Monthly Archives: March 2021

Control the Apple Music App from Emacs

Posted on 2021-03-21 by jcs

About 6 months ago, Álvaro Ramírez posted some code to play music on the Mac through Emacs. I didn’t see the point of installing a new music app when the default Music.app works just fine so I didn’t read his … Continue reading →

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Emacs 27.2 Is Almost Here

Posted on 2021-03-20 by jcs

There’s a lot of news about the upcoming Emacs 27.2. First, Eli Zaretskii wrote that RC1 for Emacs 27.2 has been released. Then he said that barring any problems, this release candidate would become Emacs 27.2 in about a week. … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Prettifying Emacs

Posted on 2021-03-19 by jcs

When I was younger, we had a term for programs that produced some sort of impressive display but were otherwise useless: eyewash. Such programs were produced for the benefit of the suits and visiting firemen. There’s a faction of Emacs … Continue reading →

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Industrial R&D Labs

Posted on 2021-03-18 by jcs

When you read “Industrial R&D Labs” in the title, what did you think of? Even in our field, there are plenty. There’s Xerox’s PARC, AT&T’s Bell Labs, and IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center to name just three of the … Continue reading →

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Book Publishing with LaTeX and Pandoc

Posted on 2021-03-17 by jcs

Dan Grec was a software engineer who gave it all up for adventures of a different kind. Now he drives his Jeep all around the world living the life he’d always dreamed of. He’s also published a couple of books … Continue reading →

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Does Targeted Advertising Work?

Posted on 2021-03-16 by jcs

We know from Betteridge’s Law that the answer must be no. Elaine Moore writing for The Finanical Times comes to the same conclusion and says that there’s plenty of evidence that the whole thing is a scam and that targeted … Continue reading →

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Why Use RSS

Posted on 2021-03-15 by jcs

Marc Kydd has a post from last month that I’ve had in the queue to write about. His post is on why he still uses RSS. I’m always a bit surprised by posts like that because why wouldn’t you use … Continue reading →

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Piracy Doesn’t Exist

Posted on 2021-03-14 by jcs

Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson gave a short, provocative talk at the Independent Games Summit in which he made the argument that there’s no such thing as piracy or a lost sale. Countless barrels of ink, not to mention pixels, … Continue reading →

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Newspapers and Writing

Posted on 2021-03-13 by jcs

Journalists, it seems to me, have two main jobs: Discover and report the news accurately and Write up the results of their investigations in a clear and easy to understand way. It’s no secret to Irreal readers that I think … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Python Is Not a Great Language

Posted on 2021-03-12 by jcs

Robin Thomas says that Python is not a great programming language and offers 11 reasons why it isn’t. Reaction was swift and virulent, proving he might have been on to something when he wrote, “Pythonists have a bit of a … Continue reading →

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