Metadata

Posted on 2015-06-02 by jcs

When they tell you it’s just metadata, show them this

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Reproducible Research in the Small

Posted on 2015-06-02 by jcs

As most of you know, I’m a big fan of reproducible research and have written about it many times. I usually think of it as something you do with a large project that is going to produce one or more journal articles but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Titus von der Malsburg has a nice example of a small experiment that he wrote up in Org mode using reproducible research techniques and published as a gist. If you click on the Raw button you can see the Org mode source.

Notice how you have a complete package: you can read the write-up in a nicely formatted document complete with graphs and tables and you can also see the source document with all the data and R code used to make the calculations. This is the perfect way to share the results of an experiment with team members or with colleagues in other locations. They can check your calculations or use your work as a jumping off point for further research.

Howard Abrams has written about using Org mode as a way of sharing DevOps experiments with colleagues. Malsburg’s gist shows another example of using Org mode to share results with others in a low effort way. You can publish the gist and email interested parties with the URL. Publishing as a gist means that even those benighted souls not using Emacs can see your results presented in a nice manner and still see the (text based) source document.

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Nothing to Hide

Posted on 2015-06-01 by jcs

Edward Snowden has a nice rejoinder for those who say they aren’t worried about government surveillance because they have nothing to hide (via Jean-PhilippeParadis):

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From Date to Agenda

Posted on 2015-06-01 by jcs

Here’s a useful tip for bringing up the agenda for a given date. If you have the point on an Org date, typing 【Ctrl+c Ctrl+o】 will bring up the agenda for that date.

This is really useful if you have a memacs-like environment where you tie your notes and events to your agenda. It’s the same key sequence you use to follow a link so it’s easy to remember if you think of a date as being a link to its day’s agenda.

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Ding Dong the Witch is Dead?

Posted on 2015-05-31 by jcs

Is the wicked witch really dead? Although I’m running the risk of suffering ignominy at the hands of Betteridge’s law, The Daily Beast is speculating just that. Namely, that the Patriot Act may soon be gone for good. We can only hope. Specifically, they say that if the Patriot Act is allowed to expire, it will almost certainly not be renewed.

That’s because while the politicos judge they can get away with renewing the act, they’re pretty sure the country won’t stand still for what amounts to a new act that authorizes mass surveillance. This explains the frenzy that the Senate leadership is in. Although they are loath to “water down” the act, they know that if they don’t get the act renewed in some form, it’s probably dead forever.

This cravenness is really disturbing. If you think the act is useful and worthwhile then you should support it and pass another one if the current one expires. If you’re not willing to do that then you have no business supporting the renewal of the current act. But, of course, politicians will be politicians.

Despite all the fuss and scare mongering on the part of the act’s supporters, it probably won’t make much difference if the act does expire. As The Daily Beast explains, the reason for that is that the act’s major provisions are mostly not used or worth the trouble

  • The “Lone Wolf” provision has never been used
  • Roving wiretaps are seldom used (there were only 11 in 2013)
  • Bulk phone metadata collection is more trouble than it’s worth.

This is all in keeping with the IG’s report that Section 215 has not played a part in any investigation. The Senate has been called back in session today for one last stab at renewing the act. Let’s hope that those senators who believe in civil liberties will hold the line.

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The Power of Plain Text Explained

Posted on 2015-05-30 by jcs

In a short tweet, Karl Voit explains the power of plain text and why you should avoid lock in:

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Making Open Offices Less Bad

Posted on 2015-05-30 by jcs

I’ve written many times about the evils and absurdities of open plan offices. There’s lots of duckspeak about improving communication or culture building but everyone knows that its real—and only—virtue is that it’s cheap.

Given that fact, if you find yourself in such a place, the chances are great that it won’t change to a more sensible arrangement. Fortunately, Matt Blodgett has some simple suggestions to make open plan offices suck less. They’re easy to implement so unless your management have come to believe their own quacking, you shouldn’t get much pushback from managers.

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A Guy Named Null

Posted on 2015-05-29 by jcs

From the art reflecting life department, we have this story of a guy named Null and what he does to databases.

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Avy

Posted on 2015-05-29 by jcs

I’ve written several times about ace-jump-mode and how it’s now my main navigation tool. I’m also a huge fan of ace-winodw and use it through the excellent hydra from abo-abo that I use to control all my window operations.

Abo-abo, it turns out has written a replacement for ace-jump, called Avy, that extends the its functionality. Abo-abo writes excellent software and is fastidious about maintaining it but ace-jump was working well for me and my inherent laziness kept me from switching. Then Artur Malabarba wrote about his upgrading to Avy and I was shamed into at least considering upgrading.

Finally, I realized that ace-window was based on avy and was therefore already installed on my machines. All I had to do was switch my key binding for ace-jump to avi-goto-word-1 and I would be using avy instead of ace-jump as well as having access to the rest of avy‘s functionality. You can take a look at avy‘s READ ME to see what some of that functionality is.

I also rebound 【Meta+g g】 and 【Meta+g Meta+g】 to avy-goto-line. It’s a more featureful replacement for the built-in goto-line.

I’ve been using the new setup for a while now and am very happy with it. I finally deleted ace-jump from my packages so you can consider me all in now. If you ever have more than two windows open in Emacs you absolutely must have ace-window. Once you have ace-window, all the rest is available for free. I can’t overstate how useful this package is. I can’t imagine using Emacs without it now.

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Colors and Emacs in the Terminal

Posted on 2015-05-28 by jcs

Here’s a useful tip for those of you who run Emacs in a terminal.

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