Author Archives: jcs

The New Luddites Go After Digital Wallets

Posted on 2021-07-05 by jcs

As you know, Irreal is fond of calling out the new Luddites when they raise their heads to complain about technology, or leaving the farm, or whatever it is they’re upset about at the moment. Now, from Kontra, we have … Continue reading →

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Using Tramp

Posted on 2021-07-04 by jcs

Will Schenk has an interesting post entitled Emacs Tramp tricks. It’s not really so much about obscure things you can do with Tramp as an exposition of how to do the normal things you use Tramp for. The most unusual … Continue reading →

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Video Introduction to Magit

Posted on 2021-07-03 by jcs

Over at the System Crafters Youtube channel, David Wilson has a new video on Magit. It’s the first in a planned series so it serves as an introduction to the most important Magit facilities with more information on them to … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Dark Mode and Sanity

Posted on 2021-07-02 by jcs

The Minions, fresh off their recent victory in sneaking another light-mode/dark-mode post into the queue, have struck again. Here we have Kontra’s take on the eventual dénouement of the dark-mode fad: Mark my words: In the not too distant future, … Continue reading →

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Brian Kernighan on the Birth of Unix

Posted on 2021-07-01 by jcs

Over at CoRecursive they have a really excellent interview with Brian Kernighan on the birth of Unix. The interview starts out with this quote from Adam, the interviewer: When you work on your computer, there are so many things you … Continue reading →

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Punch Cards

Posted on 2021-06-30 by jcs

It’s likely that very few Irreal readers have ever used punch cards or maybe even know what they are. Nevertheless, they were once the mainstay of the computer industry. Indeed, IBM started out as a company that made punch-card-tabulating machines … Continue reading →

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Another Reason Elfeed Is The Best RSS Reader

Posted on 2021-06-29 by jcs

As you all know, I’m a big fan of Chris Wellons’ Elfeed package for reading my RSS feed. There’s a lot to like. Wellons reimagined what an RSS reader should be and organized it around search. Most of the time, … Continue reading →

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Lisp and Replace-Regexp

Posted on 2021-06-28 by jcs

Álvaro Ramírez has a nice post that reminds us of one of those things you don’t need very often but when you do it’s exactly the right tool. Emacs has many ways of doing mass replacements but one of the … Continue reading →

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The Evolution of Unix

Posted on 2021-06-27 by jcs

I’ve written about Diomidis Spinellis and his wonderful Unix repository before. It’s a single place you can go to get most of the publicly available Unix source code. As I’ve said previously, one of the best ways of becoming a … Continue reading →

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Innovation at the Office

Posted on 2021-06-26 by jcs

COVID-19 has dramatically reset worker expectations. Prepandemic, most people just assumed being in an office was part of having a job. Now, however, those workers have seen how well working from home works—especially for them—and many of them say they’ll … Continue reading →

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