Category Archives: General

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

Posted on 2025-07-15 by jcs

Every year or so, Irreal publishes a list of the most popular passwords as determined by those found by exploits. It’s always exciting to see if the perennial favorite password or the hometown favorite (and frequent winner) 123456 will win … Continue reading →

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Do We Really Need Lisp Machines?

Posted on 2025-07-14 by jcs

As you all know by now, I’m a fan of the Lisp Machine concept. Like the majority of people, I never had the opportunity to work on an actual Lisp Machine—they were horrendously expensive and they haven’t been produced in … Continue reading →

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Dealing With The Thing At Point

Posted on 2025-07-13 by jcs

A few weeks ago I mentioned that Sacha Chua is tremendously organized and gave an example of that organization. That example was about how she automated organizing tasks based on her calendar. Now she provides us with another example. This … Continue reading →

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A Back Button For Emacs

Posted on 2025-07-12 by jcs

I do a lot of my writing on my couch with my MacBook on my lap. That provides a less than optimal typing environment so I frequently mistype a command and end up magically transported to another place and time. … Continue reading →

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The NTSB Speaks

Posted on 2025-07-11 by jcs

As you probably know, we here at Irreal take a dim view of Management meddling in the inner workings of Engineering. That is not at all the same as taking a dim view of Management: they are an important and … Continue reading →

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Flyover

Posted on 2025-07-10 by jcs

Note: Sorry, I got caught up with life and completely forgot to publish this this morning. If you’re a Flycheck or Flymake user and like eye candy, you might enjoy this new package from Mikael Konradsson. It’s a nice looking … Continue reading →

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Resetting All Checkboxes In An Org Buffer

Posted on 2025-07-09 by jcs

Marcin Borkowski (Mbork) has a problem that many of we Org users have: He likes to use checkbox lists to organize tasks to ensure that he doesn’t forget any steps. An example that will resonate with most of us is … Continue reading →

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Writing With Emacs #1

Posted on 2025-07-08 by jcs

Greg Newman has another episode of Emacs Carnival going this month. This time it’s about using Emacs for writing. That’s a subject I’m very interested in so I’ve been looking forward to this episode’s contributions. The first is from Erik … Continue reading →

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Safely Updating Emacs Packages

Posted on 2025-07-07 by jcs

I tend to be a pretty conservative Emacs user. I generally don’t run beta versions and try to keep my packages up to date without constant upgrading. To be sure, some folks are much more conservative in that they save … Continue reading →

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Speeding Up Magit On macOS

Posted on 2025-07-06 by jcs

If you’re using Magit on macOS, here’s a tip that will either improve your life considerably or not affect you at all. The tip is from Greg Newman who says that it reduced his commit time from about 4 seconds … Continue reading →

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