Author Archives: jcs

The Emacs goto-line Command

Posted on 2011-09-18 by jcs

As I’ve written before, I came to Emacs after years as a Vi/Vim user. One of the things I was used to doing in Vim was to go to line N in a file by typing :N in command mode. … Continue reading →

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Managing Workshifting

Posted on 2011-09-17 by jcs

In a recent post about workshifting I mentioned that one of the impediments to wider adoption is a fear on the part of managers that they won’t be able to effectively manage their employees if they can’t reach out and … Continue reading →

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Using Deft With Org Mode In Emacs

Posted on 2011-09-16 by jcs

Earlier this week I wrote about the Deft package for Emacs. Deft is a note taking facility by Jason Blevens modeled on Notational Velocity. I opined at the time that while Deft provides a simple, lightweight note-taking mode, it doesn’t … Continue reading →

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And You Thought We Weren’t Making Any Progress

Posted on 2011-09-15 by jcs

I came across two articles today—one looking backward, one looking forward—that illustrate the incredible progress we’re making in power management and battery life for our electronic devices. This is important because battery technology isn’t making tremendous strides (although there have … Continue reading →

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The Emacs Regular Expression Builder

Posted on 2011-09-14 by jcs

Emacs’ regular expressions are notoriously tricky. They aren’t Perl Regular Expression compatible and the escaping rules are not always what you’d expect if you’re used to Unix regular expressions. Most of us, therefore, have experienced wasted time and frustration trying … Continue reading →

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Happy Programmers’ Day

Posted on 2011-09-13 by jcs

Today is the 0x100th day of the year: Programmers’ Day. So Happy Programmers’ Day to all my fellow programmers.

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A Lightweight Alternative To Emacs Org Mode

Posted on 2011-09-12 by jcs

As regular readers know, I am fanatical Org mode user. Almost everything I write in Emacs that isn’t programming code ends up in Org mode. Sometimes, even code does. Still, Org mode is a large system with lots of functionality … Continue reading →

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Printing In Emacs Lisp

Posted on 2011-09-11 by jcs

Xah Lee has added another page to his excellent series on Emacs Lisp. This time it’s about printing in Emacs Lisp. Most of us who have written any elisp are familiar with the message function, which prints a message to … Continue reading →

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Emacs 24 Features

Posted on 2011-09-11 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov over at (think) recently loaded the current development version of Emacs 24 and gives us a peek at its features. The post is a very nice look at what’s coming in the next version of Emacs and well … Continue reading →

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The Greatest Software Ever Written

Posted on 2011-09-09 by jcs

Over at InformationWeek, Charles Babcock asks What’s the greatest software every written? We all have our favorites, I suppose, but take a minute to think of your answer to that question. Babcock begins by listing some of the things that … Continue reading →

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