Author Archives: jcs

Emacs Only Static Blog Site

Posted on 2024-12-31 by jcs

Every Irreal reader who’s paying even a little attention knows that this site is WordPress based. It’s been that way since 2011, and I’m pretty satisfied with it as a blogging platform. Still, it would be nice to have a … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Crossword Construction

Posted on 2024-12-30 by jcs

I’ve been doing crosswords (American style) for most of my life but one thing I’ve never understood is how one goes about constructing them. It really is a hard problem when you think about it. Forget about clues and all … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Switching Bewteen HTML and Text In Mu4e

Posted on 2024-12-29 by jcs

Anyone who’s been reading Irreal for a while knows that I’m a huge fan of Mu/Mu4e for dealing with my email. It has just the right features for my preferred workflow. That includes it’s robust search capabilities that allow me … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

PSA: The GPG/Emacs Interaction Bug Is Fixed

Posted on 2024-12-28 by jcs

I’m probably the last person on earth to know this but the longstanding bug between GPG and Emacs where Emacs could not open a GPG encrypted file has been fixed. Indeed, it was fixed in GPG 2.4.4 back in January. … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

An Emacs IDE For Python

Posted on 2024-12-27 by jcs

I’m not much of an IDE fan but many (most?) people are and want, in particular, to have some LSP integration for their favorite language. Lots of folks are using Python these days either as a quick-and-dirty scripting language or … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

From The Too Much Time On Their Hands Department: Pink Floyd Division

Posted on 2024-12-26 by jcs

Okay, okay. I wouldn’t be writing about this if it didn’t involve Pink Floyd but it does so here we are. Matthias over at The Corelatus Blog decided, at the request of a friend, to decode the phone system signaling … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

PSA: Use The Lucid Toolkit

Posted on 2024-12-25 by jcs

It’s Christmas, a day that we at the Irreal Bunker celebrate in large part by being slothful. Therefore, today’s offering is a quickie. On the other hand, since it is Christmas, you can also think of this post as a … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Why You Want Your Tools To Be Programmable

Posted on 2024-12-24 by jcs

A constant theme here at Irreal is that one of Emacs’ virtues is its programmability. Not the ersatz programmability offered by VS Code or even Vim but real programmability. You can introduce new code or change old code while Emacs … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

24 Emacs Packages To Try During The Holidays

Posted on 2024-12-23 by jcs

Marie K. Ekeberg has a holiday gift for Emacs users: a list of 24 Emacs packages that you can try during the holidays. The list is interesting in that it doesn’t really have a theme other than that they’re packages … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

CISA Best Practices for Mobile Communications

Posted on 2024-12-22 by jcs

Recently, The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released some best practices for mobile communications. These are the result of the recent exploits attributed to The People’s Republic of China. While the recommendations were targeted at senior government officials, they … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment