Author Archives: jcs

Work From Home Surveillance

Posted on 2020-05-18 by jcs

Speaking of the downsides of working from home, NPR and CNBC have horrifying stories about the anal micromanagers requiring workers to install spyware on their computer and even their phones so they can track their every movement, keystroke, and mouse … Continue reading →

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Roam Research

Posted on 2020-05-17 by jcs

Those of you who have been paying attention know that I’m embarking on a project to implement a Zettelkasten to organize my notes and ideas. My current plan is to base this on Jethro Kuan’s org-roam. Org-roam is an Emacs … Continue reading →

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Emacs By Macros 6

Posted on 2020-05-16 by jcs

Sahas Subramanian is back with another excellent episode of learning Emacs through keyboard macros. This video covers editing macros to correct or change a macro without starting over. If you have a long and complicated macro, that can be a … Continue reading →

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Manhattan and Working From Home

Posted on 2020-05-15 by jcs

Irreal readers know that I’ve been fascinated with remote work for a long time and consider it a good thing for most people and the companies they work for. COVID-19 has accelerated the trend as many companies—and their employees—discover that … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 71: Openwith

Posted on 2020-05-14 by jcs

Mike Zamansky, freshly back from a bout with COVID-19, has a new video in his Using Emacs Series that considers the openwith package. The backstory is a long standing annoyance in Zamansky’s workflow: although he can open non-text files such … Continue reading →

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Digital Payments in Developing Countries

Posted on 2020-05-13 by jcs

As all of you know by now, I’m a big fan of the digital lifestyle but I have a first-world perspective. I want to be able to use Apple pay because it’s easier and I don’t have to carry around … Continue reading →

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Better Emacs Configuration with use-package

Posted on 2020-05-12 by jcs

Menno Finlay-Smits has an interesting post on using John Wiegley’s use-package package. It’s a fairly short post but Finlay-Smits makes a good case that the package make Emacs configuration cleaner and easier. As he also points out, it’s easy to … Continue reading →

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Zetteldeft

Posted on 2020-05-11 by jcs

This is another entry in my series of posts on the idea of a Zettelkasten. Although I’ve mostly written about and am planning to use org-roam, that’s not the only possibility. Elias Storms built his own Zettelkasten by leveraging the … Continue reading →

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COVID-19 and Open Offices

Posted on 2020-05-10 by jcs

There’s not many beneficial outcomes from the current COVID-19 crisis but The New York Times suggests one possibility: the end of open plan offices. The Times doesn’t say that open plan offices will go away because of the pandemic but … Continue reading →

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Zettelkasten Explained

Posted on 2020-05-09 by jcs

I’ve finished reading Sönke Ahrens’ How to Take Smart Notes and, as promised, I’ve started exploring Jethro Kuan’s Org-roam as a way of implementing my own Zettelkasten. I’ve downloaded and installed Org-roam and am currently going over the documentation. In … Continue reading →

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