Monthly Archives: February 2021

Emacs Writer

Posted on 2021-02-28 by jcs

As most of you know, I’m very interested in the ways that non-technical people use Emacs and ways of making Emacs more accessible to such people. Ashton Wiersdorf is a technical user married to a non-technical writer looking for a … Continue reading →

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Facebook and Apple

Posted on 2021-02-27 by jcs

It’s unlikely that any sentient being in the known universe, let alone any Irreal reader, is unaware of the squabble raging between Apple and Facebook over Apple’s forthcoming iOS change that will require apps to ask a user’s permission before … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Programmers—Then & Now

Posted on 2021-02-26 by jcs

Here’s a little red meat for all the graybeards out there waving their canes and yelling at the kids to get off their lawn.

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Tracking Pixels

Posted on 2021-02-25 by jcs

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, taking a break from criticizing the president who is not the president (it’s a Zen thing), has an excellent rant on the abomination that is email tracking pixels. As most Irreal readers surely know, tracking pixels … Continue reading →

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Customizing the Agenda

Posted on 2021-02-24 by jcs

If you’re an Org-mode user you’ve probably seen some of the custom Agenda displays that enterprising users have created. They can be useful for those who like to organize their activities and use the Agenda as a portal into that … Continue reading →

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Maintainers and Expectations

Posted on 2021-02-23 by jcs

I’ve written things like this before but apparently the right people weren’t paying attention. The free/open software movement depends substantially on volunteers. Yes, some companies contribute by paying their employees to work on projects they’re interested in and, of course, … Continue reading →

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Designing with Finite State Machines

Posted on 2021-02-22 by jcs

I’ve written before (see here and here for example) of my enthusiasm for using finite state machines (FSMs) in my design and coding. I had a C-based template that I used over and over. To implement a new state machine … Continue reading →

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Configuring Mbsync to Work with Gmail

Posted on 2021-02-21 by jcs

I long ago gave up using Gmail due to privacy concerns. Still, lots of folks—and companies—still use it because, among other things, it does have the advantage of portability that doesn’t depend on your current ISP or your OS. Gmail … Continue reading →

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Managing Window Placement

Posted on 2021-02-20 by jcs

One of the tropes of Emacs use is the idea that there’s always something new to learn about the editor. I know that to be true but today it was brought home to me by a new video from Protesilaos … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Word

Posted on 2021-02-19 by jcs

Microsoft Word: What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) typesetting software that is widely used for writing despite its lack of decent version control and text entry/editing functionality#vim #emacs #rmarkdown #pandoc — Martin Skarzynski (@marskar) February 18, 2021 And … Continue reading →

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