Category Archives: General

Back-To-The-Office Backfires

Posted on 2026-04-03 by jcs

Those of you who have been around for a while know that Irreal strongly supports remote work. It’s obviously good for those employees who want it and Irreal has always claimed it’s good for employers too. Sadly, a combination of … Continue reading →

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Your Commit Messages Should Tell A story

Posted on 2026-04-02 by jcs

Chris Mariana has an interesting post about making Git commit messages with Magit. Well crafted commit messages, he says, can tell a story about your project than can valuable in the future. The secret is in the “well crafted” part. … Continue reading →

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Anju

Posted on 2026-04-01 by jcs

We here at the Irreal bunker belong to the cohort that believes every right thinking person eschews the use of the mouse whenever possible. Still, in our honest moments, we recognize that there are some intelligent, skillful people who do … Continue reading →

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Christian Tietze On Emacs Mistakes

Posted on 2026-03-31 by jcs

In celebration of this month’s Emacs Carnival, Christian Tietze has a post on his mistaken beliefs about Emacs. His “mistakes” were not about his using Emacs in the wrong way. They concerned his mistaken beliefs about Emacs. His first mistaken … Continue reading →

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Lisp Machines!

Posted on 2026-03-30 by jcs

Anyone who’s been around Irreal for a while knows of my fascination with Lisp Machines. Part of my love or Emacs is that it’s (sort of) a reimagining of the Lisp Machines. Sadly, I never had a chance to work … Continue reading →

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Paredit Keybinding Conflicts

Posted on 2026-03-29 by jcs

There are, I suppose, a few Lisp programmers using Emacs who resist paredit but most of the rest of us have long since succumbed to its charms. It can be a bit difficult to get used to but once you … Continue reading →

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Restarting Running Elisp Code

Posted on 2026-03-28 by jcs

One of Lisp’s features that seem like magic to those of us brought up with C-like languages is the ability to change the code of a running process, reload it, and continue running with the new code. The amazing thing … Continue reading →

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: AI FOMO

Posted on 2026-03-27 by jcs

Observant Irreal readers will have noticed that I hardly ever write about AI and its attendant hoopla. I recognize that it has shown itself useful in certain restricted domains but I can’t shake the feeling that it’s mainly a magic … Continue reading →

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Some New Packages

Posted on 2026-03-26 by jcs

Over at Bicycle For Your Mind, macosxguru reports that despite his good intentions to stop tweaking his configuration and absorb what he already had installed, he found that there were so many excellent new packages that he had to add … Continue reading →

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Moving From Obsidian To Emacs

Posted on 2026-03-25 by jcs

Curtis McHale runs an online book club where readers share their posts on the current book. He’s been using Longform in Obsidian but it kept corrupting his data organization so he decided to move to Emacs. His site requires Markdown … Continue reading →

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