Jack Baty's Microblog

I restarted my Micro.blog subscription this morning. I was feeling lonely all by myself over at baty.net, so I thought I’d revisit some old friends here. 👋

tap tap tap ::clears throat::

I was looking for an uplifting story about rescuing birds. That's not really what this is. I left feeling way more melancholy than I'd planned.

Rich people are bad, we get it.

Too loud, too much, and way too long. But there were moments I loved.

Third star is for Jennifer Coolidge simply being there.

I’m going to start using my jack@baty.social Mastodon account for short posts, then pull them into Micro.blog’s timeline via RSS. We’ll see if that feels less or more confusing.

I’ve started making it easier to find things in my paper notebooks. Or trying to, anyway. baty.net/2023/inde…

“I began to read just after I was four. The letters on the page suddenly gave in and admitted what they stood for. They obliged me completely and all at once.”

–“The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction” by Alan Jacobs

Reading is awesome.

The current state of the “photo wall” in my office. I love the chaos. (Reminder: print your photos!)

I love contact sheets, especially those made from medium format film. Here’s one of my former dog, Josie. baty.net/2023/cont…

I often think it would be a smart move to sell off some cameras and use the money to buy 100 books of photographs instead.

Finished reading: Antinet Zettelkasten by Scott Scheper 📚

You don’t have to convince me that analog note-taking is superior, but Scott spends the first half of his book trying to do just that. But after all that, things got useful.

Finished reading: Walking by Thomas Bernhard 📚

Repetitive and nihilist and negative and sometimes hilarious. Weird sentences that I got sucked into. Only 86 pages but in one long paragraph.

I could've used more dancing.

Yesterday, I was talking about how I miss smoking even after quitting more than 20 years ago. Then today, this photo of me smoking with my ex-wife literally fell out of a photo album I was carrying. Weird. I was good at smoking (Lucky Strikes), though.

I’ve been reviewing some of my older (early 2000s) photographs and have noticed that the 20-year-old film photos look great but most of the 20-year-old digital images look like shit.

Here’s a photo of my grandparents in 1931. How do I know that? Because my grandfather wrote it on the back. “In the rumble seat of my first car. Model T Ford 1927. Grand Haven, 1931”

Please caption your photos! (And while you’re at it, print a few of them).

Here’s a (Digital) test shot outtake from yesterday that shows the superiority of double-wristing. 😆