Monthly Archives: November 2019

Ken Thompson Talks About Computer Chess

Posted on 2019-11-20 by jcs

Someone posted a pointer to a 2005 interview of Ken Thompson by John Mashey in which they discuss Thompson’s work on computer chess. It’s unusual, as far as Thompson interviews go, because it doesn’t mention Unix except to note that … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 62: Magit Forge

Posted on 2019-11-19 by jcs

Mike Zamansky has posted another great video in his Using Emacs Series. This video takes a look at Magit Forge. It’s available from Melpa and is easy to install. Zamansky shows how easy in the video. Once installed, it just … Continue reading →

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Probably the Worst Password Advice You’ll Ever See

Posted on 2019-11-18 by jcs

I have no—because there are no—words to describe what a stupid idea this is: FinecoBank: “Verify the security of your passwords. Insert it on Google: if it returns less than 10 results it means it’s a good password.” (When you … Continue reading →

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Generating Technical Documents with Org-mode

Posted on 2019-11-17 by jcs

Mike Hamrick has put up an excellent video on using Emacs and Org-mode to publish nice looking and consistent technical documents. In preparing a document, Hamrick uses literate programming and—although he doesn’t mention it—reproducible research techniques. That’s important, because as … Continue reading →

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Zamansky 61: Org-msg

Posted on 2019-11-16 by jcs

Mike Zamansky has another video up in his Using Emacs Series. This time he looks at writing mu4e emails in Org-mode. Like me, he mostly wants to send plain text emails but sometimes he’d like to send tables, source code, … Continue reading →

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Generating Gantt Charts with Org-mode

Posted on 2019-11-15 by jcs

Perhaps because I’ve always worked for smaller organizations, I’ve never had to deal with Gantt charts. I’ve always considered them yet another management fad but that may be due to ignorant prejudice. In any event, lots of people use them … Continue reading →

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The Demise of the Car Key

Posted on 2019-11-14 by jcs

As I predicted previously, car manufacturers are beginning to jump on the keyless bandwagon. In a way, they’re already there with the widespread adoption of key fobs to open doors and start the engine. The fobs are convenient because you … Continue reading →

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Emacs Resources for Writers

Posted on 2019-11-13 by jcs

Recently, James Gill tweeted about a collection of Emacs resources for writers that he’s curated into a GitHub repository. There are two parts to the collection: Tips and examples for writing with Emacs, and Writing a book with Emacs. As … Continue reading →

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Remote Debugging With Tramp

Posted on 2019-11-12 by jcs

Matt Ray gave a very nice presentation to EmacsConf 2019 on Interactive Remote Debugging and Development with TRAMP Mode. One of the frequent complaints about Emacs is that it’s hard to work with remote files. Mostly that’s because the person … Continue reading →

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List Commits to Dired-Marked Files

Posted on 2019-11-11 by jcs

Via Wilfred Huges we have this useful tip: Uhm. No, I didn’t. https://t.co/eUQesn9ACk — Jonas Bernoulli (@magit_emacs) November 9, 2019 Apparently, it’s not widely known. I just tried it—I’m running dired+—and it worked perfectly. It’s easy to see how the … Continue reading →

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