Author Archives: jcs

Red Meat Friday: Another Skirmish In The Emacs/Vi War

Posted on 2023-04-07 by jcs

As I’ve often said, I never enlisted in the Emacs/Vi wars. I’ve used and like them both but feel they serve distinct user requirements and aren’t really in competition. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the occasional volley that … Continue reading →

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DALL-E in Org Mode

Posted on 2023-04-06 by jcs

If you follow Alvaro Ramirez’s work, you’ll soon discover that his usual procedure with a project is to start with a good idea and then keep pushing it to improve it and add new features. A case in point is … Continue reading →

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A Bit of Humor

Posted on 2023-04-05 by jcs

It’s a busier day than usual for me today so this is just a quickie. I saw this post by Jason Eckert about the disparity between Apple’s hardware and their software. It’s probably not of much interest if you aren’t … Continue reading →

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ChatGPT in Org Mode

Posted on 2023-04-04 by jcs

There’s been a lot of excitement about ChatGPT lately so of course Emacs hackers have risen to the challenge with Emacs interfaces to it. The first I was aware of was Vivek Haldar’s contribution but there have been several others. … Continue reading →

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Spyware and Goodhart’s Law

Posted on 2023-04-03 by jcs

Nir Eyal has an interesting article in the Harvard Business Review about the horrible, Orwellian practice of businesses using spyware to monitor what their employees are doing. Even putting aside the Stasi element, it should be clear to anyone with … Continue reading →

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Preferring Emacs Over VSCode and Vim

Posted on 2023-04-02 by jcs

Ken over at the code.to.the.(moon) YouTube channel has an interesting post on Why I Prefer Emacs Over VSCode and vim. That’s a question that all Emacsers have to answer, at least implicitly. Ken’s answer turns out to be “Org mode”. … Continue reading →

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Tracking Tax Documents With Org Mode

Posted on 2023-04-01 by jcs

As I’ve written many times, I use Org mode to organize a ridiculous percentage of my life and can’t imagine living without it. It’s just so powerful that I keep finding new uses for it. The problem is, though, it’s … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Neovim and Astro

Posted on 2023-03-31 by jcs

Regular readers know that I was a Vi/Vim user for many years before I switched to Emacs. I liked Vim and was happy with it but when I started writing in Lisp dialects, trying Emacs seemed liked a worthwhile experiment. … Continue reading →

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Some Technical Details on AWK

Posted on 2023-03-30 by jcs

Many of you know that I’m a big fan of AWK. After Lisp and C, it’s my go to language, especially for scripts that involve reading a bunch of lines and performing some sort of regex-mediated action on them. Its … Continue reading →

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Stacks, Heaps, and Recursion

Posted on 2023-03-29 by jcs

Even before I learned Lisp, I really loved coding with recursive algorithms. When I decided to learn Lisp, I did so through Paul Graham’s ANSI Common Lisp, which meant, of course, that recursive programming became part of my programming DNA. … Continue reading →

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