Category Archives: General

Red Meat Friday

Posted on 2019-10-25 by jcs

I’m a little behind today so let’s have another Red Meat Friday. For all you OO lovers and haters out there, Kontra has this offering: Rob Pike (of Unix, UTF-8, Go fame): “object-oriented design is the roman numerals of computing” … Continue reading →

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An Update on Emacs and macOS Catalina

Posted on 2019-10-24 by jcs

Just a quick update on my experience with macOS Catalina and Emacs. Last week, I wrote that after not reading about any significant problems with Emacs on Catalina, I upgraded my laptop. I haven’t seen any problems with Emacs as … Continue reading →

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Clearing Out the Eshell Buffer

Posted on 2019-10-23 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski has a really handy tip that explains something that I didn’t know. I’m a big fan of Eshell and usually reach for it first when I need a shell. One long standing problem I’ve had with it is … Continue reading →

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Getting Tough on the Corporate Snoopers

Posted on 2019-10-22 by jcs

It almost certainly won’t be enacted in its current form but US Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a privacy bill with some real teeth. Among other things it calls for significant jail time for CEOs and other executives who lie … Continue reading →

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Asynchronous Communication

Posted on 2019-10-21 by jcs

Amir Salihefendic of Doist notes that study after study have shown that remote workers are more productive and asks why that is. One thing that everyone cites is the time saved on commuting and to a lessor extent the lack … Continue reading →

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Navigating With Spacemacs

Posted on 2019-10-20 by jcs

Over at the GDQuest YouTube Channel, Nathan Lovato has a very nice video on navigating with Spacemacs. Most of the video discusses the Spacemacs interface to the Avy package for jumping around in your code. I’m not a Spacemacs user … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 59: Markdown

Posted on 2019-10-19 by jcs

Most people recognize that Emacs Org mode is superior to Markdown as a markup language. (Sorry Markdown partisans but it is1.) The problem with Org mode is that as a practical matter it’s restricted to Emacs users. Mostly that doesn’t … Continue reading →

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A Talk With Brian Kernighan

Posted on 2019-10-18 by jcs

Back in March, John Mashey interviewed Brian Kernighan at Princeton about his career and technical work. It’s a wonderful video that covers his career from his undergraduage years to his current position as a professor at Princeton. We’ve heard some … Continue reading →

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Emacs and MacOS Catalina

Posted on 2019-10-17 by jcs

Last night I upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS Catalina (macOS 10.15). I’d been holding off to see if there were reports of problems with Emacs on the new OS. That happened last time with the upgrade to Mojave because … Continue reading →

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The Many Functions of a Smartphone

Posted on 2019-10-16 by jcs

Remember back in the original Star Trek series how Spock carried around a tricorder? I always wanted one of those. Now, of course, I have something even better: my iPhone. Smartphones are general purpose devices that perform many functions, certainly … Continue reading →

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