Author Archives: jcs

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 →

Posted in General | 2 Comments

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 →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

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 →

Posted in General | Tagged | 6 Comments

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 →

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

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 →

Posted in General | 5 Comments

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 →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

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 →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments

Security and Unicode

Posted on 2011-08-28 by jcs

I’ve written before about the wonders of Unicode but this post is an example of its dark side. Over at the Microsoft Malware Protection Center there is an interesting post about the use of Unicode by malware. It seems that … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Keyboard Macro Counters

Posted on 2011-08-27 by jcs

Emacs is incredibly useful for repetitive editing chores. For example, this Xah Lee post shows how Lee performed major surgery on hundreds of pages of HTML by using a little Emacs Lisp. Not everyone can or wants to write Emacs … Continue reading →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

Git By Hand

Posted on 2011-08-26 by jcs

I went looking for the update to Tom Preston-Werner’s talk on Git that I wrote about previously but I didn’t find it. What I did find, however, is another talk on Git, entitled Unlocking the Secrets of Git that he … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment