Monthly Archives: January 2022

Emacs Calc Video

Posted on 2022-01-11 by jcs

Over at the Calculator Culture Youtube Channel they have a nice Introductory video on the GNU Emacs calculator otherwise known as Calc. The thing about Calc is that’s it’s gigantic. It’s not Mathematica but it seems like it can do … Continue reading →

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Yak Shaving

Posted on 2022-01-10 by jcs

“Yak shaving”. It is, at base, an opprobrious term but with a touch of indulgence and humor. Sort of like “rascal”: naughty, yes, but lovably so. It’s clear why yak shaving has a bad reputation. It’s a distraction from what … Continue reading →

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Raindrop

Posted on 2022-01-09 by jcs

It’s Sunday and I don’t have anything interesting to write about so instead I have a small gift. I stumbled across an amazing website the other day and have been obsessed with it since. The TL;DR is that you’re presented … Continue reading →

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More on Webster’s Revised Dictionary

Posted on 2022-01-08 by jcs

Last week, in Draft 4 Revisited, I remembered James Somers’ wonderful article on You’re probably using the wrong dictionary. The right dictionary, it turns out, is Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828) but you really need to read Somers’ … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Unix in the Browser

Posted on 2022-01-07 by jcs

No. Just No. Semiserious afterword I get that there’s some great engineering behind this but why would you want to “run” Unix in the browser? And why, in the name of all that’s holy, would you want an OS built … Continue reading →

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Finding Repeated Words

Posted on 2022-01-06 by jcs

Years ago, Albert Heinle was writing his thesis. A common error that many or most writers must deal with is using the same word repeatedly in close proximity. I certainly do and so did Heinle. He was using Emacs and … Continue reading →

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Is Norton Stealth Downloading a Cryptocurrency Miner?

Posted on 2022-01-05 by jcs

I just saw this horrifying Twitter thread. The thread makes it appear that Norton is stealthily downloading a cryptocurrency miner and running it without user consent. Instant outrage! Except It’s Twitter If true this would almost certainly be illegal and … Continue reading →

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Another Look At Counting Org Tags

Posted on 2022-01-04 by jcs

Andrea over at Where parallels cross has decided to post some shorter tips in addition to the blog’s longer offerings. The first is some Elisp to count the number of tags in your agenda files. When I looked at the … Continue reading →

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Are Google Searches Losing Quality?

Posted on 2022-01-03 by jcs

As most of you know, I try to avoid Google as much as possible. In particular, I haven’t used the Google search engine in years. But that’s because of privacy concerns and Google’s sordid record of vacuuming up as much … Continue reading →

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Germany Gets It Right

Posted on 2022-01-02 by jcs

Tutanota is a Germany-based secure email provider. As you would expect, they are very interested in privacy-affecting legislation, especially in Germany, so they were quick to announce a change in government policy regarding data retention on their blog. The TL;DR … Continue reading →

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