Monthly Archives: May 2015

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

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: Devastating: how much money/human-life-time/information is lost because #Microsoft #Word was used to archive things. #digitalhumanities — n0v0id (@n0v0id) April 7, 2015

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 2 Comments

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.

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

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, … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

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.

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

How Useful is Section 215 to Law Enforcement?

Posted on 2015-05-28 by jcs

Despite doubling its use of bulk surveillance orders in the five years ending in 2009, the FBI could not point to a single case where the use of Section 215 of the Patriot Act helped solve a major case. That’s … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

What Would You Miss the Most?

Posted on 2015-05-27 by jcs

Here’s a fascinating graph indicating what people of different age groups would miss the most as a way of getting information. What Would You Miss The Most? Radio? Newspaper ? Smartphone? Tv ? Laptop? #newsgeist Via @_JackRiley (ofcom data) pic.twitter.com/Wt9IP9IYtB … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Kitchin on Embedding Org in HTML

Posted on 2015-05-26 by jcs

John Kitchin has an interesting post on embedding Org documents in HTML. The idea is that you embed the Org in a data URI so that the user can click on the URI and see the Org code. This is … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Defining the Word at Point

Posted on 2015-05-25 by jcs

I just stumbled upon a new offering from abo-abo. It’s define-word, a very nice package that allows you to get a definition of the word at point. You can also specify the word in the minibuffer if you want. The … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 3 Comments