🌎 Where in the World is Jack? Vol.02

Welcome to Opposite Land

I’ve been doing things that challenge many of my basic rules around blogging, note-taking, and general text editing. It’s been weird and frustrating, but also fun. Here are a few of the rules I’ve been breaking:

Rule #1: Blogs are best served as static HTML, ideally generated via simple Markdown files, and hosted on a server that I control.

What I’m doing: I’ve started blogging with Scribbles. Scribbles is a simple blogging tool “for humans”. It’s a web app. It’s hosted by someone else. It doesn’t even use Markdown. Even so, I’m having a blast with it. So I wonder, do my “requirements” around blogging actually matter? I just purchased a lifetime subscription.

Rule #2: All notes should be written in Org-mode files. In cases where Org-mode doesn’t make sense, Markdown may be used instead.

What I’m doing: I started using the howm Emacs package a couple weeks ago. Howm is a weird, relatively obscure package for taking notes. It uses plain .txt files by default, so that’s what I’ve been using, like a Neanderthal. Oddly enough, this seems fine. Short, simple notes don’t need complex formatting and will not be directly published in any other format. I’m putting the “plain” back in plain text.

Rule #3: All text editing must use Vim-like key bindings. This means using Vim in the terminal and Evil-mode in Emacs.

What I’m doing: I’ve removed all traces of Evil-mode from my Emacs configuration and have started using Emacs’ “vanilla” keybindings. I’m adding convenience bindings for the most common tasks when the default bindings suck, but otherwise, it’s C-x Whatever to do Whatever. And I’m C-n’ing and C-p’ing like it’s going out of style. I’ve also changed $EDITOR from vim to emacsclient.

Everything is so weird right now. 

—Jack Baty

Check out the full issue of the 🎉 weekend edition vol.018!