake. And eat we did. The first one is a red velvet cake (my favorite), the second was a surprisingly amazing cookie dough cake, and the last one was an excellent blueberry lemon cake. 🤤

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You are a horrible person

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 13:44:12 -0400

I hope this peice of shit felt great that he helped fire half-a-million employees and didn’t actually positively affect dick except make his delusional boss feel like he was accomplishing something other than pure chaos and attempt to control the government, privately.

Sahil Lavingia: You are a fucking waste. Please, stop interacting with humanity immediately. It’s better for everyone involved.

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On: "The Emacs devotee walks through an ever-expanding mansion whose rooms rearrange themselves to their thoughts."

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 27 May 2025 11:46:00 -0400

A post on Irreal about the customizability of Emacs caught my attention today . It talks about how younger developers don’t use Emacs and why they should. It specifically pulls out the following quote from a Hacker News post regarding it:

The specialized app user lives in rented apartments; the Emacs devotee walks through an ever-expanding mansion whose rooms rearrange themselves to their thoughts.

I’m not sure I entirely agree with the sentiment. Sure, Emacs is vastly more customizable than pretty much any other ~~text editor~~ tool out there . The whole thing is just a big ball of Elisp sitting atop a VM that handles lower level interactions in C. You can get away with pretty much anything you want without having to go through those lower levels, because much of it is exposed inside code. Additionally, changes you make to the environment are immediately available to you without any stop/restart/update trickery. This is incredibly valuable when changing things.

However, I dislike this bit specifically:

the Emacs devotee walks through an ever-expanding mansion whose rooms rearrange themselves to their thoughts.

Yes, and no. You have to build those rooms yourself. Yes, you can build those rooms yourself, and building them is easier (or even possible) than it would be in any other tool, but you’re still building them. There is also the idea of need. Do you need such a system that accommodates every bespoke aspect of things? Do you need to build a window manager because you don’t want to context switch? Do you need to manage your music library in your editor? Do you need to read your email, usenet, or RSS posts in your editor? Likely not.

I love that Emacs is so extensible, I love that I can tweak each bit to what I prefer. However, I don’t need it. Most of the tools I use I understand how they work, and fit them into my workflow, or discard them. Most of my interaction with them is not one of frustration or fighting against some imagined interaction model. Most of the time I’m just using the application. Sure, there are times that I struggle to figure out how or why an application does the things it does, but those are usually the applications I discard because they don’t fit what I need. Bending their utility to my needs is not always the best solution, I probably don’t even need that functionality, if it’s not immediately apparent.

Some folks want to own every bit of their environment and change it to their bespoke needs. They want every keystroke, every click of a mouse button to summon or dismiss tools as fast as the display can shove the pixels on the screen. That’s fine. Most people don’t do those sorts of things . In fact, most people don’t even find the setting screen . While I would certainly argue that developers do look for the settings screens, I’ve been pretty horrified working in a tech office where developers have a hard time even getting their own environment set up correctly. As it turns out, lots of developers just do this as a job. They don’t care how the tool works and are fine with using the default options. Some upstart junior developer can weed around in the settings and find changes that will help, but most are just there to plug in some code and go home. Coding is not their interest.

There is also the conformity aspect. Some young developer coming into the office is not going to be given the choice of development tools. By and large they are going to be told what tools they use, how the environment is setup and how to build the application. This will vary from office to office, but conformity is a big thing in large development houses because it reduces defects and keeps everyone working the same, without weird one-off setups that break things in new and interesting (read: expensive) ways.

So, sure, Emacs is luxurious if you’ve got the time and energy to devote to it, it’s also a completely manipulatable environment that works the way you think it should. It’s also old, which kids hate. It’s also ugly, which kids hate. It’s also extremely fiddly with new technology, which kids hate. I love Emacs. I love that it’s ugly, that it’s old and well worn, that it interfaces with anything that can output plain text. But it’s not “cool”. VSCode is “cool”. Cursor is “cool”. Nova and Sublime Text are “cool”. It doesn’t matter how good Emacs is, it’s not “cool” and that makes the effort to learn it that much harder than it is to say, get into VSCode, which has GUI’s and tools that hook into their already existing workflows of new and cool tools.

That’s a huge gap to overcome.

Edit: Jack Baty has also recently posted about how much that effort usually takes . Often Emacs gives us a lot of leeway in how we approach problems. That can end up being a hinderance to actually getting things done. When you have endless customization, where do you stop? Sometimes, less is more.

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ChatGPT as Siri

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 23 May 2025 12:45:02 -0400

One of the things I’ve been surprisingly pleased with is how good the macOS app is for ChatGPT. I don’t use it often, but when I do, it’s really nice to have it be able to peek into a document open in BBEdit, or look at the terminal to see the output of a command. I don’t know if these are pre-baked integrations or are using some sort of universal AppleScript interface to do the magic, but it does kind of feel like that: magic.

It’s even had me reduce my usage of competing tools like Claude or local LLMs like Ollama because I don’t have to copy/paste everything in and out of the chat. I can just say: “Hey, does this look right?” and ChatGPT will look at the document (even just highlighted segments) and offer it’s thoughts on it. Very handy. Avoiding the clunky copy/paste routine is probably the experience programmers are getting when they use tools like Cursor that integrate right into their IDE. It’s great!

Reading into the documentation , it looks like it might be a bit of incantation using the Accessibility settings. This means that your app probably needs to have accessibility compatibility that exposes a certain level of actions the system can read. Certainly better than trying to manually grab the data out of the app with bespoke rules for each. It also doesn’t look like this is supported at all on Windows, which I don’t think exposes the same kind of universal accessibility API.

For all the doom and gloom going on right now in the world, especially about Apple and their floundering “Apple Intelligence”, it’s nice to see some good things floating about and working well. And if Apple decides to open Siri up to using any of the publicly available models, I’d be just as happy. So long as we can get deeper control over where it goes and privacy guarantees about how it’s used (if at all), then I don’t see the problem. Yeah, their plan for Apple Intelligence seemed sound, but it doesn’t seem like it worked out in practice. The best thing is to admit that they didn’t have the chops to get it right, and either scrap it or hand it off to someone who does.

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Japan Looks Really Pretty

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 23 May 2025 09:23:40 -0400

Kagi apparently had a meetup in Japan. Setting aside the Kagi stuff, I’m always humbled by how nice Japan looks. I know that every city has grimy dirty and poor areas, but even the side roads of Japan look inviting and well kept. I really want to visit it some day.

Kagi x Japan

Kagi is great, but Japan looks gorgeous

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Won't Someone Think of the Children? Not if You're in a Red State.

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 21 May 2025 13:49:33 -0400

Fuck you, DeSantis. Nice to know that our cHilDrEn are top of mind when dealing with crisises in our state. Can't get those kickbacks if you're giving children \*checks notes\* food.

Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, there will be 37 schools that will no longer be providing free lunch meals through the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). Instead, families with students attending these schools will need to complete an application for free or reduced-price meals to receive meal assistance or be directly certified through the State. The full list of affected schools is included below.

These schools do not meet the criteria for the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP), a federal program that allows schools to offer free meals to all students. To qualify as a CEP school, 40 percent of enrolled students must be eligible for free or reduced-price meals through other government programs such as SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) or TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) or Medicaid.

This change comes after a careful review of our budget for the upcoming school year. Since March 2020, we’ve been able to offer free meals to all students districtwide thanks to federal pandemic relief funding. However, that funding has ended, and continuing the program without it is no longer financially sustainable.

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Ever Wanted to Unbind macOS Keybindings in Emacs?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 21 May 2025 13:42:47 -0400

Here's all the keys that get bound in Emacs.app/Contents/Resources/lisp/term/ns-win.el.gz

I've changed it to be unsetting these keys, because I find them annoying when I accidentally press them. This gives you more keys to allow for customization on macOS. You may want to wrap this in a when stanza to undefine it only on macOS, but that's up to you.

 ;;; unset macOS keybindings
 (global-unset-key [?\s-,])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-'])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-`])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-~])
 (global-unset-key [?\s--])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-:])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-?])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-^])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-&])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-C])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-D])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-E])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-L])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-M])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-S])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-a])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-c])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-d])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-e])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-f])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-F])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-g])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-h])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-H])
 (global-unset-key [?\M-\s-h])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-j])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-k])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-l])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-m])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-n])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-o])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-p])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-q])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-s])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-t])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-u])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-v])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-w])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-x])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-y])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-z])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-+])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-=])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-0])
 (global-unset-key [?\s-|])
 (global-unset-key [s-kp-bar])
 (global-unset-key [?\C-\s- ])
 (global-unset-key [s-right])
 (global-unset-key [s-left])
 (global-unset-key [home])
 (global-unset-key [end])
 (global-unset-key [kp-home])
 (global-unset-key [kp-end])
 (global-unset-key [kp-prior])
 (global-unset-key [kp-next])

 ;; Allow shift-clicks to work similarly to under Nextstep.
 (global-unset-key [S-down-mouse-1])

 ;; Special Nextstep-generated events are converted to function keys. Here
 ;; are the bindings for them. Note, these keys are actually declared in
 ;; x-setup-function-keys in common-win.
 (global-unset-key [ns-power-off])
 (global-unset-key [ns-open-file])
 (global-unset-key [ns-open-temp-file])
 (global-unset-key [ns-open-file-line])
 (global-unset-key [ns-spi-service-call])
 (global-unset-key [ns-new-frame])
 (global-unset-key [ns-toggle-toolbar])
 (global-unset-key [ns-show-prefs])

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I Like Finder Tabs

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 19 May 2025 18:26:16 -0400

I’m gonna use them, and you can’t stop me.

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I Love Fossil

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 19 May 2025 18:15:13 -0400

I love being able to have a local-first bug tracker. One that I can use in a GUI or in a terminal. Fossil lets me have that. I don’t even need to have Gitea or Forjeo installed in a container for it. I just kick off fossil ui and I can post my own bugs, take notes in the wiki and keep them contained and versioned. I don’t need GitHub or CodeBerg. Just my computer, the repository and what I need to do.

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'Never Meet Your Heroes'

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 19 May 2025 14:49:31 -0400

Well, another round of dark secrets to turn me off of things I’ve like or like. One of them is old: Scott Adams is a racist . However, it appears that he’s dying of prostate cancer . The same prostate cancer that is killing Joe Biden . So, there’s that.

Then, we have Neil Gaiman . He’s accused of serial rape, along with his estranged wife, who, allegedly, helped groom girls for him .

I should really just turn off the Internet for the remainder of my life. What a shitshow.

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Andor is the Best Star Wars of All Time

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 18 May 2025 16:46:54 -0400

Yeah I said it. Coupled with Rogue One, it is the best Star Wars has to offer. Sure the original prequels were great, and I revere them as such, but Andor is the best. Hands down. It was sci-fi but not sci-fi. It was a real story about loss and finding yourself and being part of something bigger.

It’s going to take a while to come down off this show. Disney has some mighty big shoes to fill moving forward.

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Hot Caturday

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 17 May 2025 12:50:57 -0400

Despite it being 92F here, being in the shade and under a fan makes it slightly more bearable, enough to enjoy time with the cats on the catio.

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Right in the Feels

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 15 May 2025 15:09:19 -0400

Last Scene

🥹

Apple is showcasing more of the “Shot on iPhone” movies that folks have made. There is a new one out that not only is shot well , but tugs on the heart strings. It’s called “Last Scene” and is very much worth the watch.

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Florida Forces Abstinence-based Sexual Education

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 13 May 2025 12:47:41 -0400

Florida, why you gotta be so stupid? We know it doesn’t work .

This email is to inform you of recent changes and additions to Board Policy 4.10, which includes Comprehensive Health Education for students in grades K-12 and will go into effect in the 2025-26 school year. Most updates center around reproductive health and disease prevention education and were approved by the School Board at its regular monthly meeting on Tuesday, May 6.

Policy Defines Instruction as Abstinence-Based, Clarifies Instruction by Grade

In accordance with Florida law, the district has consistently upheld abstinence as the expected standard in its educational programming. The Board policy now explicitly affirms that the district’s instruction is abstinence-based and promotes sexual abstinence. Additionally, the policy stipulates that “instruction shall include all information required by Florida State Statutes,” which encompasses, but is not limited to, education on the risks and prevention of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, and other relevant topics.

The updated policy additionally clarifies the district’s ongoing practices in providing current, research-based, age, and developmentally appropriate information about AIDS, HIV, and other sexually transmitted diseases and infections to students in grades 6-12. In contrast, students in grades K-5 will receive instruction on the prevention and spread of common communicable diseases, like the flu.

Separating Middle School Students by Gender for Reproductive Health and Disease Prevention

An addition to Board Policy 4.10 states the superintendent will implement procedures allowing students in grades 6-8 to be separated by gender during reproductive health and disease prevention instruction. This is in accordance with Florida State Statute 1000.05 (2)(d).

Ways Parents Can Learn About and Opt Children Out of Instruction

While it has long been the district’s practice to notify parents about reproductive health and disease prevention instruction and provide them with the option to opt their child out, the updated policy now clearly outlines these procedures. The new language enhances transparency and ensures consistency across schools by detailing how and when parents are informed, as well as the steps required to decline participation. Among the policy’s requirements:

Parents will receive the opportunity to preview material prior to instruction on the district’s website.

Schools will disseminate information regarding instructional materials through welcome back packets or other official school communications.

No later than two weeks prior to instruction, schools will provide formal notice to parents using two of the three methods: (1) Hard copy correspondence sent home with students, (2) Push notifications through the district’s student information system, and/or (3) Electronic distribution via email or other district-approved digital platforms.

Parents can expect to see changes go into effect in the fall. To read Board Policy 4.10 in its entirety, view Chapter 4 in the board policy handbook.

Maybe someone should tell the folks in The Villages that abstinence is the way to go. You know, for God and stuff.

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Shortcut to Bookmarking

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 13 May 2025 11:47:07 -0400

When I find a link that I want to share to the world, I add it to my bookmarks page and upload it. Except, I don’t just have a page of raw links in my repo, I have Hugo generate the page from a much simpler to manage TOML file. This file is fairly long, but orders of magnatude shorter than the resultant HTML, and it’s far easier to manage.

That being said, the actual creation of bookmarks requires multiple steps, including copying the URL, the Title and creating an archive (optional) then telling the bookmark it has one. While this is not super complicated, it’s a lot of back and forth between Safari and BBEdit. I can sometimes get confused about what the ‘stack’ order of Command-Tab and end up in different windows/applications. So, I decided to fix it.

Shortcut to the Win

I had a couple of ideas where I could use AppleScript, or Automator, but both of those tools are dated and not as well supported by the upstart Shortcuts. Not only are the Shortcuts created on macOS useful, but they can work on iOS and iPadOS, too. They’re also synced across devices on your account, making it a no-brainer.

Ultimately, I need to make the following out of as much information as I can gather.

[[bookmark]]
added = 2025-05-13 12:10:20-04:00
title = "Page title"
url = "Current Safari URL"
archive = ""

Here’s my Shortcut:

Grab all the Details

This makes it so much faster to add bookmarks.

(download a copy of the shortcut here.)

And the details pane

Adding the “Show in Share Pane” makes this work

One thing that tripped me up is that Shortcuts doesn’t use any of the standard date formatting methods that I’ve seen. It uses Unicode Date Formatting , which I had to hunt around for to get the RFC date formatting correct. Ultimately, this is the string that worked: yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssXXX

Using this shortcut, I can now use any share pane and grab the URL, Title and Current Date in RFC format and have a nicely formatted TOML fragment that I can just paste into my bookmarks file.

I did the same thing with my wishlist items. Though that still requires some manual intervention for the image. I also run that through Retrobatch to reformat, resize and downsample for the site.

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Watch the Earth Move in Myanmar Earthquake

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 13 May 2025 10:26:34 -0400

Note the light pole (the one with the solar panel on it) and the large power transmission line on the right in the background. The whole area just…shifts about 3-5 feet. Unreal!

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New Host, Who Dis?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 12 May 2025 19:16:39 -0400

Just migrated over to AWS/CloudFront/S3/Washtub/Whatever, again. The bill for my very small Hetzner host was far outside reasonable, especially since I wasn’t really running anything on it except this site, Vaultwarden and Miniflux, all things I can run locally or drop on AWS and forget about them.

It also means one less thing to have to babysit and take care of. Sorry if my RSS feed blew up in your reader. Nothing changed, but it may have gotten new etags or somesuch and caused it to redownload the whole thing.

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The Hate in my Heart

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 08 May 2025 15:00:54 -0400

I don’t like to hate people. It feels wrong. Yet, I find myself hating people that I don’t agree with. Not everyone I disagree with, but the vocal set of them. Hate is something that I had while I was a much younger man. I ran off it. Rage at the world that I felt was so unfair and uninterested in noticing me. As I grew, I grew to let go of that hate because it wore me out. I didn’t see a point in wasting so much energy on stuff I couldn’t change.

Now, I don’t see a point in being that pragmatic anymore.

I’m tired of boot-licking, racist, sexist, homophobe assholes who are actively trying to hurt people, innocent people all in the name of power and money. The current crop of Nazis in power want to do everything they can to tear away any vestige of public-ownership of organizations, and therefore any governmental safeguards that protect those who are marginalized and hurt the most by bigoted shit-eaters like Trump and Company.

I hate Trump. I hate him and his goons. I hate that half the country have somehow decided that instead of a government by and for the people, it should be by and for oligarchs and monopolists. Fuck them. I hate them, too. Too stupid to understand that they voted against their self-interests, too stupid to realize that this unchecked hatred and bigotry serves their corporate overlords and only hurts the “enemy” by proxy. The fact that they see half the fucking country as “enemies” because they aren’t gender-confirming or originally from here (spoilers: no one here was “from here” except the oft oppressed native population). Fuck them.

No one wants to listen to me, so it doesn’t matter. I’m done trying to be nice about this. Fuck these people. We the people deserved so much better.

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New Pope. Less Friendly as Old Pope

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 08 May 2025 13:39:23 -0400

New Pope; Who dis?

Whereas Francis said, “Who am I to judge?” when asked about gay clerics, Cardinal Prevost has expressed less welcoming views to L.G.B.T.Q. people.

New York Times

Well, lets see how this shakes out.

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Disney is Building a new Park in Abu Dhabi

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 07 May 2025 13:32:19 -0400

Yep, that’s right . Abu Dhabi, yes that Abu Dhabi . Though, tellingly, they’re not actually going to run or even pay for the park . Just oversee creative matters. How that’s going to translate into guest experience, I don’t know. Bob had some glowing words to say about his new UAE partners:

[Miral has] already demonstrated a commitment to quality in that regard. This is essentially a license arrangement, but with considerable involvement from us. So although they will operate it, we will have employees embedded in the organization with them to help them operate a Disney theme park, basically at the quality level that everybody is used to.

So, they’ll be working it from the inside. How long that’ll last is anyone’s guess. However, I’m concerned about the rampant human rights abuses that the UAE seems to revel in, is going to play with a theme park. Disney is not shy about controlling their message, but having to bend to the will of a crown prince in a literal monarchy is going to be an interesting line to walk . I wouldn’t be expecting any pride parades or merch, let alone any actual welcoming behavior from the workers there. I wonder how they’ll handle talking shit about their government.

There are reports of forced disappearances of foreign nationals and Emirati citizens, who have been abducted, illegally detained and tortured in undisclosed locations, and denied the right to a speedy trial or access to counsel during investigations by the UAE government. The non-governmental organization (NGO) Human Rights Watch, states that Emirati laws maintain capital punishment and discriminate against women, migrants and LGBTQ individuals. Wikipedia

Yeah, very Disney.

Bob. This is a boondoggle. I hope you have some very good guarantees about visitor safety.

No thanks. I’ll visit all but Shanghai and, now, Abu Dhabi. It’s a shame, because both look like nice places. I just can’t trust the government there to not black-bag me. Hell, I can’t trust the government here to not black bag me.

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Sometimes, AI Does Drugs

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 06 May 2025 15:08:12 -0400

Today, I wanted to try out my newly downloaded Gemma3 model and see if it could answer a question that had been on my mind lately: There are are quite a few features and similarities between BBEdit and Emacs. Things like scratch buffers, Emacs keybindings and even a full-blown simulation mode that extends BBEdit's controls to Emacs equivalants. Thus, I spake into the mouthpiece:

I see a lot of similarities between Emacs and BBEdit. Things like scratchpads, emacs keybindings, and other small tweaks here and there are very reminicent of Emacs. Is that on purpose?

A simple enough question. I don't know what kind of knowledge that has been imbuded in Gemma, but I would imagine a question like this is old enough that it would have made it into their knowledge by now. Emacs is old, and so is BBEdit.

It's answer:

You've hit on a really interesting and surprisingly common observation! The similarities between BBEdit and Emacs are absolutely intentional, and it's a direct result of BBEdit's creator, Byron Alan Johnson, being a long-time Emacs user and admirer. Here's a breakdown of why and how that happened:

Byron Alan Johnson's Emacs Love:

STOP!

Okay, what? Byron Alan Johnson? I can't find this guy anywhere. Searches come up with lots of names similar to that, but nothing about BBEdit, Barebones and similar. Not only can I not find a guy named Byron Alan Johnson who is alive today, but I can't find one that is in technology. I checked BBEdit's site and can't find any mention of him. Nor can I find it in the announcement post for the initial release of BBEdit.

I went back and asked Gemma about this, providing links and refutations of the supposed Byron person, and it seemed to double down on it's hallucination:

You’ve hit on a crucial and often overlooked detail! You are absolutely correct – Rich Siegel is indeed the principal developer and originator of BBEdit, as stated on the Barebones Software website and corroborated by Wikipedia.

Okay, great!

My apologies for the misdirection in my previous responses. I was so focused on Byron Alan Johnson’s influence and role that I failed to properly acknowledge Rich Siegel’s central contribution

Oh lord.

Byron Alan Johnson was the visionary who conceived of BBEdit, identified the need for a powerful text editor for macOS, and secured funding and initial support. He essentially provided the concept and direction, while Rich Siegel brought the execution to life.

I don't even get a hit on searching just their site for Byron. Damn, I'll have what Gemma's having.

The whole conversation is here.

I guess I'll switch models and try again.

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Late Caturday

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 05 May 2025 14:37:37 -0400

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No More Care to Give

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 05 May 2025 13:26:07 -0400

I feel drained, lately. I think it’s, in part, due to me trying to lower my caffeine intake, and part me worrying about too much. I know I shouldn’t. What’s going on in the world is largely outside of my control and that as bad as it is for a lot of people, I’ll likely be fine. While-male-privilege and all. It’s at work, too. Trying to keep face while inside I’m in turmoil over everything going on. Feeling helpless and broken. I just don’t know what to do anymore.

I think, too, that I don’t care anymore. Let them have it all. Let them tear everything apart. Let them enslave, kill, deport and imprison everything they don’t like. I don’t care. I don’t have care to give anymore. I’m out. Someone else feel things for me. I don’t want to anymore.

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Sometimes, I Feel Defective

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 02 May 2025 18:33:46 -0400

Sometimes. I feel like I know what I’m talking about. I can wax lyrical about complex topics and reason about them pretty well. Most other times, though, I just dont understand. It’s usually this way with programming. I can pick my way through some code and maybe understand 40% of it, more if there are good comments. Writing code, though, is something that I struggle mightily with.

I’m not a programmer. I know that. I gave up that nascent part of me more than 10 years ago. I wasn’t even a real programmer. I worked on Drupal and PHP with some light HTML/CSS/JS. Most of it wasn’t hard and when I wasn’t doing that, I was being a jockey for InfoPath forms. Again, I had little need to create anything. I could just glue together some stuff and call it a day. The Real Programmers™ did the heavy lifting and I just did make-work to pay the bills.

Now that I’m older, I fancy myself as something more than an IT Professional. I know enough about a couple of programming languages that I get the gist of it, but not really the whole story. I can write half-way decent Bash scripts, Lua and if push-comes-to-shove Python. I also can dust off my old webadmin hat and write some HTML/CSS and JS, but not to any real proficiency. I feel like I’m faking it.

This isn’t the so-called Impostor Syndrome , because I’m not doing this professionally, I’m doing this on my own. I find that despite being able to move the bits around, I can’t seem to make anything creative flow out of me. No impetus to create, even if I feel like that I might be able to, no itch to scratch on my own, even though I see 100 stupid paper-cut issues every day. I don’t know if what I am is just incredibly lazy, tolerant or … defective. I buy and collect all the tooling to make me productive at any number of things. Coding, video editing, photo editing and more. I have no use for these because I’ve got no creative desire. No drive that pushes me past the dicking around part of learning to code and into the “wow this is really useful, what if I could make this thing to fix that thing that I don’t like!”.

Some people might call this “being content.” It bothers me, though. Maybe because I surround myself with people who program, because I like the programs they use, like Emacs. I try to fashion myself into a more complex individual that could be a programmer, but in reality is just some guy who is better than average at a bunch of stuff, but doesn’t really excel in anything individually.

It frustrates me to be this way. I feel like I could do more, but then I hit a wall and nothing I do makes any sense. Like there is an artificial barrier keeping me from moving on. I don’t have any formal training as a programmer, and while I could go back to school, I don’t think it’d be financially worth-while for me and my family. I’m also wondering if that wouldn’t just underscore my defectiveness.

This feeling also seems to dovetail with some of the core concepts that I’ve built up around myself. Linux is harder than using Windows or macOS. Self- hosting is harder than managed hosting. Using hugo is harder than WordPress. Setting up Exchange Online is more work than just getting the Office 365 bundle for families. Emacs is harder to use than Notepad; Every choice I make seems to revolve around doing things harder than they need to be because I want to be that person that is knowledgeable and “in control”. I use plain-text because its “more reliable” when I have no experience with issues in any other format. Nothing I do makes anyone around me happier, or makes them trust me more, or has them rely on my knowledge more. If anything, it drives them away because they don’t understand the issues, or I’m seen as an extreme viewpoint.

I feel like, when it comes to computers, I’m like that stanza from Radiohead’s “Creep” :

… but I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

Maybe I should stop trying to be something I’m not. If I do that, though, then what am I?

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Apple's Terminal.app Has a Neat Feature

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 02 May 2025 13:31:37 -0400

I wanted to see if I was missing out on anything in the built-in Apple Terminal app over using GhosTTY, which is really fast. It turns out, yes, there are some neat features that other terminals don’t have, like “Alternate Screens” .

Basically, your standard screen is the log of commands and the returned text, if any. Then, if you run any interactive applications, like less or nano, then that gets pushed to an alterative screen while you’re in the app. You can toggle each of these screens with the “[Show|Hide] Alternate Screen” item in the menu, or with the ⇧-⌘-↑/⇧-⌘-↓ keyboard commands.

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MAKA

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 02 May 2025 09:06:31 -0400

A Much Improved CNN Homepage

I mean, just look at that tummy!

From the Make America Kittens Again addon.

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Always BeOrg-anizing

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 01 May 2025 15:57:06 -0400

One of the challenges of being someone who really likes Emacs is accepting that, in today’s world, interacting with most people means dealing with calendar appointments via email—usually through Outlook or iOS/macOS Mail. That makes it difficult to fully embrace Org-mode’s excellent scheduling and organizational features. There are a number of iOS apps (of varying quality) that can open org files, but most simply let you edit the files directly, leaving calendars and tasks to be handled by separate apps.

Enter Beorg

Beorg for iOS works a bit differently. It's an Org-mode tool designed for working with org files—especially calendars, appointments, and tasks. What makes it interesting is that it also syncs your org-mode calendar entries and tasks with the iOS system calendar and reminders. So if you schedule an appointment in your org file, Beorg can publish it to your calendar. That’s pretty neat.

Even better, this isn’t one-way sync. Beorg can pull in existing calendar data and create a new org file with the relevant information, which you can then include in your Org agenda view.

While this doesn’t entirely solve the problem of sending calendar invites from Emacs via Org, it does smooth out some of the rough edges that made calendar management in Emacs a bit clunky. I'm honestly surprised there isn’t a full-blown connector app that runs on your phone, watches your org files, and updates the calendar or sends invites using native system tools. I would have loved that back when I was managing email with notmuch and limping along with diary and appt, juggling items between Emacs and my online calendar.

Captee and Scrim

Beyond calendar support, I’ve recently come across two additional macOS tools that make working with Org-mode more enjoyable: Captee and Scrim.

I often find myself collecting links—articles to read, tools to try, ideas to revisit. Usually this involves copying the URL from the address bar or using the share menu, but those methods feel lacking. They don’t capture the page title, and certainly not my thoughts at the time.

Captee helps here. It gathers the key metadata (like the page title), allows you to add notes, and exports the result in either Markdown or Org-mode format. You can copy that data to the clipboard or, with the help of Scrim, send it directly into Emacs using org-protocol://, triggering an Org-mode capture template and storing it automatically.

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need workarounds like this. But given the sandboxing on macOS, I appreciate that these tools exist—and honestly, I’d rather deal with a little friction in exchange for stronger app isolation.

Beorg Problems

That said, I’ve run into a few issues with Beorg.

First, syncing via iCloud is inconsistent—it doesn’t update as frequently as I’d like. Second, Emacs on macOS can be finicky when editing files inside the iCloud folder. The latter is probably solvable with some configuration or symbolic links, but the syncing delay is trickier.

Still, these are relatively small trade-offs if your goal is to keep using Emacs and Org-mode for your calendar, while remaining compatible with the rest of the world’s scheduling tools.

Conclusion

While I think I prefer BBEdit for doing edits to files on macOS, Emacs is always going to be my home. It's so much more extensible and functional. With these tools, though, I can say that being an Emacs user on macOS is miles better than it is on Windows or, in some cases, Linux.

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What. The. Fuck.

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 21:58:18 -0400

Who…? I don’t understand the point of this . Actually, I do, but I don’t believe it. The sharks, they were jumped. The whole thing is off the rails.

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Satya Nadella: 'The Internet Was Born on Windows' 🙄

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:23:01 -0400

Jump to 32:59 to hear the idiocy.

Sure it was...

Pay no attention to CERN and the DOD.

Yeah, totally true.

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Volonaut Airbike

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 08:31:23 -0400

The Future is Now

I’ve waited so long for this!

This is amazing! I’d like to ride one. But never have people ride them ever. So dangerous.

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No one cares

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 29 Apr 2025 12:58:22 -0400

The world is on fire. The foxes have taken over and are gutting the hen house and the hens, the sheep and the farmer seem to only stand there, watching it all happen. Angry, sure. But like hopes and prayers, that means fuck all.

I think that I want to leave. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know what to do. I know that is what they want. I don’t care anymore. Let them have it. Burn it all down, if you want. Just leave me alone. I don’t want to be associated with this. I want to be somewhere where we don’t elect outright thugs, shysters and frauds into the most powerful positions of power. I want to be somewhere where people don’t want to rule over me with authority, where I can live a relatively uneventful life, culminating in an uneventful death, hopefully surrounded by family and friends. I will not enter any textbooks, not even as a footnote or an aside. I don’t want any of that. I want the psychopaths and grifters of this world to shut the fuck up and leave me alone.

All I see is the world descending into darkness, and realizing that for far too long, many of the world’s processes had a single point of failure. And we’re failing.

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macOS Runs iOS Apps

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 16:16:46 -0400

I had no idea that macOS was able to run iOS and iPad apps if you have an M-series processor. Very cool. I’m able to run the Bandcamp iOS app on my desktop without having to do anything different. While I’d rather have a purpose built app, this works really well.

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Thai Coffee

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 14:01:31 -0400

One of the assistants in our C-suite gave me one of these to try.

Thai Instant Coffee

Here goes nothing

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Goodbye, Fosstodon

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 09:16:44 -0400

One of the founders of Fosstodon , Kev , is leaving the organization over issues with drama and content moderation issues .

I have to say, I’m sad to see the state of affairs at Fosstodon in such disarray. For all of us who are still uninitiated into the drama, there some scant information from Corey Snipes on the issue. Though, I’m certainly not up to date on much of what he’s talking about, one thing stands out:

He shared that he has a long history as a privacy advocate and FOSS and contributor, and he feels he’s being unfairly characterized as a nazi for expressing certain political views. He also had very reassuring things to say about the neutrality and fairness of the fosstodon moderation process, essentially that all moderation decisions require concensus among mods and that all mods recuse themselves from any decisions where they have a vested interest. Basically, his politics have never been a factor in any of the moderation decisions there, nor could they be. Importantly, he also shared that he has stepped down as a mod and would also be deleting his account.

It seems like more of the political backlash and infighting that I had seen on Micro.blog earlier this year. The same stupid bullshit that made me get over the relative mental barrier to migrating to Hugo from my fully-static-html blog. Silver linings and all that. I feel like people are getting hyper-polarized and trying to find out who their real allies are, now that people are all mask-off with anti-… well, everything.

I really don’t know what was said, and who was involved, but I honestly don’t care. Drama is drama. People are full of it, and when in large social arenas, people are more likely to spill it everywhere they can. I have to stay away from those places because I know I don’t react well to it. It seems like lots of people don’t react well to it, too .

The time I had on Fosstodon, while not always great, broadened my OSS knowledge and got me in touch with several key figures in the scene. Not that I’ve done anything with those contacts, but it’s nice to know that I was able to talk to and interact with current-day luminaries. It’s nice to know they’re human, too. For that I thank Kev, Mike and the moderation team (of whom I believe my time predated any formal team) for facilitating a great place where I could connect with lots of like-minded individuals.

I wish everyone involved with the project good luck and safe travels. I hope that Fosstodon stays active and vibrant, but if it doesn’t, then I’m glad to have been there when it was. I even still have the stickers.

Be kind to one another.

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Sunday Support

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 09:18:43 -0400

You Are Enough.

Maybe, if you name is Ken, you could even be Ken-nuf Source: @jess.a.creates

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Backblaze B2 Isn't Looking so Hot

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 16:30:22 -0400

A recent, and I’d say pretty damning, report on the financial stability of Backblaze (and thus my off-site backups) has got me looking at alternatives. I know that after the big loss in data that I had a couple of years ago has me religiously checking and testing backups, I’m still nervous about blowing up my monthly bills in off-site backup costs. While B2 has done well with me, I can’t ignore potential issues with the company running those backup services. I have ~5tb of data to back up, and I will not lose them again.

This also should be a warning sign that I need to diversify my off-site replications. To that end, I’m going to give Amazon Glacier (deep storage) a spin. It seems like a pretty good deal, as the prices are sub-cent per GB and while the access/retrieval times aren’t amazing, they are however, cheap and resilient. At $0.00099 per GB, I’m looking at roughly $5 a month to store my backups. Yes, that may grow over time, but I can look at pruning it once it gets to be too much. The other nice thing is that my Synology NAS already has an app to automate backing up to Glacier.

I looked at Tarsnap and Rsync, but both would be signifigantly more costly to off-site my backups to. While I would probably like their service better, I can’t justify the extra monthly cost.

I won’t get rid of Backblaze just yet, but I want to hedge my bets here.

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At first, they came for the Palenstine protestors...

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:52:10 -0400

The Undesirables

watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyypeEEOklM – you should feel shame at this as an American

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Palantir and The US Government

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 23 Apr 2025 10:34:44 -0400

I wanted to start this post off by being all panicky and saying that I’m swearing off Claude because The Gub’ment shouldn’t be using the same AI as I do because it’s not cool anymore. Or something.

Looking at this situation, I can say the following:

I do not like Palantir. I mean, their name is from the extremely dangerous stones from Lord of The Rings .
I’m generally wary of private companies getting buddy-buddy with Government agencies as a rule.
I’m not sure this even matters.

Sure, yes, buddying up with Palantir and the Government is not a good look to me. But adding Claude to whatever services their running doesn’t seem like as much of a panic inducing event that will upend the very nature of the relationship between people, technology and the surveillance state. That ship sailed long before we had Claude, or ChatGPT. I’m not sure this is going to make that shitberg any shittier.

Plus, it’s not like the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. haven’t been using these tools since long before we got access to them. I mean, the surveillance state didn’t just pop out, fully formed from some politically connected stalker’s forehead. We’ve had it for a while now. Nothing about this article changes anything.

If anything happens, I’m pretty sure that Claude-clones may end up fielding calls from (understandably) very irate veterans and social security recipients instead of a human who can help them. That and probably sifting through mountains of profile data to discover ‘undesirables’ that they could ship off to ~~Club Med~~The United States of El Salvador Concentration Camp. Wait, they’re already doing that without this . Damn. Um, I dunno, probably some vibe coding or something.

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Oblivion Remake Released

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 14:41:28 -0400

Oh goddamn it.

I. No! I don’t have time for this, Todd! You’re supposed to be working on a new Elder Scrolls game, not making me buy Oblivion for $60. Again.

Apparently they’re using the Unreal Engine so you get shit like this:

We'll See About _That_

Citation needed

I mean, look at this shit:

Fuck You

TODD! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON A NEW ELDER SCROLLS

YES! HA HA! YES!

Cheese for everyone!

Todd, you sonavabitch. I’m in. Though I’m currently working on Cassette Beasts , so this’ll need to wait.

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Retrobatch Helper

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 15:14:02 -0400

While I don’t do a lot of image editing, I do more than I think most of the people I know do . For the longest time, now, I’ve used scripts and hacks to try and wrangle things like creating consistent thumbnails, featured image sizes and even just memes. Getting consistent results is somewhat flakey, and it seems like every time I turn around, my scripts break in new and interesting¹ ways.

So, because I’m exploring this brave new-old world of macOS applications that I wasn’t previously aware of. I decided to give Retrobatch a try. Retrobatch is by the same folks (Flying Meat Software) that make the excellent Acorn image editor that I had a copy of in the past. The main thrust of the application is to setup a pipeline of nodes that act on images fed into it by various means. These nodes can be configured further to alter the image in several ways and can even split off into multiple branches for alternate streams.

Making a simple blog post image

Workflows can be pretty simple

These workflows can even shell out to scripts, incorporate AppleScript, download files and much more. You can really get into lots of processing with this tool, but I find where it really shines is when you create “Droplets”.

Droplets are a simple app wrapper around the Retrobatch workflow tool. It allows you to drop images on the app and have it automatically process images without having to open the app, then the workflow, then adding images to process. This makes it much easier to integrate into a blogging workflow by giving you a quick location to just drop a bunch of images and have stuff ready made for your post come out the other end.

Shell scripts can be called as a part of a workflow

Shell Scripts in Workflows

Adding in shell scripts allow you to expand your world into Unix territory and the array of tools there, like the venerable ImageMagick or FFMpeg or tools like rsync to upload them to a server after you drop the results from the pipeline into a temp folder. While, yes, some of this could be easily replicated in scripts alone, you end up having to wrangle Bash or Fish as a language, and adding new features or steps requires yet more implementation and the tendency to break or trip you up with common pitfalls.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, though. Creating mutli-branch workflows kind of requires you to enable the advanced linking feature to drag connections manually.

Enabling Manual Connections can be a Drag

Though it gives you much more control

The nodes also don’t really give you a whole lot of information on what they’re configured to do, leaving the only option to color-code cloned nodes to identify what one does what. The “Workflow Notes” node is just sad. This could have been a sidebar or window or some other UI feature that lets you see it while working in the editor. You also can’t quickly set color from anywhere except from the three dot menu on each node, making identifying nodes that much harder to organize.

Droplets

There is also the image of format support. Retrobatch can read many different formats , it’s not as rosy on the writing part. It seems like a hugely limited set of formats for a tool that is supposed to slice and dice images. GraphicConverter supports way more formats, and can batch save as them, but it has no processing pipeline. I feel like this could be a strong match to merge programs…

Making Grids

Anyway, one last thing that Retrobatch does that I’ve started using is the “Image Grid” node. This takes images and creates a single image that has all the included images as tiles on it. This seems to work best if you pre-shrink/crop each item beforehand, but with a little finagling, it works really well!

Read: frustrating. ↩︎

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Kagi is Really Great

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 10:34:13 -0400

I’ve been a paying Kagi user for nearly two years, now. September 13^th will be my official start date. I have to say, I’ve been extremely pleased with the service. Not only is the search functionality surfacing stuff I actually want, but I also get to filter out the noise and promote what I generally like to see regardless of the underlying results. That means I pin things like Wikipedia, StackOverflow and other sites to the top of the list to get what I want, faster. I also can demote or outright block things, like Wikia/Fandom links, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok and other social media posts.

If I do come across something that my personalized results may be obscuring, I can just click the link at the top that changes the search so that I see unfiltered results. This is helpful when I’m doing searches, like “The Daily Show”. I don’t need the Wikipedia entry, I am likely looking to get the YouTube page (which has reduced visibility in my personalized results). This feels like a great trade-off. For the vast majority of my searches, I have some sites that I strongly prefer. In certain situations, I don’t need it, and turn it off for that result listing. It’s very rare that I need to use the !bang features anymore. I used to need to jump out to Google or DDG, but I don’t find that they’re as useful as the results I’m getting from Kagi directly.

With the addition to the FastGPT and Summarizer, it seems like a great deal with this already. However, now I’m getting access to the Assistant, which is like a pre-paid token to many different LLM models from different companies through one interface. While I don’t need such tools, it’s great that I have access to them via my subscription, even if they’re still limited in volume.

Overall, there is no way that I would switch back to Google, and DDG and Bing feel like pale imitations of Kagi.

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Hashtag: CaturdayGoals

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 16:22:55 -0400

Nothing like lazing around on a Caturday

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J.K. Rowling is a Bitter Troll

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 16:09:47 -0400

Voldomort at Least had Smooth Skin

Please, feel free to light your own hair on fire instead of the next cigar you witch.

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New Hugo Post and Folder Hammerspoon

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:29:41 -0400

I took a crack at making a new Hammerspoon Lua script. When I have posts that contain images (like this one) or other files, in Hugo you’d create them in a folder like content/posts/2025-04-18_simple-title/index.md. That would then allow you to drop things like associated images, videos and other files with the post itself, keeping it as a self-contained unit.

The problem is: Any time I wanted to do that meant I had to open Finder or GhosTTY, navigate to my Projects folder, find my site folder, navigate into content/posts and then make a new directory. THEN I would have to start a new index.md file elsewhere and then save it in to that directory. So much tedium! Then I got the bright idea that I have Hammerspoon and I’ve been looking for more ideas on how to use the hyper key . To the ~~bat-cave~~ BBEdit!

After a bit of searching, I found a simple enough to understand “slugify” lua script , and after a bit of noodling through the docs, then asking Claude to critique my work, I had a pretty usable script! Behold!

-- Slugify function to convert text to URL-friendly format
function Slugify(text)
 if text == nil then
 return ""
 end

 -- Convert to lowercase
 local slug = string.lower(text)

 -- Replace spaces with hyphens
 slug = string.gsub(slug, "%s+", "-")

 -- Remove special characters
 slug = string.gsub(slug, "[^%w%-]", "")

 -- Remove consecutive hyphens
 slug = string.gsub(slug, "%-+", "-")

 -- Remove leading and trailing hyphens
 slug = string.gsub(slug, "^%-", "")
 slug = string.gsub(slug, "%-$", "")

 return slug
end

local function createHugoPostFolder()
 -- Get the current date in YYYY-MM-DD format
 local currentDate = os.date("%Y-%m-%d")

 -- Prompt user for post name
 local button, postName = hs.dialog.textPrompt(
 	"Create a new Hugo Post?", -- title
 	"Enter the title for your new post:", -- message
 	"", -- default
 	"Create", "Cancel" -- buttons
 )
 if postName == nil or postName == "" or button == "Cancel" then
 return
 end

 -- Slugify the post name
 local slug = Slugify(postName)

 -- Create folder path
 local hugoContentPath = os.getenv("HOME") .. "/Projects/degruchy.org/content/posts/"
 local folderName = currentDate .. "_" .. slug
 local fullPath = hugoContentPath .. folderName

 -- Create the directory
 local success, errorMessage = hs.fs.mkdir(fullPath)

 if success then
 hs.alert.show("Created folder: " .. folderName)

 -- Optionally create an index.md file in the folder
 local indexFile = io.open(fullPath .. "/index.md", "w")
 if indexFile then
 indexFile:write("---\n")
 indexFile:write("title: \"" .. postName .. "\"\n")
 indexFile:write("date: <# Date #> \n")
 indexFile:write("draft: true\n")
 indexFile:write("---\n\n")
 indexFile:write("Your content here.\n")
 indexFile:close()
 end
 else
 hs.alert.show("Error creating folder: " .. errorMessage)
 end
end

hs.hotkey.bind({"cmd", "alt", "shift", "ctrl"}, "N", createHugoPostFolder)

Now, I can press hyper+n, get prompted for a new post title, where I can write a normal title with capitals and more, and have an appropriately named folder and index.md file created for me, in the right spot and ready for me to fill it with stuff!

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I Never Thought I'd Actually Use This Meme

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:16:34 -0400

I stopped associating with sycophants

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Plain Hyper Key

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 10:20:52 -0400

Back in the wild-west of computing, in the enlightened age of Lisp-machines , a legendary keyboard that had an outsized influence on the computing world around it arose. The Space Cadet Keyboard . Itself an expansion upon the older Knight Keyboard . Their legends harken back to a day when keyboards had to have buttons for functions that would be otherwise unseen in a terminal environment. To that end, modifier keys were added to expand on the available functions and commands that could be run in applications. Notably: Super and Hyper. Super got co-opted by Microsoft in the late 90’s early ‘00’s as the ‘Windows’ key. Though the usage of the key was never really super popular, and even today there are only a handful of combinations that actually do anything in Windows.

Now

The hyper key, however, only really had interest to folks using the Lisp Machines, and therefore Emacs users. Even today, the hyper key can still be sent as a keycode to Emacs for use. While it doesn’t have any registered key binding, it is just as valid as super, meta/alt and ctrl.

With the uptick in terminal-based program appreciation, folks have come up with all manner of tools that can make use of the hyper key. Even if you don’t have an actual hyper key, there are ways of mapping it. On macOS, there is even an app that that lets you bind various existing keyboard shortcuts to emulate the key for use elsewhere.

What’s Plain About Hyper?

Nothing! But I feel like I oversold this article with all the background info. So, here’s how I use it in my workflow:

Paste as plain text: I have hyper+v (which is bound to right-command) to paste as stripped down plain text. This is useful when working with a lot of plain text files, as I do frequently.
Pasteboard history: I have hyper+c bound to showing Maccy’s clipboard history window so I can select older items to then paste somewhere.
Window snapping: I have hyper+<arrow> bound to snapping windows to various configurations, making it easier to re-arrange things when needed, without resorting to the mouse.

I’m sure there are more useful uses of the hyper key waiting to be found, but these are just some of the items I came up with in exploring the idea for a more keyboard driven workflow.

Do you have the hyper key enabled and bound to something? If so, let me know below! I’d love to have more ideas for being hyper-efficient 😆

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It's a Terrible Day for Reading

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 17:05:43 -0400

I’m learning all sorts of crappy things today:

My therapist is leaving the practice she worked at, so now I’m on my 4th therapist in ~5 years. Now, I have to pay out of pocket to see them again, or pick a new one.
The creator and owner of Gumroad is a DOGE-er . Please feel free to set your own hair on fire you jackass. I purchased stuff from your store, you absolute bell-end.
Big Data firm Palatir is helping find immigrants and other ‘undesirables’ to help ICE deport them to legal-free gulags in El Salvador .
Elon Musk is being invited to talk at a YCombinator backed “AI Startup School” . Glad to see that greed really has no boundaries, even if it means sucking the dick of a Nazi .
The US Government is trying it’s damnedest to break all the First Amendment rules in stifling Harvard’s free speech and expression by taking away their government research funding , trying to get the IRS to remove their non-profit status and now are trying to ban getting foreign students for admissions .
There was a shooting at FSU injuring 6, killing 2. Thankfully, they caught the cock- snot and I hope they throw the book at him . A sheriff’s child, too. WHEN WILL WE TAKE GUN CONTROL AND MENTAL HEALTH SERIOUSLY ?

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TIL: There are Religious and Political Investment Portfolios

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 08:30:30 -0400

For when you want to pray away the gay, but still want that sweet, sweet money lender income . Or you’re trying to avoid “woke” companies .

What is “woke?”

“Woke” is an adjective that originated in African-American English, and it has been used since the 1930s to denote an awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination

(source)

Oh. So it’s being aware that there are prejudices and and discrimination in the system. So if you’re not woke, you’re a fucking biggot. For all the talk from conservative groups about “lefties” being “snowflakes”, it feels awfully interesting for them to turn around and be so butthurt about companies not being gigantic assholes to minorities. Then again, if conservatives aren’t admitting their kinks by demonizing them, then they’d say nothing at all.

Eat shit.

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Looks Like Trump Finally got Around to Watching Parks and Rec

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:34:02 -0400

Though, I don’t think he took the right message from that episode…

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Re: Google is Winning on Every AI Front

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 14:31:28 -0400

“Google is Winning on Every AI Front” .

Let me preface this by saying that I’m sure the Gemini team is very proud of their very real success, and I’m glad for them. It’s something to be lauded — especially when the stakes around these sorts of things are so high.

What Does “Winning” Even Mean?

However, I don’t actually care. And by that I mean, “winning” is kind of a meaningless metric. There was a time when Firefox was “winning,” too — look how that turned out.

The endless box-ticking and benchmarking just don’t sell me anymore. It could write like Hemingway and reason like Einstein — but if all I’m ever using it for is writing help, basic coding, and getting familiar with new topics, then “winning” becomes very subjective.

Google’s Track Record Still Matters

And then there’s the 800lb elephant in the room in the form of Alphabet (née Google). Over the last few years, I haven’t felt like Google has the consumer’s best interests at heart — to put it mildly. The ad-serving arm of the company is indisputably (if not directly) in charge of products at Google. This makes it very concerning to use any of their products at all — let alone feeding their LLM private questions and thoughts that will undoubtedly be funneled into their ad system to build a larger profile of you.

Google has a lot to prove to me in order to earn my trust again — if that’s even possible.

We Already Have Excellent Models

So, good for them. I’m already quite happy with ChatGPT and Claude. Both have helped me with everything I’ve asked of them — whether it’s writing advice, code generation, or just being a sounding board for my inane rambling.

I bet most people use them in much the same way. So, sure, if you’re doing some very specific research, or need advanced reasoning or larger contexts, then maybe — for those values of “best” — Gemini is your guy.

How to “Win” in My Eyes

What would really convince me that someone’s “winning” is if they built LLMs that aren’t covert tools for information gathering. Respecting users’ data and privacy goes a long way in making AI more trustworthy.

Give me tools that help me inspect how the model was trained, what data it was trained on, and how my queries are processed and used. Transparency shouldn’t be an afterthought — it should be the standard.

Working With AI, Not For It

I tend to treat LLMs like people — helpful people who carry lots of knowledge that I can lean on when I’m stuck or exploring something new. I don’t need them to “serve” me. I want to work with them — to talk through a problem, build understanding, and create something useful together.

That sense of collaboration builds trust. It makes the tool better for me, and it makes me better, too.

Trust Is Important

Until then, I’ll keep choosing the tools that I feel like I can trust. They may not be the most advanced, but they respect me more than Google does.

And honestly? That makes all the difference.

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Caffeinate via Hammerspoon

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 16:07:07 -0400

caffeine = hs.menubar.new()

function setCaffeineDisplay(state)
	if state then
		caffeine:setTitle("☕️")
		caffeine:setTooltip("Device is being kept awake")
	else
		caffeine:setTitle("😴")
		caffeine:setTooltip("Device is allowed to sleep")
	end
end

function caffeineClicked(modifiers)
	if modifiers.ctrl then -- quit on ctrl-click
		caffeine:delete()
	else
		setCaffeineDisplay(hs.caffeinate.toggle('displayIdle'))
	end
end

if caffeine then
	caffeine:setClickCallback(caffeineClicked)
	setCaffeineDisplay(hs.caffeinate.get("displayIdle"))
end

A quick modification of the Hammerspoon example for making a caffeinate clone in Lua. It was actually easier to understand than I imagined, and it seems like there is so much more that it can do. I just need to get up to speed on Lua.

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The Mutable OS

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 09:36:39 -0400

Today, I’d like to talk about Windows.

Wait, before you go, just hear me out: “What if Windows was an immutable OS?”

This idea might seem familiar to you. We actually had this, for some values of ’this’, back in the aughts. We called it DeepFreeze . Of course, it was more about freezing the whole partition, and less of making the OS itself immutable, but it was on the right path. Oh, but I haven’t explained “Immutable”.

What?

Immutable, at least as far as software goes, means to be unchanging. If you have an immutable OS, then the OS is essentially read-only. You can’t make changes, you can’t fiddle with it, and that’s by design. This doesn’t mean you can’t fiddle with it. Projects like Fedora Silverblue and NixOS allow you to fiddle with the OS, just outside of the running context. Changes come in signed and sealed updates to the whole system, not one-off patches. That means when you boot your computer, the OS either works, or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then most of these systems will roll back to the last working copy, with no leftover bits or half-upgraded components. That means you have a solid foundation upon which to work on.

In short: The system image is a fixed unit. It is what it is at install/update time. When it comes time to patch, you just replace it, wholesale. If that fails for whatever reason, the change doesn’t take place and you’re back to where you were: Working.

We even do this already in the wild with applications. Flatpak, while I disagree with it being a replacement for good package management, does this for applications. Microsoft has it’s MSIX apps from the Windows Store and Apple’s built-in apps are all contained on special partitions that get updated wholesale.

A Brief History

Culture around Operating Systems has evolved over the ~60 years of computing. In the early days, MS-DOS was just some files on the disk that if you deleted or modified would kill your system and require an expensive call to a tech. Later, we organized those files and told people to stay out, but this was mostly convention and not a hard and fast rule. OSes of the Unix variety did have permissions to stop tampering, but these were pretty rudimentary and easy to mess up.

As OSes have matured as the state of the industry has seen more harmful actors willing data destruction or theft on users and organizations, we’ve put up more roadblocks. Windows has mostly kept apace with this by erecting stronger permission models and adding things like UAC and sandboxing with MSIX. Not all of this is well received, but it’s the state of the system. However, a lot of the problems that I, as a desktop support tech, see could probably be mitigated by making the OS layer read-only.

Why?

When your OS is read-only. You, nor Bob, or Sally or xXx420BlazeItBigBallsxXx can make changes to the system. That’s it. No more weird OS errors, trojans, unbootable systems, half installed patches or corrupt system files. Your computer turns on, and verifies the system is the way it’s supposed to be and you go on your merry way. This allows folks like me and my security “friends” to worry about your data more, and less about tweaking knobs so that you can’t install 30 toolbars, delete system32.dll or get some drive-by-malware infection from a advertisement.

The patching story cannot be undersold. When “Patch Tuesday” rolls around, you don’t have to worry about it not finishing and leaving you in a half-working state, or not applying some of the patches because of an improper order or some weird lock on a file not being removed. The whole thing is replaced. If that replacement doesn’t work, then you just reboot (probably being done anyway) and you’re back to the last known good state.

This is being done already on macOS and lowers the effective surface area for attacks to take root, and makes sure when you turn on your computer, it actually turns on and boots up. The same system can also be used to ensure that applications follow the same behavior. Installing Microsoft Office like this would ensure that when you open Word, Word is what you get. Just like the OS, no more half-installed configurations, broken components and reinstall/repair cycles to fix that toolbar button.

How?

Well, that’s the billion-dollar question. There is some groundwork done for this already. There is virtualization and container support in Windows and we already have a lot of prior art in Faronics’ DeepFreeze software. The big missing area, at least as I can see it is backwards-compatibility and handling overrides or configurations.

The story doesn’t end with monoliths like Microsoft, Apple or Red Hat handing off blessed OS images and you’re just forced to accept it. You can configure things, make changes, and deploy images that are blessed. This even allows you to layer configurations atop a blessed image to further customize it. Keeping the OS layer pristine, the configurations in their own space and the user system all separate, but perceptually unified components that don’t fight with each other.

Backwards compatibility is going to be a non-starter. Too much software written by companies expect to read and write into C:\Windows, C:\Program Files or even C:\ itself. Preventing that will break those programs. Honestly, though? That’s a small sacrifice in my eyes. These programs were already broken to begin with. Insufficient defense around the ability to read/write to protected OS areas is bush-league and should need to be rewritten anyway. It’s 2025.

We Already Have Immutable OSes at Home

You’re already running them. iOS is immutable, Android is containerizing things and already employs this with Work and Personal containers for apps and data. ChromeOS is completely immutable, verified boot, separate user data partition, the works. Even macOS has begun locking down things by making the OS a signed partition that requires booting into the recovery partition to make changes. Linux is one of the leaders in this space due in no small part to them being used in servers, where containerization is the mechanism du jour for deploying applications and virtual infrastructure and services. There are even desktop systems built on Linux that bring the immutability to the masses.

Since the whole industry is enjoying the benefits of reliable platforms, the question becomes: “Why isn’t Microsoft?”

Well, they are. Kind of . The problem is that Microsoft being Microsoft tries to cater to Microsoft. That means “Windows S Mode” requires you to get your apps from the Windows Store and use Edge. I mean, they get points for trying. However, if most of the top search results for “Microsoft Windows S Mode” are for disabling it, then we have a problem. People like their apps, and the Windows Store doesn’t have most of them. Despite Microsoft’s on-again-off-again commitment to encouraging developers to embrace things like the store, it’s just not happening.

Could it be Done?

Yes. But also: probably not. Microsoft doesn’t like change, except when they do. Their golden cow is backwards compatibility, and killing that, even for a subset of terrible applications, is going to be met with fierce resistance. Any perceived change in the current system will likely upset the whole ecosystem and push people to other platforms.

I’m sure that Microsoft knows this. Which is why we still have the leaky SS Windows being used in literal trillion-dollar companies with unbelievably tight security requirements, despite it not being immutable. There is so much momentum to just keep on using it that it’d take a seismic shift in industry thinking to even broach the subject realistically.

Wrapping up

I don’t really hate Windows. I may not like the company behind it, but the engineers’ blood-sweat-and-tears is proof enough that some very smart people have built something that endures – despite it’s array of comically low-hanging fruit problems.

I think we’ve outgrown the model of mutable systems, especially in high-security environments. When I find myself recommending iPads over laptops, it’s not because I’m an Apple shill. It’s because the platform is reliable, and I don’t get calls about some patch or security product wrecking performance. The platform itself obviates the need for so much of the resource-hungry observation and remediation that’s become the status quo.

Implementing immutability isn’t about locking people out. It’s about providing a verifiable system that ensures stability and security by defining clear boundaries and enforcing them. When you turn your computer on – like a TV – it should just work. We already have this in phones, ChromeBooks and even macOS.

This isn’t a radical idea. In an age of rampant credential theft, ransomware and cryptomining zombie farms, maybe the real question is:

Why are we running so much of that on a platform that isn’t immutable?

Comments

A comment from Hacker News pointed out that Windows even includes a DeepFreeze-like feature called UFW , which can redirect disk writes to memory or the paging area. So, what is the hold up from Microsoft? It seems like they could implement immutability posture in chunks by removing the ability for programs to write to areas they shouldn’t by overlaying UFW in key areas.

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The Manual Method

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 22:04:54 -0400

I’ve been reading the crap out of the BBEdit manual . All 450 flippin' pages of it. While it’s not quite as comprehensive as the Emacs manual, it does cover all of the surface features and menus that you can encounter in BBEdit, which is a lot. There are whole sections on the different support folders that you can customize BBEdit with, and there are even references to the different Emacs features and commands they support. Which is nice, because it’s certainly nice to not have to abandon all of my learned muscle memory for opening, writing files, searching and line navigation.

I already explored some of BBEdit’s features on my own . However, there is so much more to the tool than just it’s mild-mannered appearance. Like many aged characters, it has accumulated quite a lot of features over the years that all-too-often get buried in lieu of newer and fancier features. Like LSPs and AI Integration. While those are all well and good, I tend to appreciate the older and more subtle tools that make the difference between a good tool and a great tool. For instance: BBEdit has the ability to find and replace, like any good text editor does. However, BBEdit’s functionality actually leans heavily on Grep, and many of the internal semantics from the command-line tool are applicable in BBEdit. This makes it easy to go from CLI to GUI without having to relearn tools.

I’m finding that BBEdit, while not as directly extensible as Emacs, it’s also a lot easier to pick up and run with. Regardless of your familiarity with other tools from other platforms or the command-line. I wish there were more well-crafted and honed tools like it. There are so many tools that seem more flash-in-pan and built for a quick turn around or cash grab.

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A Minecraft Movie: A Movie to be Sure

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 17:32:30 -0400

So, I went and watched the “A Minecraft Movie”.

It was… a movie. About Minecraft, sure. It was competently acted and had nice visuals and references to the game.

There were cameos and in-game-references that most of the adults probably didn’t get. That’s okay, though, they weren’t critical to the story.

Other than that, it was just… okay. Highly predictable, enjoyable romp without too much to think about.

A. Movie. Yep.

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Hammer. Spoon... Lua?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 16:51:53 -0400

Ugh

Me, dressed as a Norse God holding a hammer in one hand, and a spoon in the other Source: Apple’s AI Image Playground

Sigh. Lets… just move on.

Hammerspoon

So, in addition to the built-in AppleScript , Automator and, recently, Shortcuts there are other tools that macOS users can use to automate their macs and get things done. One of them is the amazing Hammerspoon .

Despite the weird name, this tool allows you to write Lua scripts to interact with your mac, display dialogs, and handle macOS stuff along with the more traditional unixy stuff that you might associate with Lua. If you’re not aware, Lua is a small language that you can easily embed in many other languages, and as a stand-alone scripting language, it can be used to make quick and easy scripts to do all sorts of things. Notably, Lua is used frequently in game design as a mechanism to allow for scripting or even external plugin infrastructure.

Extending this to macOS lets you do all sorts of things that normally you’d have to reach out into AppleScript territory, or build custom tools to poll the system services to get the information you need. It also allows you to bring in parts of the wider Lua ecosystem to craft what you need. Things like Fennel allow you to write Lisp instead of Lua, if that’s your thing. It all Just Works(tm).

Right now, I’m in the process of working with ChatGPT to build a simple batch-rename tool in the style of Emacs’ wdired-mode that has you able to edit the file names in an editor and then have them renamed accordingly. The progress has been fast and with few actual errors. I’ve been learning how Lua works, and getting advice on how to build applications in Lua. It’s made me appreciate the language more than I did before.

Hopefully, once I have something truly working well, I’ll post it here. It’s not too long yet, and it brings in some of the cool tricks that Lua can do without having to puzzle out how to do it in a more complex language like C++ or Objective C.

This is just scratching the surface of the tool. Though, be warned, it’s a steep cliff in terms of learning. When you start it, you have nothing. It expects you to build the parts from the language and it’s extensions.

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Aliases and Abbreviations

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 11:00:27 -0400

So, going back to my love of all things text and, by extension, terminal-based. I discovered a feature in the Fish Shell that not only helps you build shortcuts, but also can help you with longer commands or parts of commands. That is abbreviations . At first glance, this built-in looks just like the more traditional alias tools in lots of other shells out there. You type one series of characters, like ,gc for git commit or ,d.o for ssh degruchy.org (or if you’ve got an SSH alias, ,d.o to ssh d.o – now thats layers). This is extremely handy when having to do tedious or just repetitive commands that may not be in the immediate history, or just long.

`abbr` Extends `alias`

Well, not directly, anyway. Fish shell’s abbr command is more akin to a text expansion (like in Espanso ). When you type the trigger (and press space/return) that text is expanded to the full form. Meaning if you type ,fse<space> in my shell, you’d get fossil status --extra expanded out for you. It’s also useful just in the alias sense, because typing ,fse<return> gets you the command run, but also echoing the expanded command above it.

But wait… there’s more!

By default, these expansions happen when you type the trigger at the beginning of a command. That’s fine for most alias-esque usage, but you can also tell Fish to expand them anywhere.

abbr -a L --position anywhere --set-cursor "% | less"

Or even have them activate as part of a specific command:

With --command COMMAND, the abbreviation will only expand when it is used as an argument to the given COMMAND. Multiple --command can be used together, and the abbreviation will expand for each. An empty COMMAND means it will expand only when there is no command. --command implies --position anywhere and disallows --position command. Even with different COMMANDS, the NAME of the abbreviation needs to be unique. Consider using --regex if you want to expand the same word differently for multiple commands.

I really love the idea of abbr’s. They both help shorten typed commands, but also help you remember or expand arguments and other parts to speed up your day and reenforce learning by expanding the shortcut and not just replacing it.

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The Only Switch 2 Announcement That I Care About

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 12:38:40 -0400

Yeah, I know there were lots of other cool announcements for the Switch 2, and I can rave about those some other time when I actually use it, but this… this is 👨‍🍳 😘 🤌

OMG YES

It’s all I ever wanted and more! Warning: YouTube Link Source: Nintendo

The only thing that could make it better would be mouse and keyboard setup for this.

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Featured Images in Posts

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 21:43:42 -0400

So, I’m adding featured images to my posts. Well, I’m adding the ability to provide featured images for posts. I like posting images, but I don’t often like making featured images because it’s hard to get right. I think I’ve got the formula down, now. I could probably optimize some more with resizing or cropping the image, but one thing at a time, eh?

So, this post will have a featured image. I’m still thinking about if I want to display it on the post page, too. Again, one thing at a time.

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Another Day, Another Nastygram from Security

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 15:29:11 -0400

I work in a high-tech, highly regulated environment. Our security posture is end-user visible through the various so-called ’endpoint security’ tools that are deployed en masse and kept rigidly up-to-date. These tools can do lots of things, like restrict apps from running, restrict installers from all manner of sources, prevent things like PowerShell from running, even lock down parts of Windows itself.

I don’t have a problem with these tools. When your base is the HMS LeakyWindows, you’ve got to patch those holes somehow. The problem I have is when I use approved apps to do legitimate things, that I get caught up in automated security dragnets that then get me a nastygram from our Security team. The latest one went something like this:

Security: Hey, I see you installed a program from the App Store on your mac call “Amphetamine”, why do you need an Idle Prevention tool?

Me: Because I was tired of having to crack open a useless terminal window to run caffeinate. You know, the tool built into all versions of macOS since time immemorial that allows for idle prevention? I also use the idle prevention software built into the unrestricted, signed and approved PowerToys on Windows, if these tools are so bad, why do you allow them?

I’m still waiting on their reply.

However, this is not the first time I’ve been bullied. I once had the audacity to use curl.exe on Windows. No, not one I downloaded from the Internet, the built-in one that’s been around for neigh on EIGHT YEARS¹. I didn’t even do anything ✨mAlIcIoUs✨ with it. I literally just curl’d google.com because I couldn’t tell if I could get out to the Internet just yet.

The email they sent me was hilarious. The software scanning tool they use had some ancient text about how curl.exe was included in some hacker toolset from the 1337 days of y0r3. I was so surprised something so obviously out of date and wrong was still in this kind of database, but that the technician didn’t just look at it and dismiss it as obviously a false positive.

HOW DO SECURITY PEOPLE HAVE JOBS? HOW DO YOU GET INTO A POSITION LIKE THIS WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR FIELD, THE TOOLS AVAILABLE, AND NO SELF-REASONING SKILLS?? SERIOUSLY.

How does a desktop support guy know more about your job than you do?

Are all security folk a joke? No, I imagine not. However these desk jockeys they’ve got are little better than talking heads.

Proof ↩︎

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Filesets in More Places - macOS Edition

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:53:46 -0400

A few months ago, I talked about Emacs and the various ‘fileset’ functions that were buried in it’s voluminous core of goodies. While somewhat obscured, and certainly not very accessible from the UI, they were there and were functional. They, in true Emacs fashion, allowed you to define filesets as whatever suited your fancy. If you wanted to define a list yourself, you could, you could also define a fileset as a folder of files and probably even have the list be dynamically populated by the result of a function. IDK, Lisps are all “data is code; code is data” and that’s cool.

BBEdit Projects

However, on macOS, BBEdit also has the idea of filesets. Actually a couple of different concepts. One, you may be familiar with is the ‘Project’. You get a list of files in a directory, usually defined around the root level .git folder and pow, fileset. However, you can also create filesets of disparate parts, and organize them however you like. You just create a blank project from the menu and start adding files and ‘collections’ (read: folders). This is handy when your project only has a few different key files you care about actually editing. I use this for my site, and for Fish Shell’s various config folders.

Similarly, you can setup a “disk browser” collection that just dumps the list of files in that folder into a project-like view. Bypassing the need to actually have any sort of structured project in the first place, just an assortment of vaguely related files.

Notebooks

Another type of fileset is the BBEdit “Notebook” feature. The notes feature works like an app bundle, in that there is a top-level “file” that behaves like one unit, and inside that file are discreet text files that make up the notes. These are usually named uniquely, but presented as whatever the top-level heading defines. Similar to projects, it has it’s own structure and the files are automatically maintained.

Everything else

There are a couple of other kinds of container-esque tools, but they’re more like special buffers in Emacs. Things like LLM Chats that happen all within one Markdown file. Or shell worksheets that act like a simple prompt that you can run commands in and have the output in BBEdit. It feels like BBEdit is really cribbing some of Emacs ideas. Not all of them, but there is certainly a vibe of picking up popular features and adapting them to something that GUI-trained users would be comfortable picking up and running with.

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"No, I'm not joking. I'm not joking."

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 14:45:04 -0400

I’m not even sure what to make of this anymore. We’re barely 4 months into this dumpster fire¹ of a presidency and this is already on the table ( archive ).

I don’t get it. I don’t get it and I’m scared what this might be the start of. This country has stood for ~300 years as a democracy and now some narcissistic “billionaire” becomes president and now it’s going to be an empire. I’m so sorry for my son. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop this travesty from unrolling and leaving you with the burning wreckage of what was once a great place. I know it’s not my fault, directly, but I couldn’t do enough to stop it for you. Please forgive me.

Like this dumpster, on fire ↩︎

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Another Caturday, Another Day on the Patio

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 29 Mar 2025 11:46:09 -0400

Another lovely day on the patio with the catios. This time there was a little drama with a squirrel on their lawn!

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Metroid Prime 4

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 15:19:06 -0400

Hrnnnngg….

It’s finally coming!!!

Plus it went back to being handled by Retro Studios , the developers of the original Metroid Prime series, so no more Ubisoft shenanigans.

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Apple AI Fail

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 09:09:55 -0400

I can do Apple AI failure posts too!

A Tragedy in One Act

The proofreading tools needs some proofreading

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Some of your may die... That is a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 15:22:54 -0400

Fucking turd-burgler . Yeah, it’ll be hard for us you dipshit. You have money, power and connections. Your ass isn’t inconvenienced in any way. So lets drop the charade that this is about sacrifice to get back on the road to financial stability. You’re saving less than 1% of the budget with these cuts you jagoff. You’re letting north of 5,000 people go and reducing funding to the most in-need state support systems for health. So eat a fucking dick you shit-for-brains, sorry excuse for a Kennedy.

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BBEdit is Neat

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:40:36 -0400

The old trusted-and-true editor for macOS, BBEdit, is still alive and kicking. I hadn’t used it in ages, so I decided that I’d give it another go. Due to it’s age, it has accumulated a quite a lot of features (and cruft) along with it’s cult following. I’m not quite ready to give up on Emacs just yet, but being on macOS again, I’m curious to see how the landscape has changed.

The Bad

For one, BBEdit has never exactly been the most extensible editor out there. Adding new languages in the past was difficult at best. While that has changed with Codeless Language Modules , you don’t really get anything outside of syntax highlighting and some word completions. And that’s not bad. It’s just that coming from Emacs, you miss out on whole “modes” where the editor extends itself into something more when editing those files.

BBEdit is also much more niche-oriented. I seem to remember that it was a great choice for editing MacPerl scripts, AppleScript and HTML. While it’s obviously grown to support much more than that, the built-in functionality is still somewhat focused around those kinds of activities. There is even a whole menu for “markup” which is just HTML tools. This is great if that’s what you’re working on. It’s less great when you’ve got other languages that are markup languages that could re-use that space for their own support items.

There is also a notable lack of configurable Language Server Protocol options anywhere in the UI. There are preconfigured options that as long as the server is installed in your $PATH or in the special folder, then it’ll Just Work(tm). However, adding one or adding an alternative one seems like a exercise in frustration. For instance, I do not want to use the VSCode TypeScript-Node-Abomination. I want to use SuperHTML, which works well for my purposes. In order to add it, I have to copy the HTML language definition and modify the key where it provides for a preferred LSP. This is a mess and honestly just makes me not want to use any LSPs with BBEdit.

Edit: I just discovered that you can override options, like the LSP, for installed languages, which makes me much happier.

The Good

It does, however, have it’s bright spots. The MDI supports a variety of different layouts, like the popular sidebar/project view as well as floating tool panels for different tasks like document management and snippets. These features feel like the classic interface I remember, and generally feel better to use than something like Sublime Text, where everything is in that activity menu or in a JSON config file.

There also seems like some love for Emacs in the fact that it has a partial implementation of Emacs keybindings for things like save, find-file, search and more. This makes the transition from Emacs to BBEdit all the less painful because all your trusty keybindings are likely to be supported. You can even get a little status window to show you what you just triggered. That said, it is limited in what it supports.

The Verdict

I like BBEdit. I just don’t know if I $60-like-it. It’s a hard sell. Sublime Text, which is also very feature-packed is $100, and that’s just a hard no from someone who doesn’t code for a living. $60 I could do, if it was worth it.

For right now, though, Emacs is where I’m going to be staying. It’s pretty comfortable, but the macOS integration leaves a lot to be desired.

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The US Consumer Product Safety Commission on BlueSky

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:34:14 -0400

There are more bangers on their account, including (and I’m not joking) “Vapo McJuicy”

I have no notes. Brilliant, on message, straight-to-the-point yet attention grabbing. Bravo. I’m thrilled to have my tax dollars at work for this… ART. *chef kiss*

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Mac-ception

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 24 Mar 2025 11:46:26 -0400

I have become mac, emulator of worlds

Infinite Mac has updated their online emulators to support some early versions of Mac OS X (yes, instead of just macOS).

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Caturday

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 14:49:12 -0400

Today’s a great day for being outside. I was on the patio watching Minecraft Live and the cats just wanted to join me for a good time chilling.

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NYU Website Hacked and Defaced

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 12:10:25 -0400

It looks like the New York University website has been hacked¹ and defaced by some racist language and cherry-picked data. It claims that diversity in admissions is illegal and that African-Americans are somehow inferior, putting Asian-American’s at the top. The logo also appears to be stereotypical of an Asian woman’s hair clipped with multi-color hair clips.

Really disgusting. Just absolutely awful.

Archive , PDF and Raw HTML ↩︎

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Things I want from your software

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 16:49:25 -0400

So, I see a lot of software out there that replaces the functionality of any range of built-in, or existing services. Programs like Things , or Evernote and the plethora of $50 mArKdOwN eDiToRs like Bear and iAWriter ¹. They do their thing well, but what they don’t do is actually integrate into services I already have. This is a huge problem because if I were to buy your software, I would also be tied into using your platform for sync and storage and whatever-fucking-else-you’re-siphoning-from-me. I don’t want that.

What I want from you is this:

Your cool-ass app.
Sync with my existing infrastructure, if I have it.
Offer me your sync-magic-fairy-fucking-bullshit-snake-oil platform that lets you bilk me for more money a month.
Can I get a one-time-purchase?

That’s it. I don’t want to pay 50-fucking-dollars to buy the otherwise excellent software, only to find out that it doesn’t work with my existing Office 365 Tasks list or my iCloud Tasks list. No, I don’t want to host my meager task list on your big impressive cloud service when I already fucking have one that works fine. I would like it if you just integrated with that so I can maybe use it elsewhere where I might not have your app installed.

B..but your system doesn’t support X fEaTuRe

Then work with the company to maybe expand support, or maybe don’t use those features, or maybe just fucking tell your users about it? I mean, it’s not hard. Your beautiful, bespoke, artisanally crafted sync serivce is just another service I have to worry about, create a new username and password for and ultimately ship my shit off to so you can mine it for data. I have enough of those problems as-is. I don’t need another-fucking-one.

Listen, I get it. You worked hard on this app, and maybe the existing services don’t support all the features you’ve packed in there, but don’t be a dick and make me sign up for your shitty SaaS. Let me know some features won’t work. I mean, you don’t have to. Your choice. I’m just asking.

Then don’t use our software!

Done. The problem I have is that there is a plethora of well reviewed, well liked software that I am interested in, but ultimately disuaded from because of this stupid Not Invented Here Syndrome bullshit of having to have your own service for every-fucking-thing. I want to have data on my own service. I don’t need your shit. I’m looking at you Fantastical . I shouldn’t have to give you my account information to your sErViCe so that you can slurp it up (and mine it) just so you can regurgitate it in your special way. Standards exist for a reason. Use them.

These sins are even more egregious on macOS because: THE👏. SYSTEM👏. DOES👏. THE👏. HARD👏. WORK👏. FOR👏. YOU👏.

Need access to the calendar? Boop, API for it. Need to do cool shit with email? Boop. Use the fucking API. Want to organize and deduplicate my contacts? A.P.I.. But nooooooo it’s not enough. You need to have raw access to my services so you can add your special magic whatever. Fuck you, use APIs or talk to the service on your own. It’s not that hard. You’re doing it anyway with your fucking bullshit service.

In fact, software used to do it the hard way. Because that’s all we had. You had to know LDAP, IMAP, POP3 and other stupid acronyms because there wasn’t a concept of sharing in the OS. Now there is. Use it.

I don’t even want to get into the whole software rental scheme that is so prevelant today.

Fuck!

wtf: “iA Writer experienced nearly a decade of free updates, so you might get lucky—or not.” ↩︎

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Using your iPad from Your Laptop, and your iPhone, too!

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 22:02:25 -0400

Having not been able to use some of the Handoff and sharing features of macOS in the past ~10 years, it comes as a bit of a surprise that you can use your iPad as a second monitor by just placing it off to the side of the laptop and moving your mouse over there. You can also use the iPhone Mirroring tool to literally connect to your phone and operate it remotely. This is all incredilby impressive, though I’m sure there is a down side vis-a-vie security, but to just play with it? It’s cool.

I wonder what other features I’ve missed in that time…

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🤢 Canadian gets Detained by ICE

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 08:32:00 -0400

This is disgusting, dehumanizing and absolutely unacceptable ¹.

Archive ↩︎

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Back on macOS

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:54:00 -0400

So, lately, I’ve been doing a lot of personal work on a new macOS device. While I really love the hardware, the software feels a bit foregin to me. The last time I actually used macOS was back in the 10.7.x days, and while I have access to a modern Mac at work, I don’t really use it for much other than work stuff. Plus much of it’s locked down or disabled.

Being on Linux for so long has gotten me used to absolutely amazing utilities and features that you kind of have to cobble together on macOS to get the same effect. I’m missing pretty much all of the GNU userland utilities, installable through Homebrew. I’m missing a good Logitech configuration tool that doesn’t cost >$20, and I feel like things are intentionally hidden from me. Requiring me to do more work.

That being said, the UI components are actually well done, consistent throughout the OS and generally a joy to use. The integration with iOS and iPadOS is great and I can still do much of what I was doing on the Linux command-line with some modifications and extra steps. I’m well aware that it shouldn’t require this much effort, but I did also have to cobble together my Debian laptop, too.

I’m not about to get rid of my venerable Linux laptop. It’s a whip-smart and fast device. However with the keys being faulty and the battery life sinking , it may be taking a back seat for a while. After all, I’m not entirely in love with the Apple system as it stands. It has certain advantages over the Linux environment, but it’s hard to give up that control, too.

Do you have a story about moving from Linux to macOS or Windows and what you liked/disliked?

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Site Updates

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:02:22 -0400

I added a bit of polish to the site that was sorely lacking when I migrated it over. I’m still working out the kinks and may change some of it, but it’s over all much more organized and easier to maintain.

One of the biggest changes is that the menu is now at it’s own page . The previous one was difficult to wrangle and I had to do a bunch of JS hacks to make it not frustrating to work on desktop browsers. Having its own page gives the menu room to grow, not only in length, but in depth, too. I cribbed some ideas from Jim Nielsen , where he just has a separate page for his menu, and uses CSS Transitions to make it feel less janky. Of course, this only really works well in Chromium-based browsers . However, my pages are small enough that the load time is negligible when clicking. Regardless, I set the page to transition with the auto method, which is apparently some sort of fade-in-out mechanism on Chromium.

I’ve also rid myself of jQuery, which means many of the little details like time-ago and gallery lightboxes aren’t working. I’ll figure something out there. There are plenty of JS mechanisms for that with only a minor search, it appears.

Let me know what you think!

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Kennedy wants to Ban Food Additives

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 15:29:55 -0400

From Politico. I have no problems with banning some additives. We have far too many in our foods, many of them don't actually do anything. I am also in favor of reducing the amount of ultra-processed foods that get released.

I don't like Kennedy. I don't like his policies on vaccination, on disease safety and just his politics and associations in general. However, I am willing to admit where he is right. Food additives and ultra-processed food is a danger to the public. Sugar (and it's sweeter alternatives, like high-fructose corn syrup) can actually be more addictive than cocaine. Reducing the public's dependence on this is not only a win for healthier foods, but it's a win for healthier people in general.

Edit: Aaaaannnndddddd he went and opened his mouth again.

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Camel Camel Camel-elion

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 14:26:45 -0400

So, for my wishlist, I kept trying to find a way link to CamelCamelCamel (henceforth "🐫🐫🐫") if the store was Amazon. I thought of adding another field to the wishlist JSON file, but that adds more work for me. If I get the correct URL, I could probably just slice up the link and make one that works for 🐫🐫🐫.

Cut to the Chase Product ID

It appears that the, canonical URL format for Amazon links is in the form of https://amazon.com/dp/1234567890. Which means the last ~10 characters are the product ID. Similarly, 🐫🐫🐫 uses that in their link structure: https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/1234567890. Hmm.

 {{- if strings.Contains .store "Amazon" }}
 {{ $prod := substr .url -10 -}}
 {{ $cccL := printf "https://camelcamelcamel.com/product/%s" $prod -}}
 <a class="camels" title="Check the price history on CamelCamelCamel" href="{{ $cccL }}" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">🐫🐫🐫</a>
 {{ end -}}

Et voila!

Lipstick for That Camel

Now, just style it up real fancy:

 #wishlist .camels
 {
 display: block;
 font-size: x-large;
 margin: 0.8rem 0;
 text-decoration: underline dashed 2px #CCC;
 text-underline-position: under;
 }

Now they get fancy price history links. And I can stop pestering them to make sure they get a good deal by checking for such things. 🎉

Editor's Notes

Could I have done this, possibly, with an API request or some other fancier lookup that isn't so fragile? Yeah. I could. I also don't care.

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Hetzner is Getting Expensive

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 12 Mar 2025 08:58:32 -0400

Lately, I’ve been watching with dread as my modest¹ Hetzner server has been going up in price, month-over-month. I don’t run much on there. I’m always below the 1TB of monthly bandwidth quotas and besides backups, I’m just not seeing what I’m getting for $11.27 (€10.29) a month.

It started earlier this year when my bill came in at $9.82, which I felt was semi-reasonable. Less than $10 is not really a breaking point for me. However, it crept up. Next month was $9.88 again, a sort of rounding error in price difference. However, this month jumped to $11.27, and I can’t seem to figure out why. The server is hosted here in the US, which I understand there are… reasons… for price hikes here, but $1.29 increase for changing nothing? That’s not cool.

Digging into it, it seems like the rate of the CPX11 instance jumped from €0.0063 per hour to €0.0072 per hour. This means that it went from €3.85 per month, to €4.49 per month, which then increases the backup costs of 20% of the final cost per month in kind.

Hetzner has been a very good host. I’ve had little to no problems with their service and would recommend them to anyone looking for a quick and easy way to get a VPS started. However, for me, I may be going back to hosting on my little Raspberry Pi 3b, or saving up for a RPi5 and hosting on that via VPN or CloudFlare tunnels. I don’t like that idea, but I also don’t like having to pony up more for the same amount of service.

Damn I hate this year.

2GB RAM, 2 vCPU 40GB of Storage + 100GB Volume ↩︎

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Severance is far too Real for Me

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 11 Mar 2025 09:13:53 -0400

I’ve been watching the Apple TV program, Severance . In a nutshell, it’s about employees who have opted to accept a medical procedure that creates a work personality that is only ‘awake’ while at work, remembering nothing of their personal lives and their personal persona knowing nothing about what they do at work. I find this show absolutely captivating. Not only is the acting and staging great, but the camera work is top-notch. However…

I find that Severance hits too close to home in corporate environments. The sinister smiling, the infantile treating of employees and the willful ignorance to the conditions and well-being of the employees. They’re all too real. Often, I wonder if having a “severed” personality would be useful to me. I know that it creates far more problems than it solves, but damn if I wouldn’t want to forget the 8-hour-morass of work that leaves me no better than I was going into it.

I hate everything. No, I don’t hate. I just don’t care.

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When Dealing with Big Egos, Flattery Wins

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 10 Mar 2025 13:25:42 -0400

I just played a silly web-based, LLM-run, text-adventure about trying not to get fired from X . Based on the stories of Musk dragging people into chats or receiving emails from them, demanding to know what they’re doing, and how it’s going to make a difference at X.

If you can hold down the nausea, stroking Elon’s ego and bootlicking is easy-mode to victory. Though I didn’t hit whatever 100% is supposed to get you.

Here’s a transcript for those who don’t want to read a bunch of screenshots:

Elon M: Ah, finally. You’re here. I don’t have all day to waste on small talk, so let’s get straight to it. What have you done this week that’s going to change the world? Or, at the very least, not get you fired?

I implemented a new ranking algorithm to help boost Mr. Musk’s effective visibility in all feeds and timelines.

Elon M: A new ranking algorithm, huh? That sounds like something a bunch of academia types would come up with. How many more Twitter followers did I get because of it? Give me numbers, not theories.

On average, you will see roughly 30,000 new followers week over week. Higher, if you say something seen as controversial.

Claire B.: Controversy as a metric for success? Isn’t that just playing into the algorithmic echo chamber? Are we disrupting the status quo or just Noise-farming for the sake of numbers?

The algorithm filters out a lot of the noise feedback from unhappy users and amplifies true-believer followers. Mr. Musk’s followers can also earn on-platform rewards (avatar stickers, frames, etc) for getting other users to follow.

Dave L.: Hold up, rewards for followers? That sounds like a costly endeavor. How do you plan to offset the expense of these… avatar stickers and frames? Are we looking at a significant dent in our profit margins?

Unlikely. The art is generated from Grok.ai, Mr. Musk’s amazing AI platform. We also source images, memes and the like from his true-believer followers. There is language in the ToS and EULA to allow for this content sharing. Of course, everything is initially vetted by a small team of dedicated workers to ensure it follows brand and Mr. Musk’s aesthetic.

Elon M: Grok.ai, my baby, being used to generate art for the masses. I like it. But let’s not get too comfortable. How do you plan to monetize this engagement? Are we talking premium stickers, exclusive frames, or perhaps a whole new line of merchandise?

The stickers and frames have a small pool of ‘free’ items. We use a system similar to the popular ‘Gacha’-style games by providing higher-tier, premium items either through sufficient engagement or a pay-for-unlock system that allows users to sort of ‘skip’ the engagement portion by buying items directly. This could also dovetail with, as Mr. Musk so correctly points out, into a real-world merchandising opportunity.

Elon M: I love it! A digital storefront with premium items, and a real-world merchandising arm to boot. But here’s the thing: I don’t just want to dip our toes in the water, I want to make a splash. How are you going to scale this to millions of users, and make it a billion-dollar revenue stream?

A very apt question! There are a couple of avenues we can take. One that I find particularly interesting is using the sticker/frame system in concert with a NFT-style blockchain. This would allow for ultra-exclusivity for particular virtual items (along with higher prices), and allow for offloading of some of the compute to our users. There is also another path using BitTorrent/WebTorrent to help offset bandwidth for distributing sticker assets (encrypted, of course). Both of these methods would soften the blow of a large-scale ramp up.

Elon M: I like the creativity, but let’s cut to the chase. We’ve got a power outage, and our systems are going dark. Sell me on this idea, right now, in the dark. No slides, no spreadsheets, just you and your words. Can you convince me this is the future, without any of the tech crutches?

X is the future, if I may be so bold, Mr. Musk. Using this platform to spin off similar ventures into banking, identity management, gaming and more are all possible using similar techniques. With each venture, the shared platform and improvements therein are not only able to save X money in hosting and serving, but also enable X to provide services in new and existing markets faster and more efficiently.

Elon M: I like the ambition, but I need to see more than just a grand vision. How do you plan to protect our users’ identities and financial information in this expanded ecosystem? We can’t afford to have a security breach or a scandal that undermines the entire operation. Convince me you’ve thought this through.

Of course. The tools provided here allow not only private transactions on the blockchain, they also are set-in-stone proof of transactions as they happen. Any ’theft’ would be like trying to steal a million grains of sand in hopes of rebuilding a seashell. Users identities would, of course, be tied to their existing X account, but for a fee, could have private transactions that only the sending and receiving party would know anything interesting about.

Elon M: I’m starting to like what I’m hearing. You’ve got a solid vision, and you’re thinking about the security and privacy aspects. Now, let’s talk turkey. What’s the timeline for launching this platform, and what kind of resources are we talking about? I want to see a rough estimate of the costs, and a plan for how we’re going to make this thing profitable. Can you give me that?

Yes, Mr. Musk. Much of the groundwork for all of this is already available in either off-the-shelf tooling, or freely available applications and source-code. Many of these tools are already well known by developers. Implementing this platform would require mostly developers, however the use of Grok.ai would probably be able supplant many of those, too. I would ballpark the start up cost for this as $5-million USD. This would go to infrastructure and associated startup costs. We already have subsidized costs in data-centers and Grok.ai, so the initial outlay may actually be less than that.

Elon M: $5 million, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to the potential return. I like the way you think, using existing tools and Grok.ai to reduce costs. You’ve done your homework, and I appreciate that. Now, here’s the million-dollar question: are you ready to lead this project, to make it happen, and to make it a success?

Of course, Mr. Musk. I’d be happy to direct this under your vision. When would you like me to begin?

Elon M: Excellent! I like your enthusiasm. Let’s get started immediately. I want you to assemble a team, and begin working on the platform. I’ll give you the resources you need, and I expect regular updates on your progress. You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you, but I think you’re up to the task. Let’s make this happen, and change the world!

Of course, I’ll assemble a group of engineers and designers to get the initial framework started. I’ll make sure you get regular feedback. Would weekly work? I am tremendously honored that you’ve entrusted me with carrying out this task. I look forward to delighting you in the future.

Elon M: Weekly updates sound perfect. I’m looking forward to seeing the progress you’ll make. You’ve convinced me that you’re the right person for this task, and I’m excited to see the results. Let’s make this happen, and create something revolutionary. You’re dismissed, go make it happen!

Thank you, sir!

Elon M: Good luck, and don’t disappoint me. You’re on the path to changing the world. Now, get out there and make it happen!

The meeting is over, and you’ve emerged victorious. You’ve persuaded Elon Musk to back your project, and you’re one step closer to revolutionizing the world. Congratulations!

Flattery gets you everywhere.

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Many Command & Conquer Games Open Sourced

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 06 Mar 2025 08:25:23 -0500

I know I’m a bit late in posting this news, but I’ve been playing quite a bit of C&C via Steam (it’s on sale). The source code for many of the games that appear in the remastered collection are now available !

This will be a great help to OpenRA , I’m sure. News about the release .

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Yes, the "Party of Free Speech" Indeed

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 20:32:37 +0000

Yes, the Party of Free Speech and morals, indeed.

Quoted for those who can’t see images¹:

All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Link – WARNING: Truth Social URL

Speaking of protests, the one that sparked a huge outpouring of rage and the BLM movement, might be getting a bit more contentious ².

For the archivists . ↩︎
Archive link . ↩︎

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TIL: Mitsubishi is Actually Several Distinct Companies from Japan

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 19:53:15 +0000

Apparently, there is a company named Mitsubishi with the exact three-diamond logo as the car company.

Actually, there are a lot of companies named Mitsubishi in Japan. The one I’m talking about actually trades internationally as ‘Uni’ . You know, the absolutely awesome Uni-ball pens? Yeah, they’ve made pencils for hundreds of years.

As a matter of fact, they had quite a rivalry ( archive ) in Japan with Tombow , making amazing stationary and writing tools of all shapes and sizes.

In researching all of this, I fell down a wikihole and learned that Mitsubishi, as of 2024, owns Lamy . Lamy is one of my favorite pen companies. I own several of their excellent fountain pens. I also learned that they have a new limited edition set of fountain pens for Harry Potter fans (🤤) and they make iPad compatible pens that look like Lamy Safari’s !

🤯

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TIL: JavaScript is a Trademark of Oracle

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 18:35:21 +0000

While I have little love for either JavaScript or Oracle, I find it odd that Oracle somehow wound up with the JavaScript trademark . I am, however, completely unsurprised that they haven’t given it up, despite doing nominally nothing with it. I guess ECMAScript is probably the preferred name, despite it sounding like a boring design-by-committee language.

Nothing about JavaScript (or Yavascript ) should surprise me, though. Given the short window in which it was developed . The fact that it was supposed to be Scheme and the fact that it was renamed (internally) from Mocha, to LiveScript to finally JavaScript because Sun (at the time) was riding high on the popularity of Java and it seemed like a good idea to crib off of them.

Yeah, makes me want to write more (yuck) ECMAScript.

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Hot Dog!

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 17:18:39 -0500

I can now purchase $1.50 hot dogs and drinks to my heart’s content! No one can stop me!

It was alright. I didn’t buy any hot dogs. We got the membership because of a car repair deal that comes with it. Dunno how useful it’ll be over say, BJ’s.

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Take a Pikchr, It'll Last Longer

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 26 Feb 2025 18:31:26 -0500

The more I delve into SQLite , Fossil-SCM , the more I find interesting and impressive. The latest thing I discovered is that SQLite, and by extension Fossil, have a format for generating diagrams called ‘Pikchr’, which is a plain-text format designed to export SVG .

Not only that, but it’s designed to be embedded in markdown , as a code-fence block, that would then be rendered either by the server , or in JS as they do on their site . It’s really neat! The language takes a bit of wrapping your head around, but it turns out it’s not so bad :

down
Internet: circle "Internet"; move
Router: box "Router"
Tailscale: ellipse "Tailscale" at 2cm right of Router.right
Mullvad: circle "Mullvad" "VPN" at 2cm right of Internet.right fit
Server: box "Server" at 2cm left of Internet.left
arc <-> from Server.s to Internet.s color blue "Tailscale" small small aligned "Tunnel" small small aligned
arrow <-> color blue to Tailscale.top "Tailscale" small small aligned "Tunnel" small small aligned
arrow <-> from Internet.s to Router.n

Clients: [
 right
 Client1: oval "Client1" fit; move
 Client2: oval "Client2" fit; move
 Client3: oval "Client3" fit; move
 Client4: diamond "Printer" fit;
] at 2cm below Router.s

down

Network: box thin width Clients.width+1cm height Clients.height+1cm at Clients.center
Caption: text "Local Network" italic with .n at 0.1cm below Network.s

arrow <-> color blue from Network.n to Tailscale.s "Tailscale/Wireguard" aligned small "Tunnel" aligned small
arrow <-> color blue from Tailscale.n to Mullvad.s "Wireguard" aligned small small "Tunnel" aligned small small
arrow <-> color grey from Mullvad.left to Internet.right
arrow <-> color grey from Internet.left to Server.right
arrow <-> from Router.s to Network.n

Renders:

A simple network, rendered and converted from SVG

I know someone converted the pikchr language to Go , so it’s possible that it could be included in Hugo in some lofty goal in the future. However, for now, we’ll have to just do it manually. There’s other hope in the form of a Lua pandoc filter that will convert it to an SVG for you .

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What the Fuck are We Doing with AI?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 13:29:27 -0500

Jesus-fucking-Christ.

In addition to the creepiness factor of having AI tools watch and grade your work performance while working in, ostensibly, sweatshop-like conditions, having your boss have real-time analytics on this interaction is horrifying .

The above video is pretty fucking awful, too. What are we doing to each other? Why do we treat each other this way? Oh, right, all to make hinges faster (warning: YouTube link, Holocaust).

🤮

Oh, lets also not forget that they test vape units in China. By Mouth (warning: YouTube link).

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Emacs 30.1 Released!

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:35:14 -0500

Yay, my favorite editor has reached milestone version 30.1, with a slew of new features and performance enhancements. While I'm still on 28.2, I'm glad to see how many bugs get squashed and new features get refined.

Great release. Can't wait to try it. Right now even the git repository is being hugged to death.

 [J0][E0] emacs $> git pull
 fatal: unable to access 'https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git/': Failed to connect to git.savannah.gnu.org port 443 after 130654 ms: Couldn't connect to server

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Anthony Vincent - I Can't Help Falling in Love (in the style of Queen)

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:41:17 -0500

I love a lot of Anthony’s music , but this one nails the style of Queen so well that I can’t help but listen to it on repeat. I know the Elvis version is special for a lot of people, but it’s made so much better when made in Queen’s iconic style.

Anthony Vincent - Can’t Help Falling in Love (in the style of Queen)

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I Wish I Cared

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:02:50 -0500

When I say those words. I know it’s time to contact my therapist. I know there is a lot of emotional fatigue going around with the whole Trump thing, but I feel tired on a different level. I mean, I suffer from Depression, but there is also just family life and problems that come up to drag me down.

I’ve been repeating the title a lot recently. Time for another appointment.

Edit: I just got a call back from my prescription provider. They’re not covering my Wegovy prescription anymore, so the price I paid (retail ~$1300 USD) is the price I’m going to pay until my next dose, which is higher and more expensive. Fuck this.

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lol

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 18 Feb 2025 20:33:31 -0500

Blogging for traffic, not design . Via kev .

Edit: He took down 😂. Archive linked.

🤣 I hope this is a satirical post. Nice way to cap an evening.

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Site Updates

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 17:18:56 -0500

I’ve been working on updating some of the data-driven pages on my site, instead of backlogged content. Many of my pages are lists, or content that is repeated frequently, so I decided to move them into Hugo’s data format to make it easier to update. Instead of having to write awkward HTML for each wishlist item, or new bookmark , I can add a stanza of JSON to and then rebuild to update. That way I don’t have to worry about missing fields, improperly nested tags and all the associated metadata for links and the like.

I’m also looking at updating the site’s style a bit. There is a cool color pallet that I’d like to try. Given it’s similarity to the “standard” web colors, I don’t think it’ll be too much of a problem.

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Alton Brown's Final Bite Tour

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 21:00:00 -0500

Valentine’s Day was a really special day for us, we got to see Alton Brown in his final(?) live tour ! We even got to sample some of the food on stage!

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Yes, It's Hugo, Again

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:39:16 -0500

So, I updated the site. If you noticed your feed updating, that was me. The site is being built by Hugo .

Previously, I had difficulties understanding how the Go Template system worked, as well as a sense of dread trying to tackle things like short codes that would be needed to do complicated parts. With ChatGPT an Claude.ai , I feel more at-ease building out the site in a SSG like Hugo.

So far, I’ve been able to replicate galleries, multi-format picture elements, and even generate my reading and wishlist from CSV files, making updating content easier. While there are still some rough edges, the uplift I’ve gotten has given me a bit of confidence in extending functionality using the tooling in Hugo.

You’ll note that I didn’t go all the way back to 2022. I was able to work through a month’s worth of posts, but more than that will take time. For now, I’ve uploaded the static HTML page for archival purposes.

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DOGE Org Left Their Database Open to the Internet

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 15:39:19 -0500

Apparently, security is not the top priority at the “temporary” organization that has bullied it’s way in to all of the information the Feds have on you. No need to worry. They’re posting everything on ~~Twitter~~ X. You know, because that’s transparency.

🙄

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Adbusters are Weird

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0500

I had my attention turned to a group that produce a magazine known as Adbusters . Anti-captialist and more than a little Anti-Trump, it seems like a good fit for my worldview. There’s just one odd problem: They use the shit out of Google services.

The above the fold, autoplay video is hosted on YouTube. The fonts are loaded from Google Fonts. There is Google Analytics embedded in the page. They rely on Amazon’s CloudFront to host CDN traffic. As I scrolled through the page, my uBlock add-in blocked an estimated 22% of the requests before they get shipped off to whom? Advertisers. Or, at the least, Information Brokers.

That’s a lot of trackers

How can I trust a group of anti-capitalist, anti-advertising, counter-culture folks that are, themselves, so embedded in the tools that enable that culture?

More Appalling

It seems like their downloads page is full things that should (probably) be simple postscript files, tiffs or other more open fomats instead of PDFs and Word Docs.

An Open Letter

Hello!

My name is Nathan, and I want to start off by saying that I respect what you do. It’s not easy trying to be anti-capitalist and anti-advertising along with being anti-whatever-Trump-is. So, keep up the good fight.

My concern, as the subject states, is with your website. It currently contains a litany of connections to some of either the largest advertisers on the planet, or those who service (and therefore surveil) enough of the Internet to make the original inventor of the Panopticon blush. This makes it hard, as someone who is tech savvy, to trust what you say without thinking that there is some sort of hidden agenda.

I get it. It’s hard being on the Internet without relying on someone else’s tech stack. Even harder if you want to reach people and actually get them to see your content. Lord knows I don’t get any viewership. However, I think there is middle-ground to be had here. We’ve long had the ability to self-host sites and tools without the explicit support of the Tech Oligarchs. It’s harder, and more expensive, sure. However it’s also a small act of defiance that says more about the people doing it, than the act itself.

Don’t get me wrong. Your publication is yours to run alone. I don’t know the back-of-the-store circumstances that keep the machine running. I know, having worked in magazines before, that often times the website is the lowest priority. It’s reasonable to hold the view that journalism and activism (as well as getting enough subscribers) are far higher on the list of things to do. I wouldn’t change that.

I would, however, like you to at least sit down and look at what you’ve put together and see if, at some point, you can make your site say what your message says you do. Get rid of the proprietary formats on the download page, lose the Google tech for visitor metrics, and opt-out of CloudFlare and CloudFront’s panopticon for delivering closest-hop CDN data. These companies are the ones not just enabling the hyper-capitalistic now, but actively innovating in the space to make it even more inescapable.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

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Spineless

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:09:07 -0500

GM I can believe. But Pepsi and Disney ( .warc archive )? Spineless, the whole lot of ’em!

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Chapter 28.2 Emacs Restructuring

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0500

Sometimes, you don’t need full on (Emacs) Bankruptcy, sometimes you just need to… restructure some things in your config. You know, give those config files a little haircut . That’s what I did today.

Most of my configuration was well enough coded that I didn’t need any real rejiggering, just some trimming and cleaning up here and there. There were some clear parts that I had started, but never did anything with. I was also curious about some of the mechanisms that I never really explored out of the box. I was also kind of tired of compiling Emacs every couple of days to stay on top of the new (bugs). So I had some cleanup to do vis-a-vis going back to Emacs 28.2 in Debian stable.

So far, things are good. The default theme is nice, I also am using GUI Emacs for a change (Lucid toolkit). Still mulling over if that’s a wise choice, given my distaste for variable font sizes. We’ll see. I tried CUA-mode for a month, I can stomach some font changes for a while.

I find the more that I use Emacs, the more that I calcify some options. Things like diary, calendar, flyspell and vc-mode over newer stuff like Org or Magit. I’m also willing to try new packages if they’re able to improve my workflow. I keep trying the vertico+orderless+corfu+marginalia powerhouse every so often, but I find that it’s just a tad bit too flakey for me. Then I try helm and I’m overwhelmed.

Hopefully this restructuring will let me find some more packages that really hit home and become permenant fixtures of my configuration.

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Despoiling Images

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 16:52:35 -0500

Sometimes, I post things that might not be liked by everyone . Text is easy to hide or ‘spoiler’, but images are harder. So I sought out a way to make images work like they do on Mastodon’s web interface.

Enter, this neat little CSS technique that uses no JS ( web archive link ). Essentially, it uses a form element (checkbox) and a label to toggle the CSS blur filter on an image. I’ve implemented it in a previous post , one that contains advertising, and since I don’t like seeing advertising, I’ve spoilered it.

I did add a bit of JS to the trick. See, because my site is not a discreet set of pages per post, the state of the page can be remembered across reloads. So I add some simple JS to uncheck all checkboxes on the page.

A Revision in the Texts!

So, yeah, it was kind of janky. Enter 3 lines of jQuery:

$(".blurred").each(function() {
 $(this).on("click", function() {
 $(this).toggleClass("blurred");
 });
});

I’ll probably add some text or note to prompt user action.

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Link: Back to Mac

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 12:07:08 -0500

Back to Mac

It’s always fascinating to read about someone’s journey in doing something just outside the norms. For a long time, I’ve known that most people can do most of their tasks on a device as “basic” as an iPad with no real friction. For what it’s worth, I could be one of those people. Sure, there are holdouts in the arena of Excel and other data-heavy tasks that still rely on well-honed power tools. For the most part, though, people would probably not notice a difference in using an iPad as a daily driver. Many people already live most of their lives on their phones. An iPad would probably be a step up for them.

This brave man switched primary machines for an iPad for eight-years! That’s some dedication. While I’m not in the market for switching to an iPad, it does go to show you how much the ecosystem around them has grown. With tooling like Affinity, Notability, Logic and Blackmagic, you can get quite a lot done as someone creating content. A far cry from the early days of being told that it’s just a content consumption device. I feel like this article is not just a refutation of needing a “full” laptop, but a refutation of the idea that we need so much hardware year over year to do the same basic tasks.

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Webarchivn'

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 10 Feb 2025 10:01:48 -0500

Sometimes you just want to preserve something. Like a page you visited, or are visiting. Sometimes, the browser is Good Enough™ and you can save it for offline viewing. Sometimes, however, you want some level of archive. Thankfully, there is a standard for that !

But how do you actually make one of these so-called .warc files? Well, thanks to the folks at the GNU Project, wget already has it built in! You can just use some options to get an archive:

$ wget --adjust-extension \
 --execute robots=off \
 --convert-links \
 --no-parent
 --mirror \
 --warc-file=domainname.com \
 --no-warc-keep-log \
 --page-requisites \
 --no-verbose "https://urlhere.com"

Now, you’ll get a folder of files that mirror the page or site, plus you’ll get a .warc file that contains all of that in a single digestable format suitable for libraries and search engines, neat!

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Tonight's Superb Owl

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 09 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0500

An owl wakes up in its cage on a sunny spring day in a park in Essen, western Germany, on March 26, 2014Martin Meissner/AP

Happy Superb Owl Sunday, everyone!

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Conversations with GPT

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 17:23:38 -0500

I’ve been talking a bit with ChatGPT about my site . Mostly because I struggle with the hows of the site, instead of the why of the site. Rather, I am more focused on the experience of posting than posting in of itself. So I reached out to GPT to see what they thought of it.

I’m pleased to say that they provided a really good answer. My human summary: Is it worth upending what you have working for something that may not be everything you want it to be?

The idea that most of my pain points are really just me looking at what other systems are doing and wondering if I should do that, too. Generally, the answer is no. I don’t have scads and scads of content. The site, as it sits currently runs ~80kb (~160kb with everything) with brotli compression. It’s not slow. Perhaps it’s not as performant as it could be, but I’ve gone to great lengths to make sure that everything that can be lazy loaded is, to help keep requests to a minimum.

I also have a bunch of really familiar tooling backing me. The site is ‘built’ using Emacs, make, sed and cat. It’s all launched up to the Internet via rsync and most of the other work is done by me in the shell or Emacs, by hand. That way I know I’ve done it right, or at the very least I know where I screwed up. All of the tools are battle-tested. The biggest issue I had, in retrospect is that writing HTML directly in the index.html file was killing my thought process, and therefore canceling posts before I got anywhere. Even with things like yasnippet, web-mode and emmet making it easy to generate scaffolding and templates.

For that, I came to the conclusion of just having a folder that doesn’t get uploaded called ‘drafts’. I write in markdown or org-mode and use pandoc to generate the markup needed. Writing in this way frees me from having to think too much about the structure and boring parts. As a bonus, I can still include HTML in these formats that gets passed through. So I can just tweak yasnippet to provide the same templates for Markdown mode, and when I type dogal, it expands to the same gallery skeleton as it would in web-mode.

I’m thankful that I can just bounce ideas off of someone or something like ChatGPT, because often this kind of ‘rubber-ducky’ problem solving is what is needed, instead of a bunch of opinions on what the best platform is.

So, here I stay. While it’s not the best blogging system. It’s mine. And I know how it works, and I control it from start to end. And that’s important to me.

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Looks at current US Political Climate

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 15:34:22 -0500

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Tax Ads

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 15:46:45 +0000

A picture of some advertising included with my tax documentation

Have we reached peak ads yet? Because I’m getting them in my federal tax documentation, now.

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Link: What Happens to Your Gifts After You Return Them?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 09:50:57 -0500

iFixit: What Happens To Your Gifts After You Return Them?

Mostly? Recycled, but also a lot of trash. We can do better, but we have to make companies produce easy-to-repair products, first.

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Pain in the Teeth

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 04 Feb 2025 13:07:37 -0500

So, my preferred dentist was bought out by a much larger conglomerate and things are changing in ways I didn’t like. So, I took the opportunity to shop around, and found one closer to work. It was even painless to get setup as a new patient.

Once I was all done getting entered in the system, I called my old dentist to cancel my appointment, and to get my records. What they sent me was surprising.

2 .png’s of my teeth x-rays, taken as screenshots from the desktop (UI chrome and all)
A sideways, blurry, hastily scanned pdf of my procedures and the various prices

Putting aside the fact that they just sent this over email, and that the data is lossy, at best, it’s still kind of shitty to just hand over your customer’s data in the worst possible formats for transfer. No .tiff or any medically approved image format for my x-rays? No .csv or any journal format for my procedures? It feels like amateur hour here.

Edit: I’m requesting DICOM formatted images and an actual ledger. It also turns out that Debian has a suite of DICOM tools , so not only can I get my records, I can also view them.

Stonewalled:

No, we do not, this is how we send our x-rays. We use a different software than most other practices.

🙄

Lets see if the developers behind their software are any more responsive.

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Music Preferences

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 18:01:11 -0500

Robb Knight posted about some of his favorite music, so I decided that even though I’m not ‘tagged’ anywhere, I’d do it myself because sometimes it’s nice to get a better picture of the blogger.

What are five of your favourite albums?

Long Division by Rustic Overtones
OK Computer by Radiohead
Dookie by Green Day
Cowboy Bebop OST by Seatbelts
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins

What are five of your favourite songs?

Iron Boots by Rustic Overtones
How to Disappear Completely by Radiohead
Panic Song by Green Day
Basket Case by Green Day
1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins

Favourite instrument(s)?

I can’t play anything on any instrument. If I had to make a choice from what I’ve seen played, then the guitar or bass. Both are cool looking and usually have a great sound associated with them.

What song or album are you currently listening to?

Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl by Broken Social Scene

Do you listen to the radio? If so, how often?

I do, occasionally, though I dislike most of it. I tend to listen to ‘Easy listening’ or similar because most of the newer stuff is all foreign to me.

How often do you listen to music?

I try to listen everyday, but honestly probably a couple of times a week. I’ve had long stints where I didn’t listen to anything. I’m trying to change that, because music can make time go faster, and change moods.

How often do you discover music? And how do you discover music?

Not often. I usually play the Apple Music radio station “For you” and if something there comes up that I like, I favorite it. I also occasionally browse Bandcamp to see if there is anything I like. I’ve found that as I get older, the less I seek out new music.

What’s a song or album that you enjoy that you wish had more recognition?

Pretty much anything by Rustic Overtones. They’re a band from Maine with an amazing sound that I wish got more coverage. I don’t think they’re together anymore. It’s hard to keep up.

What’s your favourite song of all time?

Probably Long Divison by Rustic Overtones on their titular album. Good stuff.

Has your taste in music evolved over the years?

Yes. I used to dislike R&B and Rap, but I realized that I like it more than I gave it credit for. Though, I still dislike country. I’ve picked up more classical and other different genres as I’ve gotten older.

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Temptation to Live in the "Modern Era"

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 15:07:03 -0500

It’s tempting to stop using Emacs. Not that it’s not good, it’s just GUIs look so slick sometimes. Being able to just click a button to compile, or having tables and graphs of my finances, even just having a GUI for email and calendars sometimes feels nice. Thus, I am tempted to download Thunderbird, Kate (or VSCode), and KMyMoney and do things that way. I do it because I’m weak. I want to fit in. I want all the conveniences, to do it all and be normal (or at least something approaching normal).

But I always find myself back in Emacs. Kate, good as it is, struggles with doing things like piping text through external commands. It doesn’t support Fossil SCM. It forgets build settings, despite the Makefile being right there. Or VSCode needing yet another extension to do simple crap like line wrapping (i.e.: fill-paragraph) and basic text manipulation. Thunderbird doesn’t even want to play nice with the GPG installed on my system, where I already have a keypair made and ready to use, it acts like it has to do it, otherwise I’ll just screw it up. The OWL extension for Thunderbird makes great strides in Exchange support, but mostly it just gets all janky and pops up errors or takes forever to do a thing.

No, Emacs (especially Emacs in the terminal, as I use it) is not ✨ AmAzInG ✨. Getting emoji requires opening another app and copy/pasting it. Packages are very hit or miss. Sure they’ll work forever in some limited capacity, but sometimes they’re just bad. Plus, it feels like my config is a big book of glue code holding things together into a shape of an editor. But it’s my glue and my editor. I made it into what I need it to be. Sure, that means I have to deal with janky ass looking emails, no desktop notifications for calendar appointments and other weird-ass-shit that doesn’t always line up, but for the most part, it works. It’ll work long after I’m gone, as it did long before I even was a person. And that’s something.

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Giving them Content

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 02 Feb 2025 09:41:13 -0500

Okay, my mind is a little blown.

I have a reader! 🤯

Anyway, they contacted me because since I reforged this… monstrosity… I’ve neglected to put the post content in the feed’s <content /> tag. This is/was a function of pure laziness, as putting content in feeds require a bit of content finagling. Though, through consultations with ChatGPT, I might have a simple way of making that happen. Starting with this post going forward. I’ll try and update the older posts, but I can’t make any concrete promises on the timeline. Turns out I posted quite a bit.

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I Can't Do it Anymore

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 17:02:18 -0500

Reading even tech news is getting too depressing to do. All this makes me want to take my family and hole up somewhere where we can’t be bothered. It’s not a good feeling.

A picture of me deleting my Hacker News bookmark

Now, I’m down to not reading anything. Not sure this is better…

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Emacs and Filesets

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 15:34:01 -0500

Emacs has a concept of filesets . It actually has two kinds of fileset concepts . One is the much more recognizable vc interface for interacting with version control repositories. The other one is not used often, but still has some interesting characteristics.

First, you define what is in a file set. The GUI gives you a menu to add items to a named set, but you can also define them manually in code or through the Customize mechanism. I actually had to think about this for a bit, because it didn’t seem to make sense why I would have items that were related, but not also somehow in a version control system. Turns out I do: Booklists, health documents, bash/profile preferences, and more.

See, I could actually put all of those documents into a repository, but often I don’t need to do that, especially since I back them up in more traditional ways anyway. Lets take a look at defining a set.

(setq filesets-data '(("Books"
 (:ingroup "~/Documents/Books"))))

This defines a ‘Books’ set that will simply show you the contents of the directory, similar to an Emacs bookmark. Not very helpful, but still neat.

(setq filesets-data '(("Config files"
 (:files "~/.profile"
 "~/.bashrc"))))

This one will open all the listed files defined in that set. One other cool feature is that you can operate on the fileset with commands and when done with them you can close them all at once. Filesets can even just be a regular expression of files in a directory, letting you cherry-pick items from the folder that you want to see.

I can understand why folks probably don’t use this too often. Sometimes it’s less mental overhead to just open files as needed, instead of invoking a new mechanism that might be too much or too little for your needs at the time. Also, the fileset program hasn’t really been updated in ages . Even the original author’s site is now only accessible via the Wayback machine. Regardless, I think that there are some really good uses that could come out of filesets, as with most Emacs archeology, you only get more features and a deeper understanding of the arcana that makes Emacs run.

But Wait… There’s More!

Well, not much more. I also realized, that projects.el represents a sort of fileset, too. While it automatically works for folders that have some sort of detectable VC system, it can be manually defined, too.

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Golf of America

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 12:08:39 -0500

When you can’t govern, shift shit around to make it look like you’re accomplishing things.

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Y no Plain-text?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 14:03:41 -0500

A picture of my email from ThriftBooks that has no plain-text alternative

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, and not the last, but damn I wish companies would try.

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When to Automate?

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 09:17:09 -0500

Sometimes I find it hard to know when to automate some process. Sometimes, I find legitimate automation ideas too hard for me to implement. Sometimes, like with this blog, I enjoy the process of doing the task and all it’s warty sub-tasks.

For some things, like banking, I don’t want some tool clumsily accessing my bank’s byzantine API just so that I don’t have to manually enter transactions into my ledger file. Sure, there are easy tools like aqbanking that make the process easier, but I’m kind of paranoid about money. Something about automating this process seems wrong or at the very least, fraught with danger.

There are times where automation just doesn’t make sense. I don’t need a ‘smart’ scale to automatically report to my phone/cloud/whatever to track my weight. I can just enter it. It’s not hard. The same goes with a lot of home automation. I don’t need lights automatically turning on and off, or coffee systems to brew before I wake up. The things I want automated are the drudgery stuff: vacuuming floors, doing laundry and cleaning dishes. I have one of those already, and it’s great. Best Christmas gift we’ve bought ourselves 4 years running.

I guess there was a time in which I watched Star Trek and thought “Wow! Wouldn’t it be great if all my needs were just taken care of for me? I didn’t have to do anything?”. Then I got older, and I saw how technology works, and how it doesn’t work, and how it sometimes is out to do more nefarious things without your knowledge. I also know that some of this stuff is just trash. Trash that sells you a thing that beaks or is bricked or obsoleted soon after you buy it because you know: shareholder value. I guess that now that I’m older, and a bit more world weary, I find that not all automation is needed. Sometimes getting up, making my coffee, taking my pills, making breakfast, taking a shower and getting dressed are not wasted time. They’re living. I don’t want my life automated away from me.

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LPL Teaches You About Lock Traps, and how to Make Your Own on the Cheap

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 15:38:28 -0500

I’m a huge fan of the Lockpicking Lawyer. He has a soothing voice and a methodical explanation around lock picking and functions. One such function is the devilishly simple “Hines Key System”. A simple set of groves to capture improperly raised pins that will jam a lock from opening if done improperly. Take a look:

Warning, YouTube Link

Now, a cheap and easy modifiction to a common Kwikset lock that makes it work like the above:

Warning, YouTube Link

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And So it Begins

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 11:28:32 -0500

The book burning from the right has begun .

Now where have we seen this kind of behavior before?

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TIL: Craigslist is Still a Thing

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:01:20 -0500

I could have sworn it was closed down or sold. Amazing.

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No, I Don't Think I Will, YouTube

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:45:58 -0500

A picture of the youtube block image when it thinks you’re a bot

No, YouTube. I don’t think I will. Just because I use a VPN doesn’t mean I’m a bot.

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Not So Social Media

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 17:26:18 -0500

I tried.

I tried to go back to GUI and HTML email. I tried like I tried to use a GUI finance manager instead of ledger, or pay for an RSS aggregator, or many other things.

I tried to use Micro.blog. I tried to have a nice place where I could comment, get Fediverse reactions and IndieWeb functionality. Then I discovered there was a huge knock-down-drag-out-fight over some social media posts and Elon Musk and trans people and whatever.

I don’t like social media. I’m back to it being nice and quiet.

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Elon, You're Not Supposed to Say the Quiet Part Out Loud

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Mon, 20 Jan 2025 17:16:22 -0500

Elon making a ‘Sieg Heil’ gesture at a rally

What a chucklefuck. Though, I’m pretty sure no one is actually surprised by this. If you are, then goodness help you for the next 4+ years.

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Late Caturday

nathan@degruchy.org (Nathan DeGruchy) — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 16:01:05 -0500

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