Author Archives: jcs

COVID-19

Posted on 2020-03-09 by jcs

Even if you are living under a rock, you’ve no doubt heard a lot about COVID-19 and its potential to be a serious pandemic. There is, it turns out, not much you can do about the threat other than taking … Continue reading →

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Notion and Org Mode

Posted on 2020-03-08 by jcs

Ali Abdaal, whom I’ve mentioned a couple of times before, is a physician and YouTuber from Britain. He’s a geek who at least once a week uploads a video usually about medicine, tech, or studying and learning. If you’re a … Continue reading →

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Innumeracy and the Press

Posted on 2020-03-07 by jcs

It’s no secret that Irreal doesn’t hold the press in very high regard. There are, of course, exceptions but too many journalists are ignorant and lazy. That seems overwrought but consider this example: Mekita Rivas, a journalist who writes for … Continue reading →

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Some Simple Tramp Tricks

Posted on 2020-03-06 by jcs

One of the great and mostly underappreciated features of Emacs is the Tramp system that lets you seamlessly edit files on a remote computer. There are, of course, situations where Tramp is not the right answer—working with large files on … Continue reading →

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File Hierarchies

Posted on 2020-03-05 by jcs

A nice post from Karl Voit has been languishing in my blog queue since January and I realized that it was time to write about it. In the post, Voit argues that complex file hierarchies are the wrong answer. If … Continue reading →

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The First Pretest for Emacs 27.1 is Ready

Posted on 2020-03-04 by jcs

Nicolas Petton writes that the first pretest for Emacs 27.1, Emacs 27.0.90, is available for download and testing. If you don’t mind living a bit on the edge and would like to try out the latest and greatest, give it … Continue reading →

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Raw Data and Reproducible Research

Posted on 2020-03-03 by jcs

I’ve often written that reproducible research is the best way to do science. Over at Molecular Brain, it’s editor, Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, has a long and interesting editorial that argues that if you aren’t providing raw data, you aren’t doing science. … Continue reading →

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TECO

Posted on 2020-03-02 by jcs

If you’ve ever wanted to play around with the patriarch of the Emacs family, now you can. The TECO editor was developed in 1962 to work with paper tapes. In fact, TECO originally stood for “Tape Editor and Corrector” but … Continue reading →

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An Introduction to Org Capture

Posted on 2020-03-01 by jcs

One of the most powerful and useful functions provided by Org Mode is the capture facility. With it, you can easily capture data and context and store it in an Org file of like items in any of a number … Continue reading →

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Revolt of the Librarians

Posted on 2020-02-29 by jcs

Ars Technica has an interesting article about the on-going open access wars. University libraries, like everyone else, have to operate on a budget and fee increases from journal publishers is putting the squeeze on those budgets. Librarians are starting to … Continue reading →

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