Author Archives: jcs

Improving Keyboard-quit

Posted on 2025-06-03 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov is back with a quick tip that many of you will probably find useful. It’s an improvement to keyboard-quit or, as we all know and love it, Ctrl+g. One of Batsov’s pet peeves is that keyboard-quit doesn’t function … Continue reading →

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Why Does Emacs Take So Long To Load

Posted on 2025-06-02 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, EachDaySameAsLast asks the perennial question: why does Emacs take so long to load. Actually, his question is, “Why do people say Emacs takes so long to load?” He has, he says, been using Emacs since … Continue reading →

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Web Browsing In Emacs

Posted on 2025-06-01 by jcs

Joar Von Arndt has an interesting post on a subject that many Emacs users obsess about: how to bring Web browser functionality into Emacs. As, I’ve said many times, virtually all my tube time is either in Emacs or Safari. … Continue reading →

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Adding Timestamped Notes To The LOGBOOK Drawer

Posted on 2025-05-31 by jcs

Jeff Bradberry has an excellent post on adding timestamped notes to the LOGBOOK drawer in Org files. Most of us are used to using this drawer to record state changes in TODO notes. You can arrange to have the times … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Load Times Matter?

Posted on 2025-05-30 by jcs

It seems as if everybody having even a passing acquaintance with Emacs is opining about Emacs load times. That includes Irreal, of course. Most of us take the position that it doesn’t really matter how long it takes Emacs to … Continue reading →

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macOS Emacs Tricks

Posted on 2025-05-29 by jcs

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Álvaro Ramírez’s Journelly, an iOS app that I use constantly everyday. It’s a great app that I recommend for everyone. But Ramírez has been writing apps for Emacs and iOS for a long … Continue reading →

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GitHub As A Notebook

Posted on 2025-05-28 by jcs

I like GitHub well enough; I link to it often and even have an account but I would never consider using it for anything but public files that I had replicated on my own machine. I’ve been over the reasons … Continue reading →

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A Mansion That Changes Itself To Suit You

Posted on 2025-05-27 by jcs

iLemming has an interesting post on Hacker News about why younger engineers don’t use Emacs and why they should. You may find the post a bit overwritten but I especially like the ending: The specialized app user lives in rented … Continue reading →

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A Custom Keyboard Optimized For Thumbs

Posted on 2025-05-26 by jcs

Lately, I written a few posts about Emacs-induced RSI and various strategies for overcoming it. For example, my post on The Best Emacs Keyboard seemed to strike a chord with many Irreal readers. One thing that almost everyone agreed on … Continue reading →

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Emacs As A Guix File Manager

Posted on 2025-05-25 by jcs

Lynn Leichtle over at Lynn has an interesting post on using Emacs as a Guix file manager. Almost all of my work these days takes place in the Apple milieu so, of course, I’m not a Guix user and can’t … Continue reading →

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