Author Archives: jcs

Get Your News From Blogs

Posted on 2018-06-24 by jcs

Lately, it’s become obvious that just about every “official news source”—even tech sites—are in it only for the clicks. Journalists have been ignorant and biased for a long time, of course—see Michael Crichton’s hilarious explanation of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect … Continue reading →

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Xah Lee on Frames vs. Window in Emacs

Posted on 2018-06-23 by jcs

Xah Lee has an interesting post that I hadn’t seen before even though it’s originally from 2014 (since updated) and mentions a post of mine. The post is a discussion of whether it’s better to have a single large Emacs … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 49: Mu4e-conversation

Posted on 2018-06-22 by jcs

Mike Zamansky has another video in his Using Emacs Series up. This time he talks about mu4e-conversation, which I wrote about previously. Mu4e-conversation is a package that makes reading email threads easier. It has two modes, (1) linear mode that … Continue reading →

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Klipse

Posted on 2018-06-21 by jcs

I was looking through my file of blog ideas and found an interesting post about the Klipse plugin. The idea is that Klipse allows a blog post—or any Web page—to contain live code examples. Live code examples are just code … Continue reading →

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Xah Lee on Abbrev Mode

Posted on 2018-06-20 by jcs

Xah Lee has a nice video on abbrev mode that shows you a couple of ways to use the facility. Abbrev-mode is built in so you don’t have to install any packages: you can just start using it. Lee covers … Continue reading →

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Internationalization of Text Strings with Emacs

Posted on 2018-06-19 by jcs

I’ve had this topic in my blog queue for a couple of weeks but I noticed literally scores of tweets pointing to the post in question. That was enough to make me forego my own post on the subject but … Continue reading →

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How The Teletype Works

Posted on 2018-06-18 by jcs

If you’re like me and enjoy seeing how the mechanical marvels—like the Mergenthaler Linotype typesetter—that were used before computers took over everything worked, you many enjoy this film on how the teletype operates. It’s from 1940 and considers the mechanics … Continue reading →

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Line Numbers in Emacs 26.1

Posted on 2018-06-17 by jcs

As you’ve probably heard, Emacs 26.1 has replaced the old linum-mode with a faster and less cluttered implementation. I almost never need or want line numbers so they’re normally turned off but for the occasional times when they’re useful, I … Continue reading →

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The Macalope Takes Down Tech Addiction

Posted on 2018-06-16 by jcs

I keep writing about the silliness known as “tech addiction.” I can’t help myself but I’m not going to seek help. I’m not going to seek help because somehow has to call BS on this nonsense. Now the Macalope comes … Continue reading →

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We Have Always Been at War with Spam

Posted on 2018-06-15 by jcs

Via Wilfed Hughes we have: 1864: The first record of electronic spam involved a telegram sent by a dentist in London. One of the recipients was so infuriated by this poppycock that he composed a letter to the editor of … Continue reading →

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