Author Archives: jcs

A Quick Emacs Tip: zrgrep

Posted on 2011-09-08 by jcs

Commenting on my post about Emacs and tar fles, Phil remarks that he likes the way Emacs keeps its source code gzipped and decompresses a file transparently when you open it. But he was unhappy that he couldn’t use 【Meta+x】 … Continue reading →

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Moving To An Intermediate Point In An Emacs Buffer

Posted on 2011-09-07 by jcs

Almost evry Emacs user is familiar with 【Meta+<】 and 【Meta+>】, the commands to move to the beginning and end of the current buffer. Today while browsing in Aaron Hawley’s excellent Emacs Reference Sheet, which I’ve written about before, I discovered … Continue reading →

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Reading Tar Files With Emacs

Posted on 2011-09-06 by jcs

I’ve been using Emacs for some time but am still regularly amazed at how it just does the right thing and in the expected way. Emacs has a well deserved reputation of having a steep learning curve and, indeed, like … Continue reading →

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Workshifters

Posted on 2011-09-05 by jcs

Today is Labor Day in the U.S. so I’d like to write about a phenomenon that has fascinated me for some time: workshifting. The term refers to the practice of people spending at least part of their time away from … Continue reading →

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Ampersands

Posted on 2011-09-04 by jcs

This post is a little outside the usual Irreal sphere of interest but its subject matter is so delightfully geeky and interesting that I couldn’t resist writing about it. Over at the hot word (on Dictionary.com) they ask, “What character … Continue reading →

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Smex

Posted on 2011-09-03 by jcs

Back in July I wrote about using aliases to replace longer, hard to remember command names. Several of the commenters said that I should use smex to bring the wonders of Ido to extended commands. I finally got around to … Continue reading →

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Opening Frequently Accessed Files In Emacs

Posted on 2011-09-02 by jcs

While browsing around in the EmacsWiki, I came across a nice way of quickly opening frequently accessed files. The idea is to put the target file in a register and then jump to the register. For example, I frequently open … Continue reading →

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The End Of Handwriting?

Posted on 2011-09-01 by jcs

I’ve written before on how I have pretty much stopped writing anything with pencil/pen and paper. These days the only things I use a pen for are to sign credit card receipts and the very occasional check. For all that, … Continue reading →

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Traveling With An iPad

Posted on 2011-08-31 by jcs

I just got back from another family visit, this time to upstate New York. I was well out of Irene’s path and except for a rainy Sunday wasn’t affected at all—I thought. Upstate New York wasn’t affected but New York … Continue reading →

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Listing Files On A Remote Server With Emacs

Posted on 2011-08-29 by jcs

I use TRAMP all the time to edit files on a remote machine: it’s quick, easy, and pretty much transparent. I just learned something new that in retrospect should have been obvious. You can obtain a listing of remote directories … Continue reading →

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