Tips for an Effective Home Office

Posted on 2020-03-31 by jcs

Because the COVID-19 crisis has caused a large uptick of the number of people working from home, I’m going to try to write a bit more about effective strategies for doing that. What that means is that as I find articles that seem helpful, I’ll write about them to share them with any Irreal readers who find the information useful.

Much of the advice I’ve seen has a lot commonality but there’s surprising disagreement on the best way to proceed so it’s worth taking a look at several points of view. Simon Harrer and Jochen Christ, both of INNOQ, have their own take on what makes an effective home office. They have some suggestions that I hadn’t seen before.

For example, they note that when you’re in a small room the oxygen level can go down surprisingly quickly and adversely affect your cognitive efficiency. The easy way to combat that is to open your window and to let you know when you should do that, they recommend getting a simple CO2 sensor.

Another useful suggestion is to avoid headphones by investing in a quality microphone. They recommend the Blue Yeti, which is not too expensive for what it offers. A good microphone will do noise cancelling and obviate the need for headphones to eliminate feedback.

There’s a bunch of other good suggestions in their post so it’s worth taking a look even if you’re not new to working from home. Harrer and Christ state up front that theirs is an opinionated guide but even if you don’t agree with everything they say, you’ll probably find lots of value in what they offer.

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Implementing a Zettelkasten with Org Mode

Posted on 2020-03-30 by jcs

In a perfect example of the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon, a month ago I had never heard of the the term Zettelkasten and now it seems to be everywhere I look. Previously, I wrote about the idea and noted that it was a perfect application for Org Mode. I’ve been experimenting with the concept a bit and using Org Mode to store and search for the data. It’s just preliminary futzing about. When I get around to using a Zettelkasten for real, I’ll probably use Jethro Kuan’s org-mode package, at least as a starting point.

In the mean time, Dan Pittman has his own Org Mode based Zettelkasten implementation. Like mine, it’s fairly elementary. He has a Bash script that captures the note title and pops him into Emacs to fill in the initial data. Like me, he uses Org agenda to search his notes by either tags or keywords. Other than the Bash script—which you could easily do without—there’s no special code: it’s just standard Org Mode. Pitmann keeps each “card” in a separate file with the the note’s date/time in the file name. That way, he can use the file name as the card ID. That’s a better strategy than what I do (using an org-id-get-create generated :ID: in a property drawer) because it’s much easier to link ideas.

I really like the Zettelkasten idea and have been collecting posts about ways to implement one. If you’d like to try it out too, Pittman’s post shows you how to get started in an easy way with a small investment in time.

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A Repository for Writing a Thesis With Org Mode

Posted on 2020-03-29 by jcs

Back in 2018, I wrote about a post by Daniel Gomez that describes how to use Org-mode for writing a thesis. At the time, Gomez was in the process of writing his own thesis and his post details his work flow and files structure. It’s an excellent how-to for anyone wanting to use Org for writing their own dissertation and well worth your time if you’re looking for a good thesis writing tool.

An the end of the post, Gomez says that he was considering building a thesis template repository to go with his post but that it would have to wait until after he’s finished his thesis. Now that he’s finished his PhD, Gomez has in fact published his templates as a GitHub repository.

It’s a valuable resource for anyone embarking on the writing of a dissertation, especially if, like Gomez, the thesis consists of three or four research chapters that are published separately as journal articles. With his setup, the exact same source is used for publishing the chapters as journal articles and as part of the thesis. Check out his post or the repository to see how he did this.

As I said in my original post, Org-mode really is a general purpose writing tool that can be used for memos, blog posts, reports, books, and even things like theses with their strict formatting rules. I do all my writing—except emails and texts—with Org and can’t imagine a better tool.

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Zamansky 70: Org Protocol

Posted on 2020-03-28 by jcs

If you’ve been following Irreal for a while, you know that I periodically try to get Org Protocol integrated into my workflow and end up writing a post on how I failed yet again. The last such post was just a month ago. Now Mike Zamansky has shamed me with the latest video in his Using Emacs Series. The latest video describes how he got Org Protocol to capture links to Web pages and emails.

Org Protocol helps with the link between your browser or email client and Org Mode. Most of the actual work flow is implemented with Org capture templates in the usual way. Zamansky found a browser extension, org-capture-extension, that makes setting up the browser/org protocol link easy. It provides a button that will send the necessary information to Org Protocol so that the Org capture mechanism can deal with it.

Setting up Org Protocol can be very fussy so it’s nice to have Zamansky’s step-by-step video as a guide. The Org-Capture extension is not available for Safari so I can’t use his solution directly. Fortunately, I handle the browser/Org interface with the bit of Apple Script that I wrote about back in 2014.

If you’re running under Linux and want to capture links from your browser or, say, Gmail, be sure to take a look at this video to see how to set things up. If you’re running under Windows, Sacha has some wisdom on setting things up (it’s from 2015 but can probably still be made to work).

The video is 11 minutes 40 seconds long so it should be easy to find time for it.

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The Failure to Social Isolate Illustrated

Posted on 2020-03-27 by jcs

Hardly a moment goes by without someone urging you to stay home and to social isolate. Not everyone is getting the message, apparently. One example is Spring Breakers flooding to Florida beaches until the Governor closed them.

Via Karl Voit, we have this horrifying animated heat map showing why this matters:

Forget about how much privacy information your phone is leaking for a moment and just consider how all those beach goers spread out across the country.

That’s not the worst though. Here’s another, similar heat map showing the diaspora from Manhattan, the epicenter of US COVID-19 cases. It’s terrifying to see how potential carriers spread out over the entire country and even the world.

Thalen wrote an article for The Daily Dot that gives some background information on the videos. It’s definitely worth a look.

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Quarantini

Posted on 2020-03-26 by jcs

Despite all the doom and gloom about COVID-19 some folks are maintaining their sense of humor. To wit:

Of course Aviation American Gin and Emergen-C are both saying, “Don’t do that” and no one thinks this is a serious suggestion but it still struck me as funny. COVID-19 is a serious matter and to be sure we all need to take precautions and avoid putting others at risk but a little humor may help us get by.

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The PhD Movies

Posted on 2020-03-25 by jcs

If you’re a nerd—and, come on, you’re reading Irreal so you know you are—you will be delighted to learn that both of Jorge Cham’s PhD movies are available for streaming. If you’ve been or are a graduate student you’ll appreciate Cham’s spot on and humorous take on graduate school life.

The first is a little over an hour and the second about an hour and a third. If you’re stuck at home with nothing to do, these will help fill a couple of hours. Even if you have plenty to do, they’re worth your time.

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Working From Home, Mac Edition

Posted on 2020-03-24 by jcs

Now that working from home is, at least temporarily, the new normal, many companies and employees are struggling to adjust to a novel work environment. Fortunately, plenty of people have been working from home for years and have advice to offer to the n00bs. One of those people is Jason Snell who writes for MacWorld and Six Colors—a site that specializes in Apple news and commentary—and who has been working from home for the last five years.

Snell has a helpful article at MacWorld that offers suggestions for the Mac user new to working from home. Despite the Apple slant, most of the advice is applicable to anyone working remotely. The Apple specific parts are mostly apps for doing things like closing or hiding applications that aren’t related to the current task. There’s also some hints on how to use an iPad as an extra screen with Apple’s new Sidecar technology. That’s offered as a way to help workers used to a large monitor gain a little more screen real estate for their laptops.

The rest of the article offers non-technical suggestions to make working from home a bit easier. Oddly, he doesn’t talk much about communication applications and procedures, which most people working from home know is the key to success. Of course, his job as a writer is a bit different from most of us and the rest of his suggestions are definitely worthwhile. If you’re new to working from home, take a look at the article for some good general advice.

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Coffee

Posted on 2020-03-23 by jcs

I’m old enough that I been through several cycles of, “Coffee is good for you; no coffee is bad for you.” I stopped paying attention a long time ago because, you know, coffee. Now, brought to you from Irreal’s Department of Duh, Ali Abdaal takes a look at the evidence and concludes that on balance coffee is good for you.

The bad news is that too much coffee can cause you to be jittery and may even interfere with your focus. If you drink it too late in the day, it can also disturb your sleep. Of course, most of us already know that if only from personal experience.

There’s plenty of good news, though. Most of us already know that a couple of cups of coffee can increase our alertness and ability to focus. Abdaal quotes some studies that confirms that but the benefits are much more widespread. Coffee will also improve your memory, improve your mood, and help protect from depression. It can also improve physical performance and reduce after-exercise soreness.

Perhaps most surprisingly, coffee can also reduce long-term health problems. For example, coffee can decrease the probability of developing Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, cardio-vascular disease, stroke, and some cancers. Significantly, a large meta-study concluded that there’s no evidence that coffee can lead to cancer.

Abdaal covers all this and gives more details in the video. If you’re a coffee drinker or—perhaps more importantly—if you skip coffee because you’re worried about adverse health effects, be sure to take a look at the video. It’s 18 minutes, 16 seconds so you may have to schedule some time.

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Zamansky 69: Floobits

Posted on 2020-03-22 by jcs

One of the questions I often see is, “how can I collaborate in real time with Emacs?” This may be because a couple of programmers want to do some remote pair programming or because two or more people want to collaborate on a paper they’re writing with Org-mode. Until recently, I didn’t have a good answer—Magit, Emacs, blah blah blah—but the ever resourceful Mike Zamanksy has the answer in the latest video of his Using Emacs Series.

In the video, Using Emacs 69 Floobits, Zamansky demonstrates how to use Floobits. It works with Emacs, Atom, Neovim, and a couple of other editors. This is really good news for Emacs users because for the first time there’s a good solution for realtime collaboration.

Zamansky is, of course, a teacher so his interest is mainly in negotiating the learn-from-home regime necessitated by COVID-19 but useful though it is for teachers, Floobits is a boon to those of us outside of education. It’s a boon for the same reason it is for education: it allows two or more Emacs users to collaborate in real time. If nothing else, it’s an answer to those who say, “I have to use Google Docs so I can collaborate with my coauthors.”

Floobits is a bit like the early GitHub. You can get a free account but your workspaces are pubic. If you want private workspace, you have to buy a subscription but they’re not too expensive and well worth the expense if you really need the live collaboration.

The video is 15 minutes, 43 seconds so plan accordingly. If you have any interest at all in realtime collaboration and you’re an Emacs user, you’ll find it well worth your while.

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