Category Archives: General

Describe Symbol

Posted on 2022-09-25 by jcs

A short post for a lazy Sunday. Grant Rettke over at Wisdom and Wonder has a quick tip. He recommends trying describe-symbol for invoking Emacs builtin documentation. He says that it’s almost always what you want when you invoke describe-function … Continue reading →

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Extending Org Links and Youtube

Posted on 2022-09-24 by jcs

Charanjit Singh has an interesting post on extending org-mode to handle youtube links. His goal was two-fold: Have an Org link type for Youtube videos that opened the video in mpv instead of the browwser When exporting to HTML the … Continue reading →

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Border Authorities Seize and Store Phone Data for 15 Years

Posted on 2022-09-23 by jcs

The US government has long maintained the fairy tale that the borders are somehow a civilrights-free zone and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents can do whatever they like without having to worry that pesky 4th Amendment or other … Continue reading →

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Emacs Is Not Just a Text Editor

Posted on 2022-09-22 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, analysis230 has a sort of confession. He had long considered the phrase “Emacs is not just a text editor” to be something geezer developers said as they clung desperately to an aging technology. He says … Continue reading →

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Webster 1913 and dictionary.el

Posted on 2022-09-21 by jcs

Time moves on and things you thought you knew turn out to be not as accurate as you hoped. This happened to me recently in regard to using the Webster 1913 dictionary in Emacs. I recently posted about James Somers’ … Continue reading →

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Bespoke Notetaking with Org-mode

Posted on 2022-09-20 by jcs

Matt Young over at Code Thrasher describes his bespoke notetaking workflow based on Org-mode. Rather than depend on packages like Org-roam for things such as backlinks, Young implemented his own version that worked just the way he wanted. For example, … Continue reading →

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Why Use Org

Posted on 2022-09-19 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subreddit, YakumoYoukai wonders why he should use Org-mode. He’s not some clueless n00b whining that it’s all too hard and why should he bother anyway. YakumoYoukai is a 30 year, dedicated, user of Emacs who doesn’t … Continue reading →

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Delete to Trash from Within Emacs

Posted on 2022-09-18 by jcs

Generally you have to work hard to delete a file from within Emacs but it is possible. The most common way is probably with Dired but my favorite is with Magit. Regardless, once you get used to using Dired or … Continue reading →

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Webster’s 1913 Redux

Posted on 2022-09-17 by jcs

Seven years ago, I wrote about James Somers’ beautiful article on John McPhee’s New Yorker article, Draft #4. If you write any prose at all, I urge, urge, you to read Somers’ article. It will be a revelation to you. … Continue reading →

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Everyone Has Something To Hide

Posted on 2022-09-15 by jcs

One of the most ridiculous arguments about privacy is the oft-stated “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Irreal has many articles debunking this notion—here’s a list—but it seems the argument is evergreen. Kev Quirk has … Continue reading →

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