Category Archives: General

Slightly Obscure Emacs Tips

Posted on 2014-10-03 by jcs

Xah Lee has updated his Emacs Less-known Tips page. It lists tips that Emacs n00bs may not be familiar with. Even more experienced Emacers may learn something new. Well worth a look, especially if you’re a beginner.

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A Nice Dired Tip

Posted on 2014-10-02 by jcs

Borkdude offers up a tip about Dired that I didn’t know: #emacs trick of the day: when you're "C-x-f"-ing through a path and halfway decide you want a dired buffer, just type C-d! — borkdude (@borkdude) October 1, 2014 You … Continue reading →

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Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange

Posted on 2014-10-02 by jcs

Sarah Laskow has a nice article in The Atlantic about the Diffie-Hellman key exchange. That’s an unlikely topic for the Atlantic, of course, but the article is more about Diffie and Hellman and how they changed everything with their protocol. … Continue reading →

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Automobiles and Apple

Posted on 2014-09-30 by jcs

For those who have been off-planet and haven’t heard the news, Apple’s iOS 8 encrypts the contents of users’ iPhone and iPads in such a way that only the user—not Apple—can access it. That means that Apple can no longer … Continue reading →

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The Virtue of Practice

Posted on 2014-09-26 by jcs

Via Jean-Philippe Paradis: What enlightenment feels like: RT @katrinolina: We’re eternal students. pic.twitter.com/pNuGEB3SAV — Footnote (@FootnoteMedia) August 8, 2014 I love this. It represents the attitude of a master who is forever striving to improve.

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Privacy for the Rest of Us

Posted on 2014-09-26 by jcs

A recurrent theme around here has been the need to give crypto-enabled apps a user interface that is transparent to Aunt Millie. This is important because no matter how well-protected the geeks make themselves, no one is truly safe until … Continue reading →

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Spring Fall Cleaning

Posted on 2014-09-25 by jcs

In a comment to my Mathematics in a Blog Post post, Grant Rettke asked what versions of WordPress and org2blog/wp I was using. It turned out I had a pretty old version of org2blog/wp installed so I decided to upgrade. … Continue reading →

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Rock & Roll and a Rare Personal Item

Posted on 2014-09-24 by jcs

I don’t often write about myself on Irreal because, really, who cares? I’m going to make a rare exception and share something about myself: I am a HUGE Pink Floyd fan and consider them the best Rock and Roll band … Continue reading →

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Sorting in Dired

Posted on 2014-09-24 by jcs

Xah Lee just taught me something new about dired sorting. I mostly just sort the list by name but occasionally I want to see the newer entries so I toggle the sorting to “date” by typing 【s】. It turns out, … Continue reading →

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Correct Quotation Marks

Posted on 2014-09-23 by jcs

There are few things as ugly, typographically speaking, as the straight quotation marks that are the default in most fonts. When you’re writing something that’s going to be rendered with proportional fonts, it’s easy to do the right thing and … Continue reading →

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