Monthly Archives: August 2024

Remote Emacs in Terminal Mode

There are some people who prefer to run Emacs in terminal mode. I have no problem with that but I do think that GUI Emacs has so much more to offer that it’s usually the best choice. Sometimes there’s no … Continue reading

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Profiling Garbage Collection

Gene Goykhman over at Flaky Goodness has a nice hint on profiling garbage collection but the technique is more generally applicable. Goykhman wanted to know how much time he was spending in garbage collection while exporting his blog. It turns … Continue reading

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Updating Builtin Packages

Charles Choi has a very informative post on the Emacs upgrading policy a very informative post on the Emacs upgrading policy. The TL;DR is that by default Emacs’ package.el will not upgrade packages that are builtin. Org is an example … Continue reading

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Partying Like It’s The Last Century

It’s hard to be too cynical about the security practices of software vendors: even those selling “security” solutions. Although most Irreal readers probably know a lot more about good security practices than the average user, security is a difficult discipline … Continue reading

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Schneier On Staying Safe On The Internet

There may be more knowledgeable people on security than Bruce Schneier but hardly any of them are talking to us. They mostly work for the NSA or its brethren or they’re cybercriminals. Happily, Schneier does talk to us and he … Continue reading

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Ten Coding Fonts

A perennial topic of interest to programmers is their coding font. I’ve been using Inconsolata for as long as I can remember. I adopted it when I was still a Vim user and carried it over to Emacs. In my … Continue reading

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Nothing Today Because I’m Exhausted

Yesterday was a lost day. I haven’t been happy with my WiFi router so I got a new one and yesterday was the day that I was going to spend an hour or so installing it and updating my network. … Continue reading

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Why Isn’t Lisp Used More In Production Redux

I just came across an excellent Medium article by Kenichi Sasagawa that addresses the question of Why Isn’t Lisp Used More In Production that I wrote about the other day. My post took the somewhat cynical view that Lisp lost … Continue reading

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🥩 Red Meat Friday: Toilet paper

Toilet paper? Wha? Most of us can go our entire lives—modulo COVID induced shortages—without ever thinking about it. You buy it, you use it, you buy some more. But COVID did make us think about this everyday item and wonder … Continue reading

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On Sharing The Benefits Of Emacs

Most experienced Emacsers recognize the futility of proselytizing for our favorite editor. Basically, no one but the already convinced want to hear about it. They’re sure the bling, menus, and mouse actions offered by those other editors are superior to … Continue reading

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