Category Archives: General

The Ugliest Editor Theme Ever Conceived?

Posted on 2017-08-27 by jcs

Betteridge’s law notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure it would be hard to devise a theme uglier than this one. PLEASE NOTE: That is definitely not a challenge. You think you've seen every variant of code highlighting, then you see this fun … Continue reading →

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Elisp Hash Table Library

Posted on 2017-08-26 by jcs

If you like the simplicity and regularity that libraries such as s for strings and dash for lists provide, you should take a look at Wilfred Hughes’ ht library for working with hash tables. Hash tables are, of course, built-in … Continue reading →

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Happy Birthday Linux

Posted on 2017-08-25 by jcs

Linux is 26 today. What started as a little hobby project that even Linus didn’t expect to amount to much has grown into one of the most important operating systems in use today and arguably of all time. Our world1 … Continue reading →

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Nist Password Guidelines

Posted on 2017-08-24 by jcs

As most of you probably know, NIST recently updated their password guidelines. The three big changes are: Use long easy to remember passwords. Don’t worry so much about mixing in numbers and special characters. Don’t expire your users’ passwords—it only … Continue reading →

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Marking a Word

Posted on 2017-08-23 by jcs

Today I learned something new. Or, rather, I got hit in the head with a cluebat. Peter Hwang asked how he could mark the word at point. Manuel Uberti answered that he usually uses Ctrl+Meta+SPC, which I always think of … Continue reading →

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Ivy Initial Input String

Posted on 2017-08-22 by jcs

If you’re an Ivy user—and you should be—you’ve probably noticed that sometimes the Ivy prompt will have an initial “^” so that the search will be anchored at the beginning of line. This happens depending on the command that called … Continue reading →

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Setting Up a Lisp Development Environment

Posted on 2017-08-21 by jcs

For a language as old as Lisp, there are a surprising number of queries asking how to set up a Lisp environment. If you’re a Lisper, your answer to this is probably Emacs/Slime/Quicklisp and one of the Lisp systems such … Continue reading →

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Emacs Lisp Development Tools

Posted on 2017-08-20 by jcs

I just stumbled across a video of John Wiegley’s talk at the 2013 Emacs Lisp Development Conference on Elisp development tools. Wiegley covers some of the tools he uses in his own development. Many of those tools will be familiar … Continue reading →

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Apple’s Open Office

Posted on 2017-08-18 by jcs

Managers and bean counters tell themselves all sorts of pretty lies to justify open office plans. It will increase collaboration, they say. Employees will know what the rest of the team is doing and be better able to solve problems, … Continue reading →

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A Little Red Meat for Emacsers

Posted on 2017-08-17 by jcs

I don’t have anything interesting to say today so here’s a little red meat for Irreal’s Emacs lovers: Functional programmers who #Lisp need #Emacs and #ParEdit.Non-functional programmers want them.Dysfunctional programmers dislike them. :) — amen zwa ကျော်ဇွာ (@AmenZwa) August 17, … Continue reading →

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