Category Archives: General

PGP Problems

Posted on 2014-08-24 by jcs

I’ve often written about the need to encourage wider use of encrypted emails. As everyone knows, the main problem is that existing email encryption solutions are too hard to use: Aunt Millie simply won’t deal with the complexities. But what … Continue reading →

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Map Reduce Explained

Posted on 2014-08-23 by jcs

If you’re a Lisper, the chances are that you understood the basics of Google’s map-reduce framework before you even read the paper. However, many people without a Lisp background find the ideas difficult to understand. Fortunately, if you fall into … Continue reading →

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The Editor of a Lifetime

Posted on 2014-08-22 by jcs

Recently, I wrote about Sacha Chua’s chat with Harry R. Schwartz and his work with EmacsNYC, which, among other things, releases videos of talks that its members give to the group. The latest video is a talk by Perry Metzger … Continue reading →

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Dress Codes

Posted on 2014-08-21 by jcs

If there are any antediluvian companies out there still insisting that their engineers wear coats and ties or some other sartorial silliness, maybe it’s time to rethink that policy. When you’re holding on to a policy that even the U.S. … Continue reading →

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A Followup on Leaving Gmail

Posted on 2014-08-20 by jcs

In my post about Chen Bin’s guide to using Gnus with Gmail, I mentioned that in my own quest to move my email operations to Emacs, I was looking at three packages: mew, mu4e, and gnus. In the comments, I … Continue reading →

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Bastien Guerry on Org Mode

Posted on 2014-08-18 by jcs

Here’s a video by Bastien Guerry in which he talks about Emacs and Org Mode. Guerry, of course, is the maintainer of Org Mode and an interesting guy. Here at Irreal, we’ve mentioned him several times. Guerry begins by demonstrating … Continue reading →

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Formula 1 Communication Technology

Posted on 2014-08-17 by jcs

I’ve said it before: I’m not a racing fan. And yet, I’ve already written about it twice before and here I go again. This post, like the others, focuses on the technical aspects of the sport. According to this BBC … Continue reading →

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TIL: Something New About Ace Jump Mode

Posted on 2014-08-15 by jcs

Regular readers know that I’ve been a huge fan of ace-jump-mode ever since I saw it demonstrated by Magnor Sveen in one of his celebrated Emacs Rocks! episodes. More recently, I’ve been using it all the time as a replacement … Continue reading →

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Org Mode Links

Posted on 2014-08-14 by jcs

Artur Malabarba has a great post on using Org-mode links to link to anything. It’s a hugely powerful facility that, as Malabarba says, is mostly unknown. Head over to Endless Parentheses for the details. I wasn’t going to write about … Continue reading →

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John Kitchin on Using Org Mode

Posted on 2014-08-13 by jcs

I’ve written about John Kitchin and his use of Emacs and org-mode several times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Somehow I missed his latest contribution but Sacha Chua had my back and mentioned it in her weekly review. In his … Continue reading →

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