Calc Formulae in the Minibuffer

Posted on 2021-07-19 by jcs

Tony Aldon has another quick video up that considers using Org-mode table formulae in the minibuffer. It’s a nice way of trying out a formula or even using them to make calculations and inserting the results into the current buffer.

The video, Calc formulas, all you need to know, uses the “quick-calc” mode of Calc to do its calculations. You can invoke quick-calc either by calling it with Meta+x quick-calc or by starting calc as usual with Ctrl+x * and specifying q instead of c. The advantage of quick-calc for non-Lispers is that you can enter the formula in infix notation if you prefer. In any event, all the action takes place in the minibuffer and returns to the current buffer after a single calculation.

After the calculation, the result is left in the kill ring so you can insert it into the buffer with Ctrl+y but there are a couple of other ways to do it as the video shows. Even if you aren’t a Lipser, you can use quick-calc as a handy calculator so it’s worth taking the time to watch the video. The video itself is only 3 minutes, 45 seconds long so it’s easy to schedule time to watch it.

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Google Drive and Censorship

Posted on 2021-07-18 by jcs

I’ve told you and told you and told you but some people aren’t listening. Okay, let’s be honest, they aren’t even reading to begin with but they should be. If you use Google products for producing, storing, or sharing your documents, expect to have them reviewed and if they fail to conform to Google’s political preferences, to have them removed or blocked.

Here’s the latest example:

Notice that we’re not even talking about “dangerous” or controversial material here1. It’s simply a collection of headlines concerning vaccinations but Google has a preferred narrative and if one of those headlines contravenes that narrative, their slipshod algorithms will flag the entire document as too dangerous to see the light of day.

Maybe it’s just me but I don’t want third parties reading and reviewing my documents and I certainly don’t want them disappearing those documents. There are plenty of ways of producing and sharing your content that doesn’t involve Google. I just don’t understand people who are willing to risk having their data deleted simply because Google has some convenient tools.

There are plenty of free, safe, Word clones to produce your content if you insist on Microsoft’s version of WYSIWYG, and as I’ve said before I pay about $100 a year for the Irreal Web site. I’m sure you can do better if you try. As I’ve also said before, if you insist on using Google for your content, I’m not going to feel sorry for you when the inevitable happens

Footnotes:

1

And even if we were, so what? What ever happened to the notion that opposing ideas should be debated and that the truth will emerge from that debate?

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Remote Work in Australia

Posted on 2021-07-17 by jcs

I have, for many, many years, been fascinated with the idea of remote work. Since Mike Elgan wrote about the New Bedouins in 2007 I yearned to be part of the revolution. Now, of course, due to COVID-19 it’s the new normal.

There’s an interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald that posits the five day office week is dead, at least in Australia. That’s not to say that everyone will be working remotely from now on, merely that workers won’t be spending all their time in the office in the future. In a survey, 42 of 50 of the major companies in Australia said that they were adopting permanent hybrid working plans where employees would spend 2–4 days in the office and the remainder working remotely.

Despite the widespread adoption of remote some companies are eager to get back to the ways things were. In some of these, the workers are customer facing so have them in the office makes sense. In others, though, it’s simply a rearguard action. Here’s what Telco Optus’ HR VP Kate Aitken has to say on the matter“”

“Optus believes co-location fosters collaboration and innovation; you can’t just ‘dial-in’ culture,”

Notice that it’s the usual talking points—already debunked—that those loath to give up control always use.

In the end, it won’t matter. Many workers, perhaps even a majority, simply aren’t gong back to the office.

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Like Musical Instruments for Musicians

Posted on 2021-07-16 by jcs

Ayrat Badykov has a nifty short post on why he thinks Emacs is a great text editor. As for many developers, Badykov was inspired to learn Emacs when he saw how much more efficient the Vim and Emacs users were compared to users of the other editors who had to click, swipe, and use menus to get anything done. His reason for choosing Emacs over Vim was—as it often is—a matter of happenstance: the people he was working with were Emacs users.

His reasons for believing Emacs is great are the usual: efficiency, Magit, Org-mode, terminal emulations, server mode\(…\) . The thing that stuck with me was his final observation:

I remember a quote from another of my colleagues, “I learned emacs so I could use a text editor like I’m playing guitar”. This quote contains some kind of truth. Like musical instruments for musicians, text editors are the same tools for developers.

It’s a good metaphor. Like a musical instrument, Emacs takes lots of practice and effort but the result can be beautiful. I’m tempted to push the analogy with comparisons like Gilmour on the guitar to digital music players but you get the idea.

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Does Piracy Affect Sales?

Posted on 2021-07-15 by jcs

The headline is a spoiler because we know from Betteridge’s law that the answer must be “no.” That the answer is “yes” has been a matter of faith among those who earn their living through the copyright system but research has mostly failed to back that supposition up.

There’s an interesting story on Engadget that makes two points:

  1. Except in a special, obvious case piracy does not appear to negatively affect sales and in some cases may actually help them.
  2. You can’t depend on the government to tell you the truth about such things or to even let you hear the truth.

The article, EU withheld a study that shows piracy doesn’t hurt sales, reports on a $430,000 study by the Dutch company Ecorys that was commissioned by The European Commission. The study concludes that except for new, blockbuster movies, there is no evidence that piracy has any negative effect on sales and that in the case of games, may even increase them.

That was not what the commission, which has been championing laws to require ISPs to monitor and filter their users’ downloads, wanted to hear so they suppressed the report except for the part about blockbuster movies. The report was commissioned in 2013 and disappeared until EU parliamentarian Julia Reda filed a freedom of information request in 2017. The commission stonewalled as long they could but finally released the study’s findings.

As a published author, I have some skin in the game but it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the rent seeking by the copyright industry is not in the public interest and should be reexamined. After all, if their cause is righteous, why do they need to hide the facts?

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Query: Emacs Vterm on the M1

Posted on 2021-07-14 by jcs

A while ago I asked about Emacs on the Mac M1. Everyone who replied agreed that Emacs ran without problems so I got myself an M1. I really like it and have almost got it configured as my default machine. I couldn’t get Emacs to compile from source so I loaded emacs-plus@27 from Homebrew. That runs fine and now the only thing not working is vterm.

When I try to install it, it compiles the vterm library for the x86 instead of Arm. I’ve asked Duck Duck Go and even Startpage but haven’t found an answer. The only really relevant thing I found was to ensure that /opt/homebrew/bin and /opt/homebrew/sbin were added to the exec-path variable. I did that but I still can’t get it to compile for Arm.

If anyone has wisdom to impart, I’d be grateful.

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See the Underlying Org Entry for an Agenda Item

Posted on 2021-07-13 by jcs

Here’s a quick tip that I just learned about from Tory Anderson:

Rather than having to click through the see where an agenda item came from, you can type E to expand the agenda items to the Org entries that they came from.

My first reaction was that it’s an interesting capability but probably not one you’d use very often. Then I remembered that I regularly need to do just that. It’s easy to try it out: just type E in the agenda to toggle it on. Type E again to turn it off. It’s nice because your window configuration stays the same.

One of the things I love about Emacs is that you’re never done learning about it. There’s always something else to discover. Anderson’s tip is another example of that for me.

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It’s Time For iPhone Users To Dump Google Maps

Posted on 2021-07-12 by jcs

Zak Doffman over at Forbes—I know, I know—makes the argument that the time has come for iPhone users to dump Google maps. The TL;DR is that

  1. Apple maps have come a long way since they were first introduced and are now competitive with Google maps and due to get better.
  2. Google harvests a huge amount of data that they tie back to you while Apple collects no personally identifiable data.

Apple is planning even more features for their maps in iOS 15 so there is no reason, Doffman says, to continue trading your personal information to Google for mapping and navigation support.

This, of course, is the Gospel that Irreal has been preaching for years. That Gospel is, in short, to avoid every Google application you can. It’s really not that hard; the only Google app I use regularly is YouTube and that’s only because there’s no reasonable alternative.

I’ve been using Apple maps exclusively for several years and they keep getting better. More to the point, they’re absolutely fit for purpose. My current car has an entirely useless GPS/Mapping system so when I need directions, I just prop my iPad up behind the gearshift and let Apple maps show me the way. It gives excellent turn-by-turn directions even saying things like, “Go through this light and turn left at the next light onto Main St.”

To be fair, My recent use has been restricted to the greater Tampa Bay area, which, while not one of Apple’s chosen cities with enhanced mapping, is nevertheless a large metropolitan area. I don’t have any current experience with Apple maps in the boondocks but it performed well on previous trips to the hinterlands.

One thing for sure, there’s no reason not to switch to Apple maps and every (privacy) reason to do so.

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Lesser Known Functionalities in Core Emacs

Posted on 2021-07-11 by jcs

Philip Kaludercic has an interesting post on some little known functionality in core Emacs. One of the wonders of Emacs is the package system that can add practically any desired feature to Emacs. That sometimes means that we forget how powerful Emacs is out of the box.

Kaludercic takes a look at some of those features. His post considers:

autoinsert
This doesn’t do what you probably think and can be very useful if you write code.
htmlfontify
This does do what you think. As Kaludercic says, most people use it through Org mode.
package-x
This is useful for making local package archives.
type-break
Implements a light weight Pomodoro technique.
strokes
This allows you to configure mouse strokes to invoke a an Emacs command.
mode-local
A really convenient way to define variables that are active only in a prescribed mode.
shortdoc
A new, not officially released functionality that provides some useful documentation for Elisp programmers.

There’s a lot more detail in Kaludercic’s post so head on over to Kaludercic’s site to get the full picture.

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Debugging Field Formulae in Org Tables

Posted on 2021-07-10 by jcs

Tony Aldon has another video up in his Inside Emacs series. This one considers the debugging of field formulae in Org tables. If you’ve ever used a formula in an Org table, you’ve probably encountered an error where instead of the field displaying the desired result it shows #ERROR. Usually, it’s a trivial mistake and easy to correct but sometimes the problem isn’t obvious.

Aldon’s video shows how to invoke the formula debugger to resolve those problems. It’s pretty easy; just type Ctrl+c { to toggle the debugger on, rerun the evaluation, and it gives you details of what the evaluator is doing. Take a look at the video to see it in action.

The video goes on to explore various use cases so it’s worth watching to the end. My only complaint is that there’s no audio other than music. I find it hard to follow such videos because my attention is split between the explanatory text and what is happening on the “screen.” It turns out that not everyone agrees so you may not find it a problem. In either case, it’s a good video and worth spending five and half minutes on.

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