Author Archives: jcs

A Page on Emacs 24’s New Features

Posted on 2012-06-13 by jcs

Xah Lee has started a page on New Features in Emacs 24. He’s promising to add to it every few days so it might be a good place to go to get familiar with some of Emacs 24’s new goodies … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments

Muscle Memory

Posted on 2012-06-12 by jcs

I can so empathize.

Posted in General | Tagged | 1 Comment

Living Without Flash

Posted on 2012-06-11 by jcs

Let’s face it: Flash is a mess. Hardly a week goes by without a new exploit and its performance problems are legion. Steve Jobs famously hated Flash and refused to allow its use in iOS. My Linux distribution strongly recommends … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

Emacs 24.1 Has Been Released

Posted on 2012-06-10 by jcs

Emacs 24.1 is ready for download from the usual places. There’s all kinds of little improvements that we’ve talked about from time to time but the main features, as described by the release notice, are: The new packaging system. This … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Emacs display-battery-mode

Posted on 2012-06-09 by jcs

I have occasionally run across the Emacs display-battery-mode command—it’s in Aaron Hawley’s excellent reference sheet, for example. I never bothered really looking at it because my MacBook Pro already has an battery status icon on the menu bar. Today, out … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Blind Tennis

Posted on 2012-06-08 by jcs

The next time you’re tempted to whine about how hard a task is; how it’s simply impossible; how obviously no one could be expected to do it: remember this. I know I will.

Posted in General | Leave a comment

Password Advice

Posted on 2012-06-07 by jcs

There’s been a lot of snark going around the last few days over this password help screen from the Texas Attorney General’s Child Support Services Web Page. Child Support Services are, of course, doing the best they can to preserve … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Error and Restarts in Common Lisp

Posted on 2012-06-06 by jcs

Robert Smith over at Symbo1ics Ideas has a very nice introduction to restarts in Common Lisp. Restarts are a part of the CL error system (more accurately, part of the CL condition system) and provide a way to recover from … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Emacs comment-dwim Command

Posted on 2012-06-05 by jcs

I really like the Emacs comment-dwim command. The dwim—do what I mean—neatly captures the idea of the command. It looks at the context in which it is called and then does the right thing™. Most often, I highlight a region … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 1 Comment

Recursive Greps

Posted on 2012-06-04 by jcs

I’ve been using the Unix grep utility for over 20 years but today I learned something new. Mikko Ohtamaa over at Open Source Hacker has a nice post on Power searching using UNIX grep. The post explores some of the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 6 Comments