Author Archives: jcs

Programs that Program

Posted on 2018-04-25 by jcs

I’ve written before about Eric Raymond’s (esr) UPSide project that aims to build an open source UPS that has reasonable performance and sensible operation. Esr’s latest post is especially interesting to me because it uses one of my favorite techniques: … Continue reading →

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Enough With Smartphone Addiction Already

Posted on 2018-04-24 by jcs

The new luddites are ever with us, of course, but I must say that the constant harping on smartphone addiction is becoming tiresome. Actually, it became tiresome some time ago; now it’s infuriating. I was saddened to see that Tony … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 48: Silver Searcher

Posted on 2018-04-23 by jcs

The other day, Mike Zamansky made a post that I really liked. It was about his grading workflow and how he tries to lessen the tedium by making it as efficient as possible. As many of you know, I enjoy … Continue reading →

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The Trouble With OneNote and Evernote

Posted on 2018-04-22 by jcs

In a post that serves as a nice complement to my recent musings on Open Source Tools, Karl Voit notes that Microsoft is discontinuing OneNote. Although he’s too polite to say so directly, if you’re a OneNote user, you have … Continue reading →

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Org Babel Recipes

Posted on 2018-04-21 by jcs

I find that one of the most useful features of the phenomenally useful Org mode is the Babel code block capability. You have to have facility with at least one programming language, of course, but this is Irreal so that’s … Continue reading →

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Sed

Posted on 2018-04-20 by jcs

In the days before GUIs, Unix users depended on a suite of command line tools to do their text manipulation. One of those tools, sed, is still used and useful today but many younger engineers are unfamiliar with it. The … Continue reading →

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RMS on Data Collection

Posted on 2018-04-19 by jcs

RMS has an article in the Guardian that discusses the safety of your on-line data. With the recent exposure of Facebook surveillance practices and their consequences, reporters have been asking him if he thinks it could be a turning point … Continue reading →

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Blogging with Hugo and Org Mode

Posted on 2018-04-18 by jcs

Over at ZCL.SPACE there’s an informative post about blogging with Hugo and Org mode. The post serves as a reasonable go-by for setting up and using Hugo for an attractive, static blog. Although Hugo now supports Org markup natively, the … Continue reading →

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The Job from Hell

Posted on 2018-04-17 by jcs

Imagine it’s Friday afternoon and you’re sitting in the local bar with a bunch of other developers bitching about how your company and its management is the worst ever. Then the guy from Project Failures stands up and says, “Hold … Continue reading →

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<t> Is Undefined

Posted on 2018-04-16 by jcs

Is anyone else seeing the error message <t> is undefined when using Emacs? Occasionally Emacs will respond to a keypress with that error in the echo area and Messages buffer. The key is otherwise discarded but pressing it again will … Continue reading →

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