Author Archives: jcs

Richard Dillon’s Emacs Videos

Posted on 2013-02-25 by jcs

Via Magnar Sveen’s Emacs Rocks! twitter feed I came across this retweet pointing me at Richard Dillon’s Emacs videos. It’s a set of 13 videos on using Emacs intended mostly for those inexperienced with Emacs. He covers several topics including … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Trusting Trust Redux

Posted on 2013-02-24 by jcs

Way back in 1984, Ken Thompson wrote what I consider one of the greatest papers on computer security. I wrote about this in my The Greatest Hack of all Time post. If you haven’t read this paper your education is … Continue reading →

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The Vivid Schemer

Posted on 2013-02-23 by jcs

Recursion always seems to cause beginning CS students trouble. One of the very best resources for learning and becoming comfortable with it is The Little Schemer. Although the exercises are in Scheme, they apply equally well to Common Lisp or … Continue reading →

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Multiple Cursors and the Mouse

Posted on 2013-02-22 by jcs

On Emacs Rocks!, Magnar Sveen announced that he’s added a mouse interface to the excellent multiple-cursors package. Amusingly, the first two replies were Excellent!!!! This is the beginning of the end! I pretty much ignore the mouse when I’m in … Continue reading →

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Calling External Programs

Posted on 2013-02-21 by jcs

One of the rules specific to EmacsGolf, as opposed to VimGolf, is that you’re allowed to call external programs to operate on a region of the buffer using something like 【Ctrl+u Meta+|】. You can do the same thing from an … Continue reading →

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Is Emacs an IDE?

Posted on 2013-02-20 by jcs

Is Emacs an IDE? Here’s one answer. Here’s another: who knows, who cares? You might as well ask if Emacs is a fingdop. Emacs is what it is regardless of whether or not we call it an IDE (or fingdop, … Continue reading →

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EmacsGolf Challenge 2

Posted on 2013-02-19 by jcs

Xah Lee sent me another suggestion for an EmacsGolf challenge. While in a whimsical mood, Lee decided to write some Elisp to convert Latin text to Fraktur (Gothic font). That’s an interesting Elisp challenge in its own right but Lee … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.4

Posted on 2013-02-18 by jcs

Somehow I missed the fact that SBCL 1.1.4 was released at the end of January. I just compiled and installed it and as usual everything is fine. The new release is mainly bug fixes and an optimization to the LOOP … Continue reading →

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Password Horror

Posted on 2013-02-17 by jcs

This isn’t the usual post about some nincompoop making yet another foolish security mistake. It’s about a guy who does (almost) everything right and almost loses it all. Over at the White Hat Security Blog, Jeremiah Grossman tells a chilling … Continue reading →

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Elisp

Posted on 2013-02-16 by jcs

No wonder it’s so hard to learn.

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