Category Archives: General

🥩 Red Meat Friday: Rules For Lisp Programs

Posted on 2026-04-10 by jcs

Over at tfeb.org there’s an amusing post on rules for Lisp programs. The rules boil down to: Write only in Lisp Don’t use Lisp OOP constructs Don’t use the Loop macro Avoid package-qualified names The list is obviously meant to … Continue reading →

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Voyager 1

Posted on 2026-04-09 by jcs

About 50 years ago some engineers at JPL were building a space vehicle with the Star Trek-like 5 year mission to go to unvisited places and seek out new knowledge. That vehicle was, of course, Voyager 1 and the unvisited … Continue reading →

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Tolerance For Repetition

Posted on 2026-04-08 by jcs

Floofcode over that the Emacs subreddit asks a question that resonates with me. He notes that he often has a repetitive task and wonders whether it would be worthwhile writing some Elisp to automate it. Usually, he has to repeat … Continue reading →

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Karthik On Repeat Mode

Posted on 2026-04-07 by jcs

The other day, I wrote about repeat mode. My take was that it was a way repeating certain commands without having to retype their, possibly, complex prefixes. All of that is true but as Karthik informed me in a comment, … Continue reading →

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Read Extended Command Predicate

Posted on 2026-04-06 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov has a post that mentions how M-x shows a lot of commands many of which make no sense in the current context. This has never bothered me because after inputting a few (fuzzy) letters, the display converges on … Continue reading →

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Repeat Mode

Posted on 2026-04-05 by jcs

As many you know, I was a Vim user for a couple of decades before I found the one true editor. One of the things I miss from Vim is the easy to use repeat command. If you’re in command … Continue reading →

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Congratulations Álvaro

Posted on 2026-04-04 by jcs

Irreal readers can’t help but know who Álvaro Ramírez is, if for no other reason that I’m always blathering on about his Journelly app that is my most used and useful iOS app. But of course, Ramírez has many other … Continue reading →

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Back-To-The-Office Backfires

Posted on 2026-04-03 by jcs

Those of you who have been around for a while know that Irreal strongly supports remote work. It’s obviously good for those employees who want it and Irreal has always claimed it’s good for employers too. Sadly, a combination of … Continue reading →

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Your Commit Messages Should Tell A story

Posted on 2026-04-02 by jcs

Chris Mariana has an interesting post about making Git commit messages with Magit. Well crafted commit messages, he says, can tell a story about your project than can valuable in the future. The secret is in the “well crafted” part. … Continue reading →

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Anju

Posted on 2026-04-01 by jcs

We here at the Irreal bunker belong to the cohort that believes every right thinking person eschews the use of the mouse whenever possible. Still, in our honest moments, we recognize that there are some intelligent, skillful people who do … Continue reading →

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