Category Archives: General

The Demise of the Car Key

Posted on 2019-11-14 by jcs

As I predicted previously, car manufacturers are beginning to jump on the keyless bandwagon. In a way, they’re already there with the widespread adoption of key fobs to open doors and start the engine. The fobs are convenient because you … Continue reading →

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Emacs Resources for Writers

Posted on 2019-11-13 by jcs

Recently, James Gill tweeted about a collection of Emacs resources for writers that he’s curated into a GitHub repository. There are two parts to the collection: Tips and examples for writing with Emacs, and Writing a book with Emacs. As … Continue reading →

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Remote Debugging With Tramp

Posted on 2019-11-12 by jcs

Matt Ray gave a very nice presentation to EmacsConf 2019 on Interactive Remote Debugging and Development with TRAMP Mode. One of the frequent complaints about Emacs is that it’s hard to work with remote files. Mostly that’s because the person … Continue reading →

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List Commits to Dired-Marked Files

Posted on 2019-11-11 by jcs

Via Wilfred Huges we have this useful tip: Uhm. No, I didn’t. https://t.co/eUQesn9ACk — Jonas Bernoulli (@magit_emacs) November 9, 2019 Apparently, it’s not widely known. I just tried it—I’m running dired+—and it worked perfectly. It’s easy to see how the … Continue reading →

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Digital Payments in India

Posted on 2019-11-10 by jcs

I’ve written several times about how the Chinese, through apps like WeChat, can pay for almost anything with their smartphones (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). One of the things that have helped make digital payments ubiquitous in China is the … Continue reading →

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Project and Org Mode

Posted on 2019-11-09 by jcs

Karl Voit has an interesting post in which he explores ways of defining projects in Org-mode. Note that by “project” Voit doesn’t mean the type of object handled by an app such as Projectile, but a set of tasks meant … Continue reading →

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PayPal Says the Death of Cash Is Here

Posted on 2019-11-08 by jcs

I recently wrote a couple of posts, here and here, about how we are moving to an essentially cashless society and the problems and backlash it’s bringing. The TL;DR is that it’s now possible to live your life pretty much … Continue reading →

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What Would a Digital Society Look Like?

Posted on 2019-11-07 by jcs

Those of you who have been following along for a while, know that I try to live a digital lifestyle as much as I can. In the US, the meaning of “digital lifestyle” is essentially trivial. It means I eschew … Continue reading →

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The Horrors of Word

Posted on 2019-11-06 by jcs

From Eric Fraga we have this long and screamingly funny Twitter thread about the horrors of using Word. Why I use #Emacs with #orgmode and #LaTeX:https://t.co/jUwo8EKyT1 The whole thread is absolutely hilarious! — éric 🇪🇺 #FBPE (@ericsfraga) November 5, 2019 … Continue reading →

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Moving Icons Between Smartphone Screens

Posted on 2019-11-05 by jcs

A year ago, I wrote about a trick I learned from Karl Voit’s Twitter feed on how to move the iOS cursor. It’s been extraordinarily useful to me and, I’m sure, others. Now, Voit has retweeted another very useful trick: … Continue reading →

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