Category Archives: General

Little Improvements Add Up

Posted on 2020-01-14 by jcs

All Irreal readers, I’m sure, are familiar with the power of compounding if only because they know about “compound interest.” Every now and then, Paul Graham (re)tweets an interesting mathematical fact. The last example I wrote about is the fact … Continue reading →

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Zamansky: ClojureScript 2

Posted on 2020-01-13 by jcs

I’ve written a few posts lately about working in the Slime and Geiser environments to write and experiment with Common Lisp and Scheme code. What’s great about them is that they enable an “interactive programming” style where you can try … Continue reading →

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Ebook Stupidity

Posted on 2020-01-12 by jcs

I haven’t written about the publishing industry for some time but a recent post by hoakley over at The Eclectic Light Company has reignited my rage. Publishers have been doing things the same way for hundreds of years and don’t … Continue reading →

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Emacs Modifier Keys on the Mac

Posted on 2020-01-11 by jcs

If you’re an Emacs user who works primarily on some sort of Mac, you may be interested in a post by Nick Drozd in which he suggests a keyboard layout for avoiding pinky fatigue and all that goes with it. … Continue reading →

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The Undo-tree Bugs

Posted on 2020-01-10 by jcs

One of my favorite packages is undo-tree. It makes a “many branched” sequence of changes easy to fix but to tell the truth the most valuable thing about it for me is the sensible redo functionality. It’s always worked perfectly … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 63: ClojureScript

Posted on 2020-01-09 by jcs

Mike Zamansky has another video up in his Using Emacs Series. This video is a little different from his usual fare in that it’s more about using ClojureScript than Emacs, although Emacs does play a prominent role. If you follow … Continue reading →

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Will Federally Financed Research Have to Be Open Access?

Posted on 2020-01-08 by jcs

Will research that the U.S. Federal Government pays for have to be open access? Betteridge’s Law of Headlines says the answer must be “no” but there’s a rumor—just a rumor—that the White House is about to extend the Obama Administration’s … Continue reading →

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A Palindrome Predicate Coda

Posted on 2020-01-07 by jcs

As I wrote yesterday, I upgraded my Common Lisp environment to SBCL 2.0 so of course I wanted to try it out. Writing Lisp programs in the excellent Slime environment that Emacs provides is truly a pleasure that I haven’t … Continue reading →

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SBCL 2.0.0

Posted on 2020-01-06 by jcs

Steel Bank Common Lisp has a new version out. I haven’t been writing much Common Lisp lately so I haven’t kept the software up to date. SBCL makes a new release every month and I always compile from source so … Continue reading →

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Is Cash Still King?

Posted on 2020-01-05 by jcs

As most of you know by now, I’m very interested in being able to pay for everything with my phone and not having to carry around credit cards, let alone cash. I’m also aware that not everyone shares that desire … Continue reading →

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