Monthly Archives: November 2018

An Emergency USB for When You’re Stuck on Windows

Posted on 2018-11-10 by jcs

Gustavo A. Ballen has an interesting story about his journey to Linux and Emacs. Ballen is a PhD student in the biological sciences and although Emacs did not come naturally, he soon came to rely on it. He also became … Continue reading →

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De-Googlifying Your Life

Posted on 2018-11-09 by jcs

I came across a post from Kev Quirk on why he was ditching his Android phone. He’s trading it in for an iPhone SE. The TL;DR is that Quirk tired of having Google pry into his life and record everything … Continue reading →

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Refiling in Org Mode

Posted on 2018-11-08 by jcs

Longtime Irreal readers may remember my post on Aaron Bieber’s talk on moving from Vim to Emacs that he gave to the Boston Vim Meetup back in 2015. Since then, I’ve mentioned him in a few other posts. The other … Continue reading →

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Troy Hunt on Why Passwords Aren’t Going Away

Posted on 2018-11-07 by jcs

I was trying to create a Web account with my credit card company so I could update some information. The process was painful beyond endurance and their password policy revealed that they weren’t using the best practices method of hashing … Continue reading →

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A Win for Open Access

Posted on 2018-11-06 by jcs

In a win for open access in publishing two major funders will no longer cover publishing in hybrid journals. The two funders, The Wellcome Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that they will not provide research funding … Continue reading →

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Implementing Strings

Posted on 2018-11-05 by jcs

Andreas Zwinkau has a very nice article on strings and how to implement them. If you’re a C programmer, your first reaction might be, “Meh. They’re an array of bytes. What’s to implement?” If you’re, say, a Python programmer, you … Continue reading →

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Blocking Elsevier

Posted on 2018-11-04 by jcs

I’ve written before about Sci-Hub and their fight with the publishing industry (1, 2). It’s easy to see both sides of the argument but one side, the publishers, have acted in ways that deplete whatever goodwill they might have had. … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 53: Emailing Your Agenda

Posted on 2018-11-03 by jcs

Mike Zamansky is back with another video in his Using Emacs Series. This time it’s about mailing himself a copy of his current Org agenda. I found this video useful for a couple of reasons. First, he discusses the Org … Continue reading →

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High School Students and Basic Computer Skills

Posted on 2018-11-02 by jcs

Chris Wellons over at Null Program has an interesting post on High School students and how they lack a couple of basic computer skills that hamper their advancement in the subject. Wellons mentors students so he’s seen these problems first … Continue reading →

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Programmatic Capitalization

Posted on 2018-11-01 by jcs

Xah Lee, as most of you know, is fanatical about keyboard ergonomics. He’s always measuring, experimenting, and looking for ways to make his typing easier and more ergonomic. He especially tries to avoid key chording. Someone recently tweeted a pointer … Continue reading →

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