Author Archives: jcs

What Keyboard Are You Using With Emacs

Posted on 2024-10-22 by jcs

A month ago I opined that no true Scotsman Emacser would view anything but the Space Cadet Keyboard as the apotheosis of keyboards for Emacs users. I was promptly schooled that, to the contrary, most Emacs users today have no … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Adding Org Image Links From Dired

Posted on 2024-10-21 by jcs

Over at DyerDwelling there’s another great example of using a bit of Elisp to sand down the friction of a recurring task. The task in question is generating an Org link with attributes for an image file in Dired to … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Substitute Command Keys

Posted on 2024-10-20 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a nice post on the Emacs substitute-command-keys command. The TL;DR is that it’s a way of mapping a command name to its keybinding. I’ve long been familiar with it but only in the context of Emacs … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Emacs Drawing Tools

Posted on 2024-10-19 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, ismbks asks about drawing tools for Emacs. If you’re like me, the only thing that comes to mind is artist-mode with possible export through ditaa. That combination has always met my needs but it is … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Making It Easy To Unsubscribe

Posted on 2024-10-18 by jcs

One of the really annoying aspects of the digital age is trying to end an online subscription. These subscriptions are always easy to sign up for but very difficult to end. My favorite example is the New York Times. They … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Apple Was Right

Posted on 2024-10-17 by jcs

Irreal has been preaching for years about the dangers of giving the nannies a backdoor into our private communications. They scream, “Think of the children” at us and insist that they’re the good guys and be trusted to safeguard our … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Moving Among Emacs Windows

Posted on 2024-10-16 by jcs

Once you discover the utility of having multiple windows in a single Emacs frame, the question of how to switch between those windows arises naturally. Emacs, of course, has you covered. You can use Ctrl+x o to cycle between windows. … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Organizing A Book In Org Mode

Posted on 2024-10-15 by jcs

Somehow, I missed this great reference to Ron Galloway’s outline for using Org mode to organize a book. Fortunately, Sacha had me covered with her excellent Emacs News. If you haven’t written a book before, it may be surprising how … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Unique Card Decks Revisited

Posted on 2024-10-14 by jcs

Five years ago, I wrote about an interesting factoid that Paul Graham posted (probably to Twitter) concerning how many unique orderings of a standard 52 playing card deck there are. Almost all Irreal readers will immediately raise their hands shouting, … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Downside Of Living A Digital Life

Posted on 2024-10-13 by jcs

Regular readers know that for several years I’ve been endeavoring to live a “digital life”. What that means—more or less—is eschewing pencil and paper, paper bills, checks, dead tree books, physical credit cards, and even things like keys when I … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment