Author Archives: jcs

🥩 Red Meat Friday: Stop Forcing Dark Mode On Us

Posted on 2025-01-24 by jcs

As you all know, we here at the Irreal bunker are not fans of dark mode. Of course, if you’re a benighted soul who likes dwelling in the dark on your own computer, I may shake my head in bewilderment … Continue reading →

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Escape From Walled Gardens With RSS

Posted on 2025-01-23 by jcs

I am not on Facebook. I’ve never been on Facebook. I’m not on Twitter/X. I’ve never been on them. My entire social media profile consists of Irreal. I’ve always had an aversion to things like Facebook and Twitter without really … Continue reading →

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Reliability

Posted on 2025-01-22 by jcs

We often see claims that such and such an application has \(99.\cdots\) reliability. That seems pretty definitive but what does it really mean? Here’s the answer. The difference between 99.9% and 99.99% is significant. By the time we get to … Continue reading →

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Exporting Tables To LaTeX

Posted on 2025-01-21 by jcs

A week ago, I wrote about Matt Magire’s use of Emacs and Org mode to prepare notes for the students in his mathematics classes. In his post, Magire mentioned that Org mode was especially useful for producing tables for export … Continue reading →

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Helping To Read Old Cursive Documents

Posted on 2025-01-20 by jcs

It’s been a long time since I’ve addressed one of my favorite hobby horses: cursive handwriting. I have a long record of writing about it—search for “cursive” on Irreal—and if you’ve been around for a while, you know I think … Continue reading →

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What Computer And OS Do You Use?

Posted on 2025-01-19 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, ll777 wants to know what computer and OS you’re using. He’s a macOS user but is getting into Emacs and realizing that Emacs can do a lot of the things that he uses individual apps … Continue reading →

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Iterating In Lisp

Posted on 2025-01-18 by jcs

Joe Marshall has an interesting post on iteration for all you Lisp heads. It’s mostly aimed at Common Lisp and Scheme but a lot of it applies to Elisp as well so even Emacs users will be interested. The mail … Continue reading →

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Sweden Goes Back To Books And Handwriting

Posted on 2025-01-17 by jcs

I don’t know what to make of this. The TL;DR is that after many years, Sweden is returning to more traditional methods in education, including an emphasis on physical books and handwriting. On the one hand, there is some actual … Continue reading →

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Where Should Your Configuration Live, Redux

Posted on 2025-01-16 by jcs

A couple of weeks ago, I published a Red Meat Friday article about the proper place for your Emacs configuration to reside. Like many Red Meat Friday posts, it was tongue in cheek but it got quite a bit of … Continue reading →

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Stories From The Internet

Posted on 2025-01-15 by jcs

If you’re like me, you love those weird stories about seemingly impossible things happening with computers and the Internet. My favorite is A Story About Magic. Even if you know the story, follow the link to see a picture of … Continue reading →

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