Bookmarks (65)

The IndieWeb Carnival prompt for May is small web communities. I've been exploring some thoughts on how a little effort goes a long way to connecting a community. Sometimes I think of it as working on the plumbing so that ideas can flow more smoothly. It feels a little different from the direct contribution of knowledge or ideas. I also want to connect with...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed May 28 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May 29 0030 Asia/Singapore EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/307852772/ Wed Jun 4 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto - 2300 Etc/GMT – Thu Jun 5 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0430 Asia/Kolkata...

This week A+ said she wanted to play a farming game, so we went through this list of farming games on Steam and she picked Stardew Valley. I bought it for CAD 17 under her Steam account. She got pretty good at finishing her homework before playtime. After some fiddling around, we managed to figure out how to play 3-person local co-op using our...

W- has been volunteering for Bike Brigade for a number of months now. A+ and I occasionally tag along. It's encouraging to be part of this initiative to deliver groceries and other essentials to people who need help. One of the organizers spoke at this panel discussion about bicycles and social justice organized by York University. Session description Bicycles hold immense potential for addressing...

Emacs 30: Emacs 30.1.90 released: this is Emacs 30.2 pretest #1 (Irreal) Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed May 21 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat May 24 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830...

I started helping Bike Brigade with their e-mail newsletter. I read through their Slack history and a couple of years of newsletters to build up a library of newsletter blocks. I made a collage of the Jane's Walk photos. I didn't get around to editing the photos and posting them on Facebook. Maybe next week. We also did some more deliveries. We biked to...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #5 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/5302f53d-05cd-437b-b885-80f07d307f31 Tue May 13 1900 CET OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed May 14 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1800 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May 15 0000 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed May 21 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto...

Help wanted: Emacspeak: update to support TCL 9? Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Paris: S: Emacs workshop in Paris (online) https://emacs-doctor.com/ Tue May 6 0830 America/Vancouver - 1030 America/Chicago - 1130 America/Toronto - 1530 Etc/GMT - 1730 Europe/Berlin - 2100 Asia/Kolkata - 2330 Asia/Singapore EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/306966612/ Wed May 7 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto - 2300 Etc/GMT –...

2025-05-02-04 Pottery painting class – drawing.jpg 2025-04-28-03 More life sketches – drawing.jpg A+ enjoyed the pottery painting class at Clay with Me. She painted a small bowl, a tiny dish, and a rainbow. I let A+ scoot ahead to her class. I didn't even see her when I got there, but I did find her scooter and her helmet neatly put away, so I...

April 2025: ✏🎭🚲👕🤔🌱🎮🩹🏘️🪓🔥🌱🔧🎭🐠✍️🥚🌱🖩🚲🐒🫧🩹☀️🎮🛴🚲✏🍨📚 2025-04-30-03 April 2025 -- monthly review Text from sketch April 2025 Minecraft, playdates, Bike Brigade ✏ Pictionary 🎭 Charades 🚲 bike playdate 👕 clothes, shoes 🤔 reflection 🌱 gardening 🎮 Minecraft together 🩹 A+: finger cut 🏘️ set up a village 🪓 trial chamber 🔥 blazes 🌱 nether wart, skeleton spawner 🔧 bike maintenance, park playtime 🎭 pretend Minecraft - park...

The weather was often warm and sunny, so we spent more time biking and walking. We brought bubbles, sand toys, and popsicles to the playgrounds. That was nice. A+ has been practising crossing the street by herself. She's quite proud of being able to go ahead of me. She was also proud of making her own choices at the farmers market, carefully counting out...

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Fragmentation Sleep Overall Do I want to find time for the activities I used to spend time on before? How much time does it take to track and analyze time? Can I share my data? Other resources Looking forward to the next few years Following up on my post A...

Help wanted: [ANN] Re: Join the Org Mode project as the Worg maintainer (Reddit) Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Apr 30 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May 1 0030 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri May 2 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago -...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Apr 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Apr 30 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata – Thu May...

The IndieWeb writing prompt for April 2025 is renewal. One of the things that I struggled with in the early days of parenting was the repetitive nature of my day. Every two- or three-hour cycle brought the same kinds of tasks: nursing, diapers, snuggles, sleep. Nothing could be crossed off a to-do list, nothing stayed done. Nothing built up towards tangible accomplishment, or at...

Assumed audience: I'm writing this for: me: I want to remember what this is like, celebrate my progress so far, and look ahead maybe other parents who also find themselves still figuring out playfulness Achievement unlocked: I made A+ giggle so much that she started hiccuping She had had a case of the meh​s. After a little bit of empathizing, I flung myself over...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Apr 16 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2030 Asia/Kolkata - 2300 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Apr 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Upcoming events:...

I enjoyed walking in the park this week, and we started gardening too. Good counterbalance to the chaos of whatever the US is doing. I also enjoyed writing more about life. I added sidenotes duplicated as footnotes to my blog, inspired by citationneeded.news. The sidenotes should show up on my blog if you have Javascript enabled and the window is reasonably wide. I like...

2025-04-10-01 A typical weekday -- life Text and links from sketch A typical weekday family time: 11/16 hours, me time: 5/16 hours 7 AM: Morning routines 8 AM: piano practice 9 AM: gardening, recess 10 AM: Walk, braindump 11 AM: Lunch 12 PM: focus time: code, write, draw, read, do stuff 1 PM: tidying, recess 2 PM: writing, hanging out with A+ 3 PM:...

Trawling through blogs to add to my feed reader, I came across a number of posts related to the February 2025 IndieWeb Carnival theme of affirmations. It nudged me to think about the words I rub into A+'s brain with repetition. Once a year or so, A+'s virtual school teachers typically play a video about affirmations as part of the social-emotional learning aspect of...

Assumed audience: Future me, when mango freezies are a distant memory Maybe other parents who might consider splurging on fruits We have two cases of mangoes on our kitchen counter: the last case of Ataulfo mangoes W- could find at the Nations supermarket a short bike-ride away from the house (slightly underripe at purchase; it's been a few days, so now A+ says they're...

Help wanted: Re: Safe evaluation of macros (was: bug#77341: [PATCH] ; (find-function- - looking for volunteers to help improve trusted-content on Windows Emacs 30: The new JSON parser is fast Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Apr 11 1800 Europe/Paris M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Apr 16 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1500 Etc/GMT...

Thanks to Pictionary, we caught up with all the illustrations that A+ needed to do for her homework. I tweaked my blog navigation and headings. I also exported the comments from Disqus and took it off my site. I got rid of some clutter. Blog posts Adding subheadings and sketches to my blog page navigation Using Emacs Lisp to batch-demote HTML headings for my...

Assumed audience: My future self, when I'm trying to figure out where to change things if I want to implement something similar People who like tweaking their blog's CSS, especially if they also use Org Mode or 11ty Headings help us make sense of longer blog posts. Heading links are like signposts letting you know what's ahead and where you can take a shortcut...

Assumed audience: People who have lots of HTML files used as input for a static site generator, might need to do a batch operation on them, and are open to doing that with Emacs Lisp. Which might just be me, but who knows? =) HTML defines a hierarchy of headings going from <h1> to <h6>, which comes in especially handy when people are navigating...

Summary Blog posts Sketches Time Ideas for next month [2025-04-02 Wed]: Added emoji summary. Summary March 2025: 🔥🎵🥧🍎✏️⛸️📰😴⏲️🍕🖨️🏝️🎮📚🎵🎮🐒🦷👥🧁🏺💭📺🐟🚲☕🧁🥾🌧️📝🛒 2025-03-31-05 March 2025 -- monthly review.jpeg Text from sketch March 2025: decrease fretting, increase experiments, field trips, self-efficacy 🔥 campfire 🎵 Minecraft & singing 🥧 peach pie 🍎 apples & marshmallows ✏️ doodling ⛸️ skating in the wind 📰 RSS, thoughts on reading 😴 tired kids...

Emacs 30: TAONAW - Emacs and Org Mode: Emacs 30.1 so far Help wanted: Show your post-command-hook contents to help Emacs core Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Paris: S: Emacs workshop in Paris (online) https://emacs-doctor.com/ Tue Apr 1 0830 America/Vancouver - 1030 America/Chicago - 1130 America/Toronto - 1530 Etc/GMT - 1730 Europe/Berlin - 2100 Asia/Kolkata - 2330 Asia/Singapore EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/306712497/ Wed...

Exploring my disqus.xml with xq, Org Babel, and seaborn Deleting spam comments via the Disqus web interface and Spookfox Modifying eleventy-import-disqus for my site Next steps Assumed audience: Technical bloggers who like: static site generators: this post is about moving more things into my SSG XML: check out the mention of xq, which offers a jq-like interface or Org Mode: some notes here about...

I've been practising fretting less about homework. I added an On this day page to my blog. (blog post about it) I added Mastodon links to my blog. I think the process will be: post the blog post; toot to Mastodon; edit the blog post and republish. I might be able to save time and just copy over the blog post during the first...

Defining shortcuts in org-speed-commands is handy because you can use these single-key shortcuts at the beginning of a subtree. With a little modification, they'll also work at the beginning of list items. (defun my-org-use-speed-commands-for-headings-and-lists () "Activate speed commands on list items too." (or (and (looking-at org-outline-regexp) (looking-back "^\**" nil)) (save-excursion (and (looking-at (org-item-re)) (looking-back "^[ \t]*" nil))))) (setq org-use-speed-commands 'my-org-use-speed-commands-for-headings-and-lists) I want k to...

One of the things I like about blogging from Org Mode in Emacs is that it's easy to add properties to the section that I'm working on and then use those property values elsewhere. For example, I've modified Emacs to simplify tooting a link to my blog post and saving the Mastodon status URL in the EXPORT_MASTODON property. Then I can use that in...

2025-03-26-01 Feline feelings -- drawing emotions Feel free to use this under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Text from sketch Feline feelings sachachua.com/2025-03-26-01 happy playful content interested proud accepted powerful peaceful trusting optimistic surprised startled confused amazed excited bad tired busy stressed bored fearful scared anxious weak rejected insecure threatened angry let down humiliated bitter mad aggressive frustrated distant critical disgusted disapproving disappointed awful...

Sometimes I want to copy a toot and include it in my Org Mode notes, like when I post a thought and then want to flesh it out into a blog post. This code defines my-mastodon-org-copy-toot-content, which converts the toot text to Org Mode format using Pandoc and puts it in the kill ring so I can yank it somewhere else. (defun my-mastodon-toot-at-url (&optional...

I sometimes want to thank a bunch of people for contributing to a Mastodon conversation. The following code lets me collect handles in a single kill ring entry by calling it with my point over a handle or a toot, or with an active region. (defvar my-mastodon-handle "@sacha@social.sachachua.com") (defun my-mastodon-copy-handle (&optional start-new beg end) "Append Mastodon handles to the kill ring. Use the handle...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Mar 26 1030 America/Vancouver - 1230 America/Chicago - 1330 America/Toronto - 1730 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2300 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Mar 27 0130 Asia/Singapore Emacs Paris: S: Emacs workshop in Paris (online) https://emacs-doctor.com/ Tue Apr 1 0830 America/Vancouver - 1030 America/Chicago - 1130 America/Toronto - 1530 Etc/GMT - 1730 Europe/Berlin -...

I often want to copy the toot URL after posting a new toot about a blog post so that I can update the blog post with it. Since I post from Emacs using mastodon.el, I can probably figure out how to get the URL after tooting. A quick-and-dirty way is to retrieve the latest status. (defvar my-mastodon-toot-posted-hook nil "Called with the item.") (defun my-mastodon-copy-toot-url...

Nudged by org-daily-reflection (@emacsomancer's toot) and Jeremy Keith's post where he mentions his on this day page, I finally got around to making my own on this day page again. I use the 11ty static site generator, so it's static unless you have Javascript enabled. It might be good for bumping into things. I used to have an "On this day" widget back when...

2025-03-22-02 Stick figure out feelings -- drawing emotions.svg Feel free to use or remix these stick figures under the Creative Commons Attribution License. Text and links from sketch Stick figure out feelings https://sachachua.com/2025-03-22-02 Feelings wheel by Geoffrey Roberts, stick figures by Sacha Chua and the kiddo happy playful content interested proud accepted powerful peaceful trusting optimistic surprised startled confused amazed excited bad tired busy...

Some walking, some writing, some Emacs tweaking. A+ and I went to a pottery wheel workshop. That was nice. My eyes have been dry lately, so I've been using eye drops. Blog posts Visual book notes: ADHD is Awesome - Penn and Kim Holderness (2024) (toot) Old-school blogger (toot) Playing with chunk size when writing (toot) Reading more blogs; Emacs Lisp: Listing blogs based...

2025-03-20-01 ADHD is Awesome #visual-book-notes #adhd (Feel free to use or share this under the Creative Commons Attribution license!) Text and links from sketch ADHD is Awesome - Penn and Kim Holderness (2024) sachachua.com/2025-03-20-01 Notes: Ch 1: ADHD 101 Ch 2: Diagnosis Ch 3: Inside the ADHD brain all-in or completely off dopamine Great at paying attention, terrible at choosing what pay attention to...

2025-03-16-01 Old-school blogger -- blogging writing Text from sketch Old-school blogger [timeline showing different strands braided together] I started blogging in 2001 (really, more like 2002), as a university student who had started playing around enjoyed learning out loud. Both blogging and Emacs continued through: teaching computer science going on a technical internship in Japan taking up graduate studies working at IBM experimenting with...

How long is a blog post? Some people write short posts with one clear thought. Others write longer essays. I tend to start out writing a short post and then get distracted by all the rabbit-holes I want to go down. Drafting my thoughts on blogging leads to adding lots of blogs to my reader, writing some code that takes an OPML and makes...

Nudged by Dave Winer's post about old-school bloggers and my now-nicely-synchronizing setup of NetNewsWire (iOS) and FreshRSS (web), I gave Claude AI this prompt to list bloggers (with the addition of "Please include URLs and short bios.") and had fun going through the list it produced. A number of people were no longer blogging (unreachable sites or inactive blogs), but I found a few...

I usually summarize Mastodon links, move them to my Emacs News Org file, and then categorize them. Today I accidentically categorized the links while they were still in my Mastodon buffer, so I had two lists with categories. I wanted to write some Emacs Lisp to merge sublists based on the top-level items. I could sort the list alphabetically with C-c ^ (org-sort) and...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Mar 19 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Mar 20 0000 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Mar 22 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 0930 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630...

Pedro pointed out that I had some incomplete clock entries in my Emacs configuration. org-resolve-clocks prompts you for what to do with each open clock entry in your Org agenda files and whatever Org Mode files you have open. If you don't feel like cancelling each clock with C, I also wrote this function to delete all open clocks in the current file. (defun...

Emacs 30: How to Get Started with Emacs 30.1 on Linux (@derdreschi85@mastodon.social) GNU Emacs 30.1 läuft auf Android (@hgdrn@nrw.social) Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #3 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/333236a9-d51f-4646-9630-4d42a820f1f0 Tue Mar 11 1900 CET Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Mar 14 1800 Europe/Paris M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Mar 19 0900 America/Vancouver - 1100 America/Chicago - 1200...

Sometimes I want to get the URL from a string whether the string contains a bare URL (https://example.com) or an Org bracketed link ([[https://example.com]] or [[https://example.com][Example]], ignoring any extra non-link text (blah https://example.com blah blah). org-link-any-re seemed like the right regular expression to use, but I started to get a little dizzy looking at all the parenthesis and I couldn't figure out which matching...

Conscientiousness and me Noticing when my brain likes to do the work Supporting my brain Not far from the tree Growing Learning on my own and with others Over the past few days, I've been reflecting on the personality trait of conscientiousness, which is something that can be a bit of a struggle for me. From Wikipedia: Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being...

Emacs 30: Emacs 30 Now On Android (12:19) GNU Emacs 30.1 Released With Android Support, Emacs Lisp Native Compiler By Default (Reddit) Irreal: Emacs 30.1 Update Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/306023632/ Wed Mar 5 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto – Thu Mar 6 0000 Etc/GMT - 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0530 Asia/Kolkata - 0800 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA...