Category Archives: General

More Information on the Outage

Posted on 2013-04-13 by jcs

Apparently, this is what’s going on that’s causing the problems with Irreal. It looks as if all WordPress sites are getting hit. I’ll post more information as it becomes available. Let’s hope this latest round of silliness ends soon.

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Outage 2

Posted on 2013-04-13 by jcs

OK, I guess that worked. I had to rename the post file so that it didn’t get stuck in the queue but at least I was able to get it pushed out. Also, I forgot to mention that there is … Continue reading →

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Back of the Envelope Calculations

Posted on 2013-04-13 by jcs

I love this. I’m a big believer in the utility of making back of the envelope calculations. It’s amazing how often it can reveal poor assumptions or that someone is trying to peddle malarkey. The technique is also extremely powerful. … Continue reading →

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Window Configuration and Management

Posted on 2013-04-12 by jcs

Xah Lee has a couple of nice posts on managing window configurations. One posts deals with having a single (large) frame and dividing it into several windows. The other deals with the opposite case of having several frames with one … Continue reading →

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Babcore

Posted on 2013-04-10 by jcs

Arne Babenhauserheide, who you may remember as the “Eminent Babenhauserheide” from Episode 7 of Emacs Rocks!, has a nice post up on Babcore, his version of Bozhidar Batsov’s prelude. If, like me, you enjoy mining other people’s configurations for ideas … Continue reading →

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Emacs Conference Videos

Posted on 2013-04-09 by jcs

The indefatigable Sacha Chua volunteered to edit the videos of the recent Emacs Conference and I’ve been looking forward to watching them. The problem was that I haven’t been able to find a list of those ready for viewing. Until … Continue reading →

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EmacsGolf 3

Posted on 2013-04-08 by jcs

It’s been a while since we’ve had a EmacsGolf challenge but I just ran across this post from Cameron Saul with the perfect problem for us. Here’s the problem: Saul is writing some Java code that looks like this TextView … Continue reading →

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Timeless Tools

Posted on 2013-04-07 by jcs

James Bennett over at The B-List has an interesting post on editors and why, no matter what you finally decide, you should learn either Vi(m) or Emacs. He begins by noting that every couple of years there is a wave … Continue reading →

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An Up-To-Date Paredit Reference Card

Posted on 2013-04-05 by jcs

I learned something new from Magnar Sveen’s excellent Emacs Rocks! episode on Paredit: the paredit-convolute-sexp command (bound to【Meta+?】). It’s hard to describe exactly what it does so check out the video to see it in action. The thing is, I … Continue reading →

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Iain M. Banks

Posted on 2013-04-04 by jcs

The careful Irreal reader will have noticed the quote from Iain M. Banks in the upper right corner of the blog. The quote comes from Excession, my favorite of Banks’ Culture Novels. It’s a description of metamathics, which Banks describes … Continue reading →

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