Monthly Archives: September 2020

Life Imitates Literature

Posted on 2020-09-10 by jcs

Old-time Irrealers and alert newcomers know that I’m a big fan of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels. Indeed, this blog is named after one of his ideas from the novel Excession: the Irreal. I mention Banks because I was reading … Continue reading →

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Unix Names Explained

Posted on 2020-09-09 by jcs

There doesn’t seem to be much going on today but, fortunately, we’ve not yet reached the end of the internet. Instead, I offer those of you who didn’t grow up with the Unix command line some insight into where all … Continue reading →

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Online Privacy; Real World Privacy

Posted on 2020-09-08 by jcs

I’ve been a big fan of Daring Fireball for years. Sadly, of late it’s devolved from being a tech blog that occasionally mentioned politics to a political blog that occasionally mentions tech. Nevertheless, Gruber can still bring it when a … Continue reading →

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Avi Navigation

Posted on 2020-09-07 by jcs

Over at the Emacs subredit, RecursiveTraverser says that of all the Avy navigation commands he likes avy-goto-char-timer the best and asks if anyone else agrees. Those who answered agreed with him but there’s no reason to prefer it to the … Continue reading →

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Gnus

Posted on 2020-09-06 by jcs

I am really enjoying mu4e again after fixing the problem that caused it to be so slow. As I’ve said before, I’m very happy with mu4e and don’t have any desire to replace it. Nevertheless, I always find it interesting … Continue reading →

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Grading With AI

Posted on 2020-09-05 by jcs

The Verge has a story that is at once hilarious, infuriating, and deeply disturbing. In this time of COVID-19 much education has moved online. Except for scale, this isn’t really new. It’s been possible for many years for children to … Continue reading →

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Wireless Charging Problems with the iPhone

Posted on 2020-09-04 by jcs

Apologies to those of you who aren’t members of the cult but this is another post on Apple products. For the last year or so I’ve been using a wireless charger for my iPhone. I like it because it’s easy … Continue reading →

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Finite State Machines in Python

Posted on 2020-09-03 by jcs

One of my favorite development strategies is using finite state machines. They’re not right for every type of problem but they have greater applicability than you might think. I’ve written several FSM-based applications almost always in C. C isn’t the … Continue reading →

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Two Clicks Needed for Menus on macOS

Posted on 2020-09-02 by jcs

This is another one of those posts that are of interest only to folks using Emacs on macOS. For some time, the Emacs menus haven’t been working right for me on macOS. In previous versions of Emacs/macOS, there would be … Continue reading →

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Typing and Bottlenecks

Posted on 2020-09-01 by jcs

Today is one of those days when life intervened and I’m late in getting a post out. Life may be intervening tomorrow too so be warned. Today I saw an interesting post by Thorsten Ball that considers the argument that … Continue reading →

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