Monthly Archives: May 2018

Python Doctests, Literate Programming, and Org Mode

Posted on 2018-05-21 by jcs

If you’re a Python programmer and like to have built-in tests for your functions, you probably know about doctest, a way of embedding one or more tests in the docstring of a Python function. Normally, they don’t do anything but … Continue reading →

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Introduction to Using Git

Posted on 2018-05-20 by jcs

If you’re in the intersection of Emacs and Git users, you are almost certainly using Magit and probably don’t think about version control very much: it just works. But suppose your version control experience is restricted to CVS, SVN, or … Continue reading →

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Capturing Code Snippets

Posted on 2018-05-19 by jcs

The other day in my post about Alain Lafon’s talk on playing Emacs like an instrument—you have watched that video, haven’t you?—I mentioned that one of the things I picked up was an Org capture template for capturing code snippets. … Continue reading →

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A Tip for Org Mode N00bs

Posted on 2018-05-18 by jcs

Wilfred Hughes serves up some useful advice for those just starting out with Org mode: It's too easy to get excited about time tracking, tags, and literate programming when starting out with org-mode. It has a huge featureset. I'd encourage … Continue reading →

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Some Dired Tips

Posted on 2018-05-17 by jcs

Tim Visher, who used to produce the popular VimGolf in Emacs Videos, has a couple of useful tips about using dired: #emacs: In dired, `w` copies the file to the kill ring (and clipboard if you have that set up), … Continue reading →

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California Stores the DNA of All Babies Born in the State

Posted on 2018-05-16 by jcs

What could go wrong? The iron law of data collection, that’s what. It’s been a while since I’ve written about the iron law, so here’s a quick recap: The iron law states: Whenever the government (or anyone else for that … Continue reading →

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Emacs Tools for Writers

Posted on 2018-05-15 by jcs

As you all know, I’m fond of posts that show the versatility of Emacs by documenting its use by writers. At first glance, writing—a novel, say—seems to be the direct antithesis of what most of us use Emacs for. But … Continue reading →

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Making Slides with Org-reveal

Posted on 2018-05-14 by jcs

Scott Nesbitt has an informative post on how to set up and use Reveal.js and Org-reveal for generating slide decks. There are several solutions for making slides that leverage Emacs and Org mode but Org-reveal is the simplest that I’ve … Continue reading →

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Batch Editing with ed

Posted on 2018-05-13 by jcs

I’ve written before about the ed editor and the faithful who still use it today. A tweet by Mike Zamansky lead me to this Julia Evans post on batch editing files with ed. Evans has a typical editing problem: she … Continue reading →

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Spaces After Periods

Posted on 2018-05-12 by jcs

I feel almost like a troll writing about this. The controversy as to whether there should be one space or two after a period is surely one of the most pointless of holy wars. Yet holy war it is. For … Continue reading →

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