Category Archives: General

Stingray Status

Posted on 2015-05-03 by jcs

I’m sure most Irreal readers are familiar with the fake cell phone towers known colloquially as “Stingray” after the version manufactured by the Harris Corporation. Vox has a nice article on the status of the Stingray and the deteriorating government … Continue reading →

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The Case Against Agile

Posted on 2015-05-02 by jcs

Back in early April, I wrote about Nic Ferrier’s take on agile. Ferrier understands it as a way of increasing communication in development teams. He makes a good case that agile is at worst benign and that in most cases … Continue reading →

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Org Mode HTML Themes

Posted on 2015-05-01 by jcs

Fabrice Niessen has a couple of beautiful Org mode HTML themes that lets you produce lovely and functional Web pages by exporting normal Org mode files to HTML. Currently there are two themes. The first, Bigblow, is a general theme … Continue reading →

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Memacs Paper

Posted on 2015-04-30 by jcs

I’ve mentioned Karl Voit’s Memacs project before. I’m really interested in its ideas and have been implementing various manual procedures to capture some of the same data. My end goal is to implement Memacs on my own machines but it … Continue reading →

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A Nice Set of Emacs Tips

Posted on 2015-04-29 by jcs

Via Artur Malabarba we have a link to an excellent set of Emacs tips from Ben Maughan. Maughan has a local mailing list to which he posts an Emacs tip every week. Happily, for the rest of us, the list … Continue reading →

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Grep in Emacs

Posted on 2015-04-28 by jcs

Xah Lee has a useful tutorial page on grep and grep-like searches from Emacs. The page is an old one but is worth bookmarking if, like me, you keep a list of valuable Emacs reference material. For some reason, I … Continue reading →

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Some Dired Tips

Posted on 2015-04-27 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a nice post on Emacs dired tips. Dired is amazingly powerful but most of us don’t begin to take advantage of its capabilities. Mbork looks at a few things you can do to enhance your workflow … Continue reading →

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The 500 Mile Email Limit

Posted on 2015-04-26 by jcs

If you’re in our business for any length of time, you accumulate a number of amusing stories. Most of them are in-jokes that outsiders wouldn’t get or find funny. One of my favorite such stories concerns a problem with email … Continue reading →

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Diceware as a Pipeline

Posted on 2015-04-25 by jcs

If you’re interested in picking a passphrase using the Diceware method but don’t want to bother with compiling a program for what is most likely a one-off use, you’re in luck. Dr. Drang over at And now it’s all this … Continue reading →

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Working with Customers

Posted on 2015-04-24 by jcs

We’ve all been there: True. "@amyengineer: Also found this gem on software development – it *is* a winner. pic.twitter.com/r1qkTF2bzq" — Anna Nachesa (@ashalynd) April 14, 2015

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