Author Archives: jcs

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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Using Org Capture Globally

Posted on 2020-02-28 by jcs

After my recent disaster with my old MacBook Pro, one of the functionalities that I still haven’t restored is the ability to call Org capture from outside Emacs. I used to have a bit of Apple Script that I could … Continue reading →

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Tom Tromey on the Future of Emacs

Posted on 2020-02-27 by jcs

During FOSDEM ’20 Tom Tromey gave a very interesting talk on what he believes the future of Emacs will be. Others, such as Perry Metzger, have also addressed this question. Almost always, one of the suggestions that come out of … Continue reading →

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Even Google Employees Are Trying to Escape

Posted on 2020-02-26 by jcs

As regular Irreal readers know to their sorrow, one of my favorite hobby horses is the need to keep control of your data. Broadly that means keeping it in open formats and on computers that you manage. If you’re committing … Continue reading →

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Who Cares About Emacs?

Posted on 2020-02-25 by jcs

Over at Opensource.com, Seth Kenlon has an article that asks the question, “Who cares about Emacs?” After all, the editor is ancient. Its GNU incarnation has been around since 1983 and there are plenty of glittery new editors to choose … Continue reading →

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Refcards

Posted on 2020-02-24 by jcs

Emacs has many subsystems that are complicated enough that they have their own reference cards: Dired, Org Mode, and Calc are prime examples but there are others. If I find myself using a refcard frequently, I bookmark in my browser … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 67: Emacs vs. Vi(m)

Posted on 2020-02-23 by jcs

As promised, Mike Zamansky has published his thoughts on the Emacs vs. Vi controversy in a another video in his Using Emacs Series. Unlike Zamansky, I was a long time user of Vi/Vim before I moved to Emacs so I’m … Continue reading →

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