Category Archives: General

AWK Examples

Posted on 2017-10-26 by jcs

Before Perl and other such scripting languages, there was AWK. AWK is a great language for doing text manipulation chores. It has regular expressions, associative arrays, automatic splitting of input lines into fields, and other features to make working with … Continue reading →

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Tables and Org Mode Code Blocks

Posted on 2017-10-25 by jcs

I have lots of Org files that collect data and have an embedded code block to generate a summary table. Here are a couple of examples that others may find useful. The first thing to know is that tables are … Continue reading →

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EXWM

Posted on 2017-10-24 by jcs

I mentioned the Emacs X Window Manager (WXWM) in a previous post but didn’t say very much about it. Now, Phil Hagelberg has a post in which he explains his use case for EXWM. Like me and many other Emacs … Continue reading →

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The Unix Philosophy

Posted on 2017-10-23 by jcs

For many people, the Unix Philosophy is captured by the aphorism, “Programs should do one thing well.” That’s an important part of the Unix philosophy but the actual philosophy is much richer and more subtle. Actually, there’s no formal philosophy … Continue reading →

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Fraud in Digital Advertising

Posted on 2017-10-22 by jcs

I’ve written many times (1, 2, 3, 4) about adtech and the associated fraud. The sooner the advertising industry stops tracking us the better it will be for them, the advertisers, and us. A recent BuzzFeed article indicates that the … Continue reading →

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Practical GPG

Posted on 2017-10-21 by jcs

Over at Hackaday, Pedro Umbelino has a nice article on the practical mechanics of using GPG and, more generally, public key cryptography. Rather than looking at its integration into a particular email client, Umbelino demonstrates everything on the command line. … Continue reading →

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Lists in Word

Posted on 2017-10-20 by jcs

So true. So very, very true: Making a list in Word 1. Word plz make me a list2. No wait what are you d 2. 2. wtf is this c. no this isn't what• WTF — Christopher Ingraham (@_cingraham) October … Continue reading →

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Which-key and Calc

Posted on 2017-10-19 by jcs

I ran across this excellent video on Emacs calc and was preparing to write about it. During my research, I discovered that I’d already written about it. That was a couple of years ago so you can consider this a … Continue reading →

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Emacs Line Modes

Posted on 2017-10-18 by jcs

LigerLearn has another nice video up. This time it’s about line wrapping, line truncation, and visual line mode. If you’ve ever been confused about visual line mode and what it’s for, this video will help clear things up for you. … Continue reading →

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Remote Sudo

Posted on 2017-10-17 by jcs

If your workflow involves administering remote systems or something similar, you probably have the following burned into your muscle memory. If, on the other hand, you’re like me and don’t have occasion to need root access on a remote machine … Continue reading →

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