Monthly Archives: November 2017

DRM and the Darknet

The folks over at Ars Technica UK were resting up after Thanksgiving and reran an article from 2012. The article discusses a paper (2002) by the Microsoft engineers who worked on Palladium, Microsoft’s Trusted Windows Project. The project failed partly … Continue reading

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Working in Emacs

Some people will go to any lengths to do all their work in Emacs. I can sympathize. How I spreadsheeted this evening: export as csv->open with emacs->org-table-convert-region->happily edit using isearch-replace, macros, etc.->org-table-export back to csv->import into spreadsheet. #emacs — Bryan … Continue reading

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Read Only

I just had one of those “Well Duh! Of course” moments. It came to me with this Emacs Command of the Day tweet: M-x read-only-mode, bound to C-x C-q. Avoid accidentally modifying a buffer with this handy minor mode! — … Continue reading

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Computer Languages as Weapons

For those of you who like such things, here’s a list of popular languages and the weapons they correspond to. My go to languages are Lisp and C so I guess I’m crazy and dangerous but toting an old—if reliable—weapon. … Continue reading

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The pcre2el Package

In my post the other day on Mike Zamansky’s Dired video, I meant to mention one of the packages he talked about but I forgot. That package is pcre2el, a package to, among other things, convert Perl compatible regular expressions … Continue reading

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Mastering Emacs on Sale

If you’ve been wanting to get a copy of Mickey Petersen’s excellent Mastering Emacs, here’s your chance: You don't need a new TV – what you DO need is my book on Mastering #Emacs. It's just $20 for the next … Continue reading

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Using Emacs 38: Dired

Mike Zamansky has his latest video up. This time it’s about Dired. Dired is one of the great features of Emacs but many users are only dimly aware of it and don’t make full use of its capabilities. Zamansky’s video … Continue reading

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Google Apps

Regular Irreal readers know that I avoid Google and its applications as much as I can. I use DuckDuckGo for web searches, use Org mode for writing and publishing—and when I must, NeoOffice to interact with documents from the unenlightened—and … Continue reading

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Emacs for the CEO Redux

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Josh Stella’s use of Emacs by a CEO. I’m always interested in how non-technical people use Emacs so I took note when Stella’s piece popped up again. I reread his post and … Continue reading

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Ivy Occur Customizations

I really like ivy-occur and the way you can take a list of Ivy completion candidates and put it in a separate buffer that you can manipulate in any of the usual Emacs ways. The easiest way to use it … Continue reading

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