Author Archives: jcs

Writing Books with Org Mode

Posted on 2014-03-19 by jcs

Oscar Perpiñán Lamigueiro is writing a book. Lots of people do that, of course, but Lamigueiro is doing it with Org Mode. Just the other day, I wrote that Emacs is multifaceted and Lamigueiro demonstrates another of those facets and … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Why Use Org Mode?

Posted on 2014-03-18 by jcs

Regular Irreal readers know that I’m always talking up Org Mode and urging people to try it out. Many Org Mode users say they switched to Emacs just to get Org Mode. One of the things about Org Mode is … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Git Flow

Posted on 2014-03-17 by jcs

Recently I’ve seen a lot of articles about git-flow but it was sort of hard to understand exactly how to integrate into your work flow. Happily Kevin Basarab has come to the rescue with a video that shows you how … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Wages of Sin

Posted on 2014-03-16 by jcs

The U.S. Government in the guise of the NSA believed that they were beyond reproach for their spying on innocent citizens all over the world. Everyone expects governments to spy on their enemies and perhaps on the government of even … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

All Those Pesky Commas

Posted on 2014-03-15 by jcs

@samaaron I've tried to program non-lisps, but find I just can't get past all the commas. — Selah Ben-Haim (@selahb) March 7, 2014

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Some Useful Emacs Packages

Posted on 2014-03-14 by jcs

Torstein Johansen has a nice post on useful Emacs packages. As it happens, I use all of those packages except auto-complete so I’m certainly in agreement with his list. The post includes animated gifs so you can see the packages … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 5 Comments

Configuring Emacs as a C/C++ IDE

Posted on 2014-03-13 by jcs

Baris Yuksel has a nice set of videos (Part 1, Part 2) that show you how to configure Emacs to be a reasonable IDE for C and C++. In the first video Yuksel talks about auto-complete, auto-complete-c-headers, and yasnippet. Adding … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Senator Feinstein in High Dudgeon

Posted on 2014-03-12 by jcs

I know I mentioned it before, but this is just too hilarious to let pass unremarked. Senator Dianne Feinstein who has consistently dismissed objections to our government spying on its citizens is up in arms about the Government spying on … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Security of the Apple Keychain

Posted on 2014-03-11 by jcs

TidBITS has a great post on how Apple secures the iCloud keychain. An Apple device will remember passwords to sites you visit, WiFi nodes you join, and many other things. If you don’t do anything special, these credentials will be … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Common Lisp Reader Macros

Posted on 2014-03-10 by jcs

Chaitanya Gupta has posted a nice introduction to reader macros. The conventional wisdom is that reader macros are ripe for abuse and many experts recommend avoiding them. Still, there are times when they solve a legitimate problem1 and in those … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment