Author Archives: jcs

Elisp/Emacs Examples

Posted on 2015-07-08 by jcs

Caio Rordrigues has an excellent resource for beginning/intermediate Elisp programmers that also lists some of the common Emacs customizations that many Emacs users end up making. For example, it tells you how to turn off requiring a “yes” or “no” … Continue reading →

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Draft #4

Posted on 2015-07-07 by jcs

I’ve had this post in my blog-ideas queue for some time but it’s always seemed too far afield from Irreal’s interests—being about writing and dictionaries, and stuff—to write about. Now, happily, I’ve found the perfect hook. I wrote previously about … Continue reading →

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Mastering Emacs in Emacs

Posted on 2015-07-06 by jcs

Virtually every Emacs geek knows about and has probably purchased Mickey’s Mastering Emacs. Álvaro Ramírez wanted a bit more: he wanted to be able to search it from Emacs. That turns out to be surprisingly easy. Just download the epub … Continue reading →

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Roundup of Open Plan Office Research

Posted on 2015-07-05 by jcs

Jack Schofield over at ZD Net has a nice post on the evils of open plan office layouts. That’s a favored Irreal hobbyhorse, of course, so you might think I’ve said just about everything there is to say about the … Continue reading →

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Obscure Math Curiosity of the Day

Posted on 2015-07-04 by jcs

The Fibonacci sequence: it’s everywhere.

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SBCL 1.2.13 Released

Posted on 2015-07-04 by jcs

The Steel Bank Common Lisp developers have released version 1.2.13. The release fixes 8 bugs and has a few enhancements for the Windows port and for threading. See the NEWS file for the details. The system compiled without incident as … Continue reading →

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Big Data

Posted on 2015-07-03 by jcs

Cory Doctorow has an interesting piece in The Guardian positing that in the commercial sphere, if not the world of spies, big data has run its course. I especially like this quote: The fact that the billions spent spying on … Continue reading →

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Magit 2.1.0

Posted on 2015-07-03 by jcs

I just installed the new version of magit (2.1.0) and even though I’ve made only two commits so far, I really like the new functionality. One of the first things you’ll notice is that when you commit, a diff is … Continue reading →

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Flash and Security

Posted on 2015-07-02 by jcs

In an editor’s note to the SANS Newsbites piece on Flash being used as a vector for the ransomware CryptoWall, William Hugh Murray speaks the uncomfortable truth on what Flash tells us about security.

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Emacs and Data Science

Posted on 2015-07-02 by jcs

Robert Vesco has an interesting post on why he uses Emacs in his data science work. Vesco is a data scientist for Bloomberg so he’s a serious practitioner of the art. Working in data science means he uses a variety … Continue reading →

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