Category Archives: General

Sacha on External Brains

Posted on 2017-12-06 by jcs

Back in September, I wrote about Jeff Terrell’s excellent video on using Emacs and Org Mode as an exocortex. “Exocortex” for these purposes means an “external brain” of some sort that is used for off-loading thoughts and plans that aren’t … Continue reading →

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Org 9.1.4

Posted on 2017-12-05 by jcs

Bastien tweets to let us know there’s a new Org out: #emacs #orgmode 9.1.4 is out. Enjoy! — Bastien Guerry (@bzg2) December 5, 2017 It’s not in Melpa as of [2017-12-05 Tue 13:08] but will doubtless appear in the next … Continue reading →

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AUCTeX 11.92

Posted on 2017-12-04 by jcs

Annnnd we’re back. Occasionally a package update is broken and aborts the Emacs boot process. Normally I just disable the offending package for a day and keep on trucking. However, when use-package breaks, you’re pretty much restricted to an Emacs … Continue reading →

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Almost Ready

Posted on 2017-12-03 by jcs

Good news from Eli Zaretskii: Emacs 26 is almost ready. In the last paragraph of this message on the Emacs Development list, Zaretskii says, Emacs 26 is nearing its release; the stream of serious bugs (or any bugs, actually) seems … Continue reading →

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Zamansky’s Advent of Code #1

Posted on 2017-12-02 by jcs

I don’t have anything else interesting to say today so let’s take a look at Mike Zamansky’s post on the Advent of Code 2017 Day 1 problem. Zamansky has a nice discussion of solving this with Python and the steps … Continue reading →

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Ivy 0.10.0

Posted on 2017-12-01 by jcs

Abo-abo has released Ivy 0.10.0. It’s the result of 8 months work and has several new features. One that I like, is that you can force acceptance of your input when you’re on the first candidate by scrolling up to … Continue reading →

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DRM and the Darknet

Posted on 2017-11-30 by jcs

The folks over at Ars Technica UK were resting up after Thanksgiving and reran an article from 2012. The article discusses a paper (2002) by the Microsoft engineers who worked on Palladium, Microsoft’s Trusted Windows Project. The project failed partly … Continue reading →

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Working in Emacs

Posted on 2017-11-29 by jcs

Some people will go to any lengths to do all their work in Emacs. I can sympathize. How I spreadsheeted this evening: export as csv->open with emacs->org-table-convert-region->happily edit using isearch-replace, macros, etc.->org-table-export back to csv->import into spreadsheet. #emacs — Bryan … Continue reading →

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Read Only

Posted on 2017-11-28 by jcs

I just had one of those “Well Duh! Of course” moments. It came to me with this Emacs Command of the Day tweet: M-x read-only-mode, bound to C-x C-q. Avoid accidentally modifying a buffer with this handy minor mode! — … Continue reading →

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Computer Languages as Weapons

Posted on 2017-11-27 by jcs

For those of you who like such things, here’s a list of popular languages and the weapons they correspond to. My go to languages are Lisp and C so I guess I’m crazy and dangerous but toting an old—if reliable—weapon. … Continue reading →

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