An Org/Hugo Workflow for Blogging

Posted on 2019-07-26 by jcs

Lots of bloggers are electing to generate static sites instead of relying on a CMS like Blogger or WordPress. It’s an attractive option and one that I would probably pursue if I didn’t have so much invested in WordPress. All my posts are written in Org mode and archived on my local machine so it would be pretty simple to republish them as static pages. The main problem I see is how to move the comments with the posts. There’s a lot of wisdom contained in those comments and I’d hate to lose them.

If you’re just starting out, however, there’s no reason not to consider a static blog. Michael Howard over at FumbLing has a nice post that goes into detail on how he uses Hugo and Org mode to blog. The nice thing is that every step from writing a post to publishing it is handled from within Emacs so there’s very little friction.

If you’re not a hardcore Emacser, you might wonder why you’d want to use Emacs for blogging. Howard explains why he thinks it makes sense at the beginning of his post. Then he goes into how he actually uses Org and Hugo to blog. As I said, it’s pretty seamless. He has a single Org file with all of his posts in it. I don’t know how well that would scale for someone like me who posts daily, but it’s a very attractive strategy that keeps everything in one place.

If you’re wondering if the Org/Hugo combination is a sustainable option consider that Mike Zamansky and many others also use Hugo and Org-mode for their blogging. As I say, it’s one I’d consider if I weren’t so heavily invested in WordPress.

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Minimalism

Posted on 2019-07-25 by jcs

As I wrote in my Ten Years post, I’ve become interested in leveraging my digital life style as a way of further simplifying my life. My post on everyday carry is an example of this: searching for ways to minimize the things I have to take with me when I leave the house.

It turns out that there’s a related movement that is also concerned with simplifying your life: minimalism. The idea—or at least the main idea—is to simplify your life through reducing the number of your possessions by getting rid of everything that you don’t need or love.

It’s an attractive idea in many ways but, of course, many of its adherents have turned it into a cult. They’ve made it into a religion that they use to define themselves rather than using it as a way to make their lives better by emphasizing the things that matter. These people are really annoying and give minimalism a bad name. Sadly, most people writing about minimalism are like this.

They like to argue about how many forks or t-shirts you should own and proudly announce that they got rid of their couches. For many of these folks, it’s a game of count your objects; the lowest number wins. They put me in mind of the New Luddites in their forsaking of convenience to show how morally superior they are. The rest of us, of course, think they’re a little nutty. That’s too bad because there is a point to minimalism.

Of course, not all minimalists are like that. This guy, although he owns practically nothing, seems to me to be doing it right. It’s all about making his life simpler, not about reducing his possessions for its own sake. Another minimalist whose approach I really like is video blogger Matt D’Avella. Matt’s latest video, published as I was working on this post, describes what happens When Minimalism Goes Too Far. Like his video on You can’t be a minimalist if… he pokes fun at those humorless souls who want to drum folks out of the minimalist cult for owning too many things.

I’ve been taking tiny strides in the minimalist direction and they have made my life simpler and better. I will never, I’m sure, reach the point where I can pack everything I own in a small suitcase and move at a moment’s notice. Nor do I want to. It’s just nice to get rid of complications when you can.

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The Holy War

Posted on 2019-07-24 by jcs

After writing yesterday’s post on Vim vs. Emacs, I serendipitously saw a tweet pointing at the Wikipedia article on the Editor War. It describes our holiest of holy wars and gives a pretty thorough analysis of both sides’ views.

The article is also useful as a comparison of Vim and Emacs. It lists the strengths and weaknesses of both editors as well as the jokes the partisans make about them. If you worship in the Church of Emacs, you’ll probably enjoy Bill Joy’s 1999 comment that vi was written for a world that doesn’t exist anymore and that Emacs was written on and for much more capable machines. There’s a bit more to the quote that’s worth taking a look at.

Both Vimmers and Emacsers will take comfort in the article’s noting that one of the major arguments in favor of vi, its much smaller footprint, is pretty much moot because both Vi(m) and Emacs can be considered light weight compared to modern monstrosities such as Eclipse.

As I said in yesterday’s post, no one takes the argument seriously anymore other than for its entertainment value but the Wikipedia article gives a nice history of the war and its major points. It was fun to read it. If you have a couple of minutes, take a look and enjoy one of the sillier parts of our shared history.

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Vim vs. Emacs

Posted on 2019-07-23 by jcs

One of our longest standing holy wars is Emacs versus Vim. I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen all the jokes and memes. Seen them over and over again, in fact. At this point, I doubt anyone is even serious about the debate; they just throw out the same old arguments for the fun of the troll. Still, occasionally someone tries to bring a little light to the squabble.

I’ve written before about my thoughts on the war. Vim and Emacs serve two different constituencies and you pick the one that meets what you want from an editor: Vim if you’re looking for a fast editor that does one thing (editing) well; Emacs if you want an operating environment or, as I like to say, a recapitulation of the Lisp Machine.

David Morelo has a nice post that makes an honest assessment of the two editors’ strengths of weaknesses and which you should choose. I pretty much agree with what he has to say. In the past, I would have agreed with his statement that “[f]or pure text editing, Vim is usually faster…” but I’m no longer sure that’s true. Certainly Vim, with it’s composable command set can take less time to invoke an editing operation that is common to both editors but Emacs has a much larger command set and an individual user can, of course, add any command they like. Given that, I’m pretty confident Emacs can be faster for some editing jobs simply because it has a more powerful command set.

Or maybe not. As I said, it doesn’t really matter. If you want an editor that edits your files quickly and easily and the idea of playing Tetris in your editor seems bizarre, then Vim is your editor. If you want a complete operating environment in which you can perform most of your tasks, then Emacs is for you. The real argument is not which editor is better but which workflow is more effective.

In any event, read Morelo’s post and see if you don’t agree with what he has to say.

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The First Rule

Posted on 2019-07-22 by jcs

For many years I had the good fortune to work with a small team of very talented software engineers. The team stayed together across many jobs working for many different companies. Our work was always related to computer networking and communications.

We had what we called “The Three Rules.” They weren’t really rules so much as aphorisms or perhaps rules of thumb that were surprisingly helpful in getting our job done. The first rule, also known as the prime directive, was “It’s always the cable.” The meaning of that was that when you’re having network problems it’s almost always because of a cable that needs to be replaced. You can think of it as analogous to the police rule that in a murder case you always look first at the spouse as the perpetrator. It isn’t always true but it turns out to be correct much more than you’d think it would.

The problem with the first rule is that we were always forgetting it. A network problem would occur and we’d waste time looking at all sorts of things that weren’t causing the issue. Finally, one of us would chant, “It’s always the cable” and sure enough when we replaced the cable the problem went away.

I’d been thinking lately that in our new wireless world where cables are eschewed, the first rule might not be applicable anymore or at least not with such force. The gods, of course, punished me for my apostasy.

I wrote the other day about the problems I had restoring my network connection after a lightning strike. I didn’t go into detail about the difficulties I had getting the new WiFi router working but the major issue was that it wouldn’t talk to the firewall to which it was connected. I spent most of the day chasing down what I believed the problem might be but got nowhere. Then in the back of my mind a little voice said, “It’s always the cable.”

Now I didn’t think that could be the case because that cable had been working just fine with the old router. All I did was unplug it from the old router and plug it into the new one. Of course, when I switched out the cable everything started working. That’s always the way the first rule works. You have a nice rationale for why this time it doesn’t apply but learn to your sorrow that—yes, actually—it does apply. That’s why it’s the first rule.

I’m telling you this story in part because I think it’s amusing but mainly to spread the dying wisdom embodied in the first rule. If you’re having a network problem, check your cables first.

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Making The Results Block Executable

Posted on 2019-07-21 by jcs

Over at the Emacs Stack Exchange, shackra asks how he can make the RESULTS block of an Org babel SRC block executable by the shell. In other words, he wants to build a shell script in one block and be able to execute the resulting shell script in another.

That turns out to be really easy and Xu Chunyang provides a very nice answer: simply use the :wrap keyword in the first block to wrap the RESULTS block in a new Org src code block. Follow the above link to see the exact details. As I say, it’s easy and can be very convenient. Needless to say, you can make the results executable by any of the supported languages, not just shell.

When I read the Stack Exchange query, I remembered that I once knew about :wrap but had completely forgotten about it. Then I thought that I vaguely remembered writing about it but I couldn’t find any mention of it in my archives so perhaps I’m imagining the whole thing. In any event, if you’re a Babel user, it’s worth knowing about the :wrap keyword. If you like the idea of programs writing programs, here’s a great technique for doing so from within Org-mode. Very nice indeed.

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Fun and Games

Posted on 2019-07-20 by jcs

For those of you living in saner parts of the world who might not know, the Irreal International Headquarters are located in Tampa, Florida, which is recognized as the lightning capital of North America. Indeed, Tampa comes from an Indian word meaning “lightning.” Last night, Tampa was living up to its name with more severe than usual thunderstorms. About 10 PM our time, there was a strike right above our house that sounded more like a large gun than the usual thunder clap. Afterwards, all the TVs, cable boxes, and cable modem for the Internet were DOA. My trusty Apple WiFi router was clearly suffering but I hoped it was just unhappy about not seeing the network.

I spent all day today dealing with just trying to get the Internet up again. First I went to Spectrum to change out the modem. Everybody in Tampa was there doing the same thing and it took at LONG time just to talk to a representative. Once I did, though, it was only a couple of minutes to get a new modem.

Then home to plug in the new modem and get things going again. Sadly, the WiFi router refused to talk to the modem so it was off to Best Buy to get a new WiFi router. I’ve heard great things about the Eero routers and Best Buy did carry them. Of course, when I got there they were out of what I needed so I grabbed a Netgear router and went home to hook it up.

The horrors that followed would take a book to relate so I’ll merely say that after much hair rending and some occasional iffy language I did get the Internet back. I still have some configuration to do but at this point I’m too exhausted to do anything but whine in this post.

Right now, we’re having another storm but it isn’t as severe as yesterday’s. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow morning, you’ll know why.

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The Speed of Offlineimap vs. Mbsync

Posted on 2019-07-19 by jcs

One of the problems faced by those of us who have moved our email operations into Emacs is how to download the emails from the Imap server. There are two popular solutions: offlineimap and mbsync.

Offlineimap is written in Python and has the reputation of being slower than mbsync, which is a C application. Occasionally you see this disputed by someone offering largely anecdotal evidence that there’s no discernible difference. Such claims are invariably met with other anecdotal evidence that mbsync is indeed faster.

Charl Botha, who’s postings on email in Emacs have been excellent, decided to offer some actual scientific evidence so he ran some timing tests. The tests were all run on a single Windows 10 machine so they are by no means a definitive benchmark but they do offer much better information than we had before and probably generalize to the other platforms.

I’ll let you head over to Botha’s site to get the actual results but the TL;DR is that mbsync’s running time for a sync is about 65% that of offlineimap’s normal mode. Offlineimap, however, also has a quick mode that may not detect some message flag changes but that runs at about the same speed—a little faster, actually—as mbsync.

I don’t think any of this matters much. Generally the syncs are happening in the background so you don’t really notice them unless you’re forcing a sync. Even then, the times are not onerous. As for offlineimap’s quick mode, I think life is already uncertain enough without adding additional entropy to solve a problem that has another, better, solution.

I started off using offlineimap but changed to mbsync because I read reports of instability on offlineimap’s part. I never experienced that so it was probably just irrational paranoia. I don’t know if it’s still true—or ever was, for that matter—but I’ve been happy with mbsync and it was difficult enough to get configured that I have no desire to change.

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The Gauntlet Is Thrown

Posted on 2019-07-18 by jcs

I’ve written many times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) about the open access wars between universities and academic publishers. In a move that almost certainly signals the beginning of the end game, the University of California has refused to renew its Elsevier subscriptions. This isn’t a small matter. Not only does UC spend 11 million dollars a year on Elsevier subscriptions but it is the largest producer of scholarly papers in the U.S. and Elsevier publishes about 18% of them. Other university consortia have done the same and as with UC, Elsevier has cut them off.

The UC, for its part, says that losing access to the journals will be inconvenient but only inconvenient. They already have plans in place to obtain needed papers through interlibrary loans and other means. They didn’t mention Sci-Hub and other illegal sources but you can bet that researchers will be making use of them. They probably already are because it’s easier to get a paper from them even if you have legal access.

The next step would be for the UC to discourage publication in Elsevier journals. No one’s said they’re going to do that but many researchers are already refusing to publish in their journals and the movement appears to be growing.

Elsevier and the other publishers have had a free ride for a long time. Academics write the papers, edit them, and referee them and the publishers then charge them for access to their own work. The UC’s actions are hopeful signs that that disgraceful situation is coming to an end.

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Text Based Email Clients

Posted on 2019-07-17 by jcs

Many people can’t imagine life without a shiny, GUI-based email client. The idea of using a text based client would never occur to them and some probably don’t even know there are such things. Others of us don’t want to waste our time clicking around a GUI app or Web Email page. We like doing things from the keyboard and, if you’re a hardcore Emacser, handling our email from within our editor.

Shreyas Ragavan is in the latter group and has a very nice post on why he thinks text based clients are the best solution. He had three email accounts and wanted to handle them in a unified way. His first step was the get a paid Fastmail account and forward his other accounts through it. That makes dealing with email from separate accounts much easier. I do something similar and have my email client (mu4e) set to respond with a From: address that matches the To: address of the original email.

Ragavan, like me, uses mu/mu4e. He finds that it integrates very well with his workflow. If he’s working in Emacs on some other task and finds he needs to dash off a quick email, mu4e is only a couple of keystrokes away. If he wants to turn an email into a task, that too is only a few keystrokes away. And, of course, he avoids the context switch that invoking a separate email client involves.

Like Ragavan, I love using mu4e. It makes working with email easier, keeps me in Emacs, and I can easily turn an email into an actionable task or put a link to an email into any of my Org files.

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