Category Archives: General

Learning Emacs Keyboard Shortcuts

Posted on 2013-09-08 by jcs

Sacha Chua has been doing a lot of sketch notes lately. One of her most recent contributions are two guides for learning Emacs keyboard shortcuts. These are, of course, aimed at n00bs but they are well done and worth passing … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Using Org Mode for Custom Workflows

Posted on 2013-09-07 by jcs

jr0cket, aka John Stevenson, is working on a series of posts that discuss how to design a custom workflow with Org Mode. So far, he has a set of three posts but be sure to check his home page for … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Schneier on Trusting the NSA

Posted on 2013-09-06 by jcs

Bruce Schneier has a powerful article in The Atlantic on The Only Way to Restore Trust in the NSA. His prescription is to appoint an independent special council to clean up the mess. My first reaction when reading that was … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Sacha Does Org

Posted on 2013-09-03 by jcs

The ever-energetic Sacha Chua uses Org mode to organize her life. If you follow her at all you know that She has an extremely busy schedule. She documents everything. If Chua can run her life with Org Mode, just about … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Lisp and Slime on Windows

Posted on 2013-09-01 by jcs

I haven’t used a Windows machine in decades but my general sense is that using Emacs on Windows can be—er—challenging. Even more so, apparently, is using Slime with Emacs on Windows. It’s nice, then, that Jisang Yoo has come to … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Common Lisp versus Emacs Lisp

Posted on 2013-08-31 by jcs

As a user of both Elisp and Common Lisp I sometimes have a hard time remembering the small differences. Many of these are “hidden” in the sense that identically named functions behave differently. One such example is that functions such … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

A Surveillance Timeline

Posted on 2013-08-30 by jcs

The revelations from the NSA scandal are coming so fast and furious that it’s easy to become confused. Now, the EFF has come to our rescue with Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying. It starts with the ratification of the bill … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Another Emacs Challenge

Posted on 2013-08-29 by jcs

Over at the Emacs reddit, zoldberghoneydew presents an interesting problem and solution. The problem boils down to creating a hosts file of the form host1 ip-address-of-host-1 … host64 ip-address-of-host-64 where the address of host-n can be looked up in DNS … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments

Fourteen Years of SQL Injection

Posted on 2013-08-28 by jcs

Mavituna Security has a nice post up on SQL Injection. They give a brief history of SQL injection and the three common mistakes that enable it. They have some astounding facts. Here’s a small sampling: In 2012, 97% of all … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Dinner With General Alexander

Posted on 2013-08-27 by jcs

Jennifer Granick has an excellent article, My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander, in Forbes. Unlike most reporters, Granick doesn’t waste her (and our) time with sideshows such as the whereabouts of Edward Snowden. Instead, she zeros in on the … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment