jtr-taonaw

[jtr-taonaw]

In case you don’t know, it’s very hot 🔥.

[jtr-taonaw]

Yesterday, I went to see The Muppets Take Manhattan at the Museum of the Moving Image. The Muppets are ageless and always relatable, as were the people who came to the viewing - all ages, colors, and sizes - just like the muppets themsleves.

As Pete said, “We’re all just people.”

[jtr-taonaw]

Trying to improve my workflow with Outlook and Emacs… and getting a headache. Nothing. My workplace blocks any third-party syncing options with Outlook, so I’m unable to set up email inside Emacs. Outlook doesn’t even generate links to an email (without API, which I have no access to)

[jtr-taonaw]

28 Days Later, 2002 - ★★

I wanted to watch this again before its sequel, 28 years later - and then I found out there's also 28 Weeks Later. Seems like I have work to do.

28 Days Later sets us up with our usual blend of zombie apocalypse with its own little twists; there's nothing too original that we haven't seen before, one way or another. What is a bit different is that this movie is not about the zombi.. err, infected, as much as it's about human nature and violence.

Toward the end, there's a bit lord of the Flies kind of thing going on, but with grown men instead of.. You know what? Scratch that, they're nothing more than children with guns. This is also the point where the protagonist goes through some near death experience that tranfsform him into a lean mean killing machine who can take on the soliders and the infected and save his girlfriend who up to that point was a doing fine kicking ass on her own, but you know, her hero is around so now she's poor and helpless and can't do anything. They even got her a dress and all. That's where the movie went from 3 - 3.5 for me to a mere two stars.

Not sure if I want to watch the next one, hopefully it's not the same formula again.

[jtr-taonaw]

micro.blog is one of the few places I know where not all the blogs are made by web developers or IT folks. Not that I have anything against IT folks (I am one myself) - I just wish more people would feel comfortable having their own website. I feel like it’s almost like having a driving license.

[jtr-taonaw]

I haven’t used this coffee ☕️ beaker in a while. Very fitting when I’m writing about org-mode experiments.

[jtr-taonaw]

Adjusting my org-mode workflow

One of the things that affects my workflow at work and Emacs recently is the source of my tasks and projects.

In the past, I worked almost exclusively with our ticketing system. My capture templates in org-mode contained properties for ticket numbers and user IDs to identify the users. Each task in org-mode I created this way included a scheduled date for that day, which I would move around later, depending on urgency.

This all went away when I moved to a more managerial position about a year ago, but it took me some time to realize that. My new position means that roughly 80% of my projects come from Emails while the rest come from meetings. I almost never have a ticket assigned to me directly, unless it has to do with my old position as a tech writer, which I still do now and then1.

Habits die hard, and I was trying to fit email chains and meeting notes into my task templates in org-mode with limited success. For example, I was struggling to figure out what properties I need, since emails don’t really point a user with a problem, but often describe a situation that requires a solution.

Meanwhile, I was swapped away by Journelly (and for a good reason) and started to use it in meeting notes, but realized that I tend to keep these notes in a certain manner that would fit nicely into a capture template. These notes, which consisted mostly of bullet points and questions, did not fit well visually with the rest of the journal. More so, since I often write down things to do in meetings, I needed an indicator to flag those meetings later, when I need to go through the notes and re-write those as tasks2. This quickly became cumbersome.

For my meetings then, I created this simple template (for more structured templates, I use org files rather than writing them directly into my settings):

* MEETING %? %^T *Discussion*: - *To Ask*: - *To Do:* - [ ]

I write the points in the meetings as people discuss them. As I listen, I come up with questions/comments which go below (I tend to write the answers as nested items below the questions with a “+” rather than a “-” to indicate an answer). The To Do part is newer, usually containing large items (projects) that need to be broken down further into dedicated tasks. This is still a work in progress.

As for emails, I still don’t have something solid. I mostly rely on my existing project template, but it doesn’t fit as nicely as the meeting template above.

Emails in Outlook are usually a mess of “conversations” by the time I get to read them. I then need to spend time on reading and understanding what’s going on, which is often an issue in itself, as people require urgent answers for complicated matters (Emacs is amazing, but I don’t think it can help me with that). I was looking into a way to identify emails by their email ID and use these as properties, but this is something that can only be done on the back end, which I don’t have access to. I probably need to spend more time with Outlook and its filters, and that’s a mess in itself, as Microsoft tends to change options and controls across its different versions. If anyone reading this has any advice, I’m all ears.

Ideally, Emacs projects stemming from emails should contain the email subject or another identifier (ideally in the header itself), then the people involved (the askers and the doers), location, and then resulting ticket numbers for the tasks created - but this is all flexible.

Footnotes

1 : interestingly, my experience writing technical documents is helpful when I need to delegate work or explain a workflows in meetings - and org-mode is one of the best place I ever had to write such documents because it is an outline tool that breaks processes to steps by default.

2 : For about a week, I used Journelly’s tagging system to tag certain notes as meetings, which helped me realize how ridiculous this was. Journelly is a place for me to see pictures of people I spent time with or capture ideas when I get a chance to stop and think a little, often by dictation. Meetings are nothing like these things, and they shouldn’t. It’s easy for me to write now, clear as day, but a few weeks ago I didn’t know.

[jtr-taonaw]

I was trying to summarize some of the things I like about Orion on macOS, but there’s a lot I’m still learning. All in all, it’s growing on me. Here are some of the highlights:

Dark mode for individual websites is nice, especially when the rest of the windows are dark

Compatibility mode is a quick way to lift ad blockers and disable extensions for websites that don’t work with those

Vertical tabs.

Links from the page you’re on show under it as sub-tabs.

You can organize tabs into workspaces for individual projects

Tabs can also be auto-hidden

Extensions from Chrome and Firefox allow me extra privacy and tweaking.

[jtr-taonaw]

Worries

Lot’s of worries about what’s going on in Israel and also here, which is not rare for me, but it doesn’t happen often either on the other hand.

In what is dubbed by the IDF “עם כלביא” (a rough translation is “people as lion”) operation, Israel was hit with large ballistic missiles that cause severe damage (compared to the rockets from Hamas, those can be considered “minor”), leveling a whole block with one hit. A few of these missiles hit, causing hundreds of wounded. My father is somewhere in the middle of all of that, sleeping and going to work. So is my aunt, and my other aunt, and my cousin, and the rest of the people I know in Israel.

Meanwhile, here in the US, the “No Kings” protests are spreading beyond LA into large cities, as expected. This time though it coincides with the tomato in chief’s (TIC from now on) stupid display of dictatorship, an event that came to be because of his birthday and the 250th birthday of the US military. It’s not an official display of dictatorship, but it doesn’t need to be. For the many who protest, this is what it is, and this is probably one of the reasons TIC’s going with it.

The other issue is the initial reason for the demonstrations this time - ICE’s actions against immigrants (not even illegal immigrants, as they capture legal ones too). How long will it be before a police officer somewhere or a soldier refuses to follow orders to arrest someone they know or stand up against what they believe in? Immigration is a big part of this country, and dividing it into “legals” and “illegals” is not a simple matter.

Only a year ago, I watched Civil War, and I voiced some concerns there. This country is slowly getting ripe for a war like that, and events like these pack up metaphorical explosive barrels in large cities. When there’s enough explosives, and I think we’re heading there, all it needs is a spark of stupidity… and as we can have plenty of those with TIC.

There’s the worry toward my Jewish colleagues and friends who reach out to me with their own concerns. They are checking in on me, knowing I have family in Israel, but I know that their concern for me is mutual, and they are worried too. There are enough financial concerns in our organization and insecurity about our jobs already, which is doubled by the “help” he provides through this crackpot anti-semitic force, yet another attempt to grab control under the disguise of concern.

My apartment here is quiet. I hear the sound of raindrops on wet leaves and birds tweeting here and there. A chill, lazy Sunday. I had my coffee, and I want to make time and write about my technological adventures, but my brain is stuck elsewhere - and it’s OK. Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

[jtr-taonaw]

Been meaning to write some opinions about Orion for macOS, but I’m running out of time. In the meantime, does anyone use Orion on iOS and know how to turn on reader mode there? It’s very handy on Safari.

[jtr-taonaw]

In other personal tech news, going back to Apple Mail and Apple Calendar for my stuff. Outlook makes it easy to see everything in one place (I have to use it for work), but I don’t like to see work stuff when I just want to check on friends and hobbies. I must be getting grumpier.

[jtr-taonaw]

I downloaded the Orion browser from Kagi. So far, I’m not really impressed. It’s… fine, but it doesn’t do anything much different, and some muscle-memory things (like double-clicking the tab to get the URL) don’t work or work differently. Meh.

[jtr-taonaw]

I just found out Kagi made its assistant available to all paying customers, meaning I can use quite a few LLMs (like ChatGPT or Gemini) directly from Kagi, included in my plan.

I just found out Kagi has made its assistant available to all paying customers, meaning I can use several LLMs (like ChatGPT or Gemini) directly from Kagi, included in my plan.

I don’t fully understand how the token system works or how it’s used to determine the search’s cost, but it seems like I’m not going to run out anytime soon.

Like the rest of Kagi, AI is available if you want it - it’s not shoved in your face everywhere you go (looking at you Microsoft) as if it’s the damn messiah delivering you from the horror of search. Search is still enjoyable - especially on Kagi. I don’t understand exactly how the token system works and how it’s used to determine how costly the search is, but it looks like I’m not going to run out any time soon.

Like the rest of Kagi, AI is availble if you want it - it’s not shoved in your face everywhere you go (looking at you Microsoft) like it’s the damn massiah delivering you from the horror of search. Search is still fun - especially on Kagi.

[jtr-taonaw]

compressing mp4 files while keeping better quality with dwim in Emacs

I mentioned Rameriez’s dwim tools, and it’s only natural to do some IT for fun when I rest from IT at work on the weekend, Right…? Eh, don’t answer that.

One of the important and excellent things about Rameriez’s package is that it makes it easy to build something custom of your own using the “Lego blocks” he provided with the package.

For example, one of the commands that comes with the package is dwim-shell-commands-resize-video, which lets you resize the resolution of a video (and through that, its size). It does the job well, but I wanted something that compresses videos while retaining their resolution for quality. I know how to do this directly with ffmpeg, so I thought I’d give dwim a go, and got something working pretty quickly:

(defun jtr/dwim-shell-command-compress-mp4-fast () "Compresses mp4 down further using slow preset." (interactive) (dwim-shell-command-on-marked-files "Compresses MP4s with libx265 using slow preset to bring down size" "ffmpeg -i '<<f>>' -c:v libx265 -crf 25 -preset slow '<<fne>>_compressed.mp4'" :utils "ffmpeg"))

There are a couple of things at work here with ffmpeg:

First, libx265, which is a newer decoder than the default libx264. The newer version does a better job at retaining video quality when compressing, but at the cost of compatibility; some older systems might not be able to play the resulting MP4 file or say there’s something wrong with it until you install the needed decoder. If you’re playing with ffmpeg regularly, you probably won’t have a problem - but the people you send these videos to might, so keep that in mind.

Second, the slow preset. This increases the time it takes ffmpeg to work on the video as it combs through the frames more carefully. I forget exactly what it does, but I believe it grabs a smaller group of frames each time, so more frame groups (hence more time) with different compression values.

Lastly, the CRF value is at 25, a bit less than the default 28 for libx265, so a bit less compression. I can probably push it up a bit further, but the above already reduces the file size dramatically.

[jtr-taonaw]

Journelly is having me try a new perspective

A couple of people wrote back to me regarding my last post about the challenges I have with Journelly (which, again, don’t really have anything to do with the app itself, but my workflow).

In an Email, HTH let me know that while Syncthing is not officially supported on iOS, there is an app that works and does the job just fine: SyncTrain. I tested it, and it successfully synced my files to my iPhone, iCloud not included. That’s an amazing find.

Meanwhile, I was thinking about how I can better streamline my process of refiling Journelly’s entries to my journal, where they are… archived. Duh! I can simply use org-mode to archive entries into my journal file. All I need to do is define the file I want them to archive into in the file options at the start of the file. Journelly even has an archive feature built in, but since I want to save my entries off the phone, it won’t work for me.

However, I realized I might not want to send my Journelly entries away. Journelly is convenient, and I use it constantly for notes. Having these available on my iPhone (where Journelly has an excellent search feature with tags) and on Emacs on the Mac at the same time is a boon to my productivity, not to mention, it just looks so nice on the phone.

So now I’m considering a different mental approach. Instead of refiling and moving entries away from Journelly, I’m going to try and expand on what I have there later. Some of this I already discussed before: things like meeting entries, for example, can be copied later to my dedicated meeting file, and activities can be copied to my event file, if I feel there’s more to add. The missing piece is expanding on “mind dumps” in Journelly that go into tangents. For that, I want to break the ideas into specific subjects with Denote later. For example, if I write an entry in the morning about Journelly and I’m realizing I’m rambling about the app and have ideas, I can later put these ideas into a “Journelly thoughts” note later with Denote, along with the appropriate keywords and attachments, as needed. This, I think, also covers the concern I have regarding privacy and iCloud, as the Journelly entry will just cover the initial nugget, where I will write some key points which I will later develop in a dedicated note off Apple’s servers.

This is all pretty new and raw in my head, so I’m going to try that out for the rest of the week and see how I feel.

[jtr-taonaw]

I wish I could use Journelly's new location features, but

Journelly keeps getting updated with good features. One of the latest features I noticed (I’m not sure if it was part of the latest patch) is that locations tagged with entries can be revisited in iOS Maps from the app. This makes Journelly a good spot to save locations and integrate them with personal memories, to be revisited later on the map. I would like to use this (instead of, say, a saved of locations on Google Maps), but I can’t - for two reasons.

The first one, which I can work around, is that the list of entries on Journelly quickly becomes long, and finding where you were a couple of weeks ago requires some scrolling. While Journelly has a search option, I usually don’t remember the name of the place I’m searching for, which is why I’m searching for it in the first place. Still, I could probably look for who I was with at the time, or even better, use the tagging feature, which was introduced a couple of weeks ago, for, say, “#cafes” to filter down cafes only.

The other issue is more challenging: I don’t keep my notes in Journelly. I keep refiling my entries into my main journal file. That file, while still on my Mac, is not synced with iCloud. Call me paranoid, but I don’t trust Apple’s iCloud with my personal notes along with my pictures throughout the years. As far as I’m concerned, Apple just has a better PR department than Google and Microsoft, and they only care about their users' privacy as long as it’s what looks good in the news. Because of that, I am not comfortable with Journelly being my archive of notes. There could be other options besides iCloud, but as far as I know, they all involve a cloud company somewhere. On Android and macOS, I still use the excellent Syncthing, which doesn’t involve any cloud storage. However, Syncthing doesn’t work on iOS, so I’m out of luck.

Besides these two issues (which have nothing to do with the app), the app is terrific. It’s amazing how polished and responsive it is.

[jtr-taonaw]

This morning, made Seitan tacos as part of improving my cholesterol intake. I don’t know that I’ll go full vegan, but I’ll go back to “my roots” and past it. 📷