Author Archives: jcs

EmacsGolf: Changing Times to 24-Hour Notation

Posted on 2014-12-02 by jcs

Here’s a problem I dealt with recently. We have a tab-delimited data file that has time as one of the fields. The times are in the U.S. 12-hour format with a trailing ‘a’ for AM or a ‘p’ or PM. … Continue reading →

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The Legacy of Emacs

Posted on 2014-12-01 by jcs

Bernd Haug has an interesting take on what the real legacy of Emacs is: #Emacs’s lasting legacy may be keeping #functional programming for real-life applications alive between AI winter and current renaissance. — Bernd Haug (@xaibeha) November 7, 2014

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SBCL 1.2.6 Is Released

Posted on 2014-12-01 by jcs

The new Steel Bank Common Lisp, version 1.2.6, is out and available at the usual place. As always, it built and passed the regression tests without problem. As usual, there are a couple of enhancements and some bug fixes. All … Continue reading →

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Animated Paredit Guide

Posted on 2014-11-30 by jcs

Dan Midwood has posted an excellent animated paredit guide. The post consists of animated gifs and supporting text. Midwood’s experience mirrors mine. For a long time he used only the most basic paredit features but then decided to optimize his … Continue reading →

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Handwriting Update

Posted on 2014-11-29 by jcs

It’s been a while since we’ve visited the fronts in the cursive wars. Here in the United States the trend away from cursive is moving fitfully forward with occasional counterattacks from traditionalists and their talk of Armageddon. It’s harder here … Continue reading →

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Lisp for the Web

Posted on 2014-11-28 by jcs

Adam Tornhill has a new book: Hard to believe I got 1000+ readers of my #Lisp book @leanpub . I mean, Lisp? I'm happy and proud! https://t.co/QFp86ulLnA — Adam Tornhill (@AdamTornhill) October 19, 2014 I just bought and downloaded my … Continue reading →

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eshell Examples

Posted on 2014-11-28 by jcs

I’ve written before about how I’ve integrated eshell into my workflow. I’ve been using it for some time and really like it but mostly I might as well be in bash. I don’t use any of its special features and … Continue reading →

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The loop Macro Explained by Example

Posted on 2014-11-27 by jcs

Long time readers are probably aware that I don’t care for the Common Lisp loop macro. It’s not Lispy and I always have a hard time remembering its syntax. Happily, Chris Bagley, who I’ve mentioned before, has a video for … Continue reading →

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Installing a Lisp Development Environment on Windows

Posted on 2014-11-26 by jcs

Chris Bagley (Baggers) has a nice video from last year on installing a Common Lisp development enironment on Windows. He walks us through installing Emacs, Slime, SBCL, and Quicklisp on a Windows machine. That includes defining a working directory and … Continue reading →

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Adaptive Queries

Posted on 2014-11-25 by jcs

Jeremy Kun has an amusing and startling trick: pick any polynomial \(p(x)=c_{0}+c_{1}x+\cdots+c_{n}x^{n}\) where the \(c_{i}\) are non-negative integers and the degree, \(n\), is any positive integer you like. Kun will then ask you one at a time for the value … Continue reading →

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