Category Archives: General

RSS With Gnus

Posted on 2026-04-30 by jcs

After reading the sad news that Chris Wellons is abandoning Emacs and the Emacs packages he developed one of my first concerns was for Elfeed. It’s the RSS reader that I depend on everyday for my research and news curation. … Continue reading →

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Goodbye Old Friend

Posted on 2026-04-29 by jcs

I recently opened my feed to discover this post from Chris Wellons. The TL;DR is that Wellons, after 20 years, is abandoning Emacs for Vim. Folks do that, of course, but Wellons is special because he’s been a prolific author … Continue reading →

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Fast16

Posted on 2026-04-28 by jcs

There are few Irreal readers, I sure, who don’t know what Stuxnet was and, whatever their feelings about the underlying politics, don’t consider it a tour de force of software engineering. Recently a new candidate for the championship of such … Continue reading →

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The Sunk Cost Of Emacs

Posted on 2026-04-27 by jcs

Randy Ridenour has an interesting post on Emacs and sunk costs. His post is in reaction to the idea that using Emacs requires a lot of learning and customization and that those efforts are sunk costs. That is, they’re costs … Continue reading →

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Keybindings For Mouse Use

Posted on 2026-04-26 by jcs

For those of you who like using your mouse with Emacs, Charles Choi has a post you may find helpful. In it, he lists some keybindings that are helpful when using a mouse in Emacs. I famously eschew the use … Continue reading →

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Guide To Folding

Posted on 2026-04-25 by jcs

James Cherti has an excellent post describing how to set up a universal folding system. Folding is one of those things that I’m equivocal about. I use it all the time in Org files and couldn’t live without it. On … Continue reading →

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Help Test Scrim v. 1.3.3

Posted on 2026-04-24 by jcs

If you’re a macOS Emacs user and haven’t tried Scrim, you may want to give it a spin. The TL;DR is that it solves the Org Protocol problems on macOS. Along with Captee, it allows you to easily share links … Continue reading →

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Emacs As A Browser

Posted on 2026-04-23 by jcs

As I’ve written many times, only my browner keeps me from doing almost everything in Emacs. Sure, there are some other apps that can’t be brought under the Emacs umbrella, but in many cases, emacs-everywhere allows me to handle text … Continue reading →

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Orgy

Posted on 2026-04-22 by jcs

Irreal, in both its incarnations, has always used a dynamic Web site: first on Blogger and now on WordPress. I like them both. They’re easy to use and, really, perfect for non-technical people who want to blog. At this point, … Continue reading →

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Changing Of The Guard

Posted on 2026-04-21 by jcs

The much predicted succession of Apple’s top management is underway. In a community letter from Tim Cook, Cook announced that he is transitioning to Apple’s executive chairman and as long expected, John Ternus, the current Senior Vice President of Engineering, … Continue reading →

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