Bookmarks (81)

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...

2025-02-28-04 February 2025 -- monthly review Checking in with myself Where did I feel most energized this month? What activities drained me? What moments made me say "aha!" this month? Emoji summary Blog posts Sketches Text and links from sketch (, and) a list of emojis per day February 2025 field trips birthday music and art By day: 👀 looking ahead 💃 dance ✅...

I've had this iPad Air 13" for about two weeks now, and I'm slowly settling into how the different pieces of tech can work together and how things can flow. 2025-02-28-01 Getting used to SuperNote A5X and iPad Air 13 -- drawing supernote ipad tech Text from sketch Getting used to SuperNote A5X + iPad Air 13" SuperNote A5X: I prefer it for writing,...

A+ likes prompting Claude AI to generate funny kid-focused Star Wars fanfic mostly exploring how various characters might babysit Luke, Leia, and Grogu in a universe where Anakin did not fall to the Dark Side. This seems to be working out well. It encourages her to improvise stories even when we're off-screen, and it lets her play with small variations on ideas and quickly...

Adding anchors to paragraphs Anchor links Text fragments I write my blog posts in Org Mode and export them to Eleventy with ox-11ty, which is derived from the ox-html backend. Sometimes I want to link to something in a different blog post. This lets me build on thoughts that are part of a post instead of being a whole post on their own. If...

Emacs 30: Emacs 30.1 released (Reddit, lobste.rs, HN, lemmy.ml) Emacs 30.1 RC1 is available (Reddit, Irreal, lemmy.ml) What's New in Emacs 30.1? (Reddit, HN) J.e.r.e.m.y B.r.y.a.n.t: Emacs 30.1 released including which-key Tim Heaney: Emacs 30 What's New in Emacs? (Feb 2025) - System Crafters Live! (01:47:02) Rahul Juliato: Compiling Emacs 30.1 from the source on Debian Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid,...

After our first informal field trip to the Art Gallery of Ontario, I got my own 13" iPad Air so that I can play with digital painting beside A+. Using the same apps might make it easier for her to pick up ideas from me and for me to pick up ideas from her. We mostly draw in Procreate, and I'm starting to get...

2025-02-20-01 Productive procrastination -- productivity parenting.png Text from sketch Productive procrastination We are going to procrastinate. That's the way our brains like to work. No sense grumping about it, that'll just make it worse. We might as well get better at it This is a skill that takes practice, so try to learn when the stakes are low. Have a good idea of what...

I set up a BigBlueButton web conferencing server so that people can use it for Emacs meetups. To keep costs down, I want to resize it to 1 GB RAM 1 vCPU most of the time, and then resize it to 8 GB RAM 4 vCPU when there's a meetup. When it's at a proper size (4 CPUs), the Nginx web server should proxy...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Wed Feb 19 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Feb 20 0000 Asia/Singapore Emacs APAC: Emacs APAC meetup (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/announcements/ Sat Feb 22 0030 America/Vancouver - 0230 America/Chicago - 0330 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 0930 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630...

A+ asked me to take her on another informal field trip to the Art Gallery of Ontario to check out that special exhibit on modern art that we didn't have the energy for last time. I decided that was worth taking her out during a school afternoon. I figured there'd be plenty of time to catch up with schoolwork over the long weekend, and...

Help wanted: Looking for testers: Nix (Flakes) integration for Eshell (Github) Re: Status of xwidgets support Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #2 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/36aa7507-8a4f-4ab4-bd1f-fa12b5d1accb Tue Feb 11 1900 CET OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed Feb 12 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Feb 13 0000...

A+'s class is working through a variety of assignments while reading through The Wild Robot. They've done chapter 1-11 so far. One of the assignments is to visualize things from the book, like sketching 6 things Roz has seen in nature so far. I figured I'd practise drawing too. 2025-02-06-01 Beaver, goose, squirrel, sparrow, flower, sheepdog, sheep -- drawing.png References: blue flower by NiklasErnst...

I want to get better at helping A+ learn more about art, and I want to learn more about art myself. She'll learn whatever she's ready to learn, but maybe I can help her get past the initial frustrations by breaking it down into smaller skills. As for me, there's plenty I can learn about seeing, getting stuff to look like what I'm seeing,...

I joined @screwtape's Lispy Gopher Show at the last minute because he wanted to chat a little about community, his experiences starting a new blog, and my recent post Through blogging, we discover our thoughts and other people. Ramin Honary was also there, so the conversation also included Scheme, CL, Haskell, and other cool things. I shared the notes I was taking (yay screen...

Help wanted: F-Droid are in need of a new maintainer for their Emacs package. Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): EmacsATX: Emacs Social https://www.meetup.com/emacsatx/events/305908631/ Wed Feb 5 1600 America/Vancouver - 1800 America/Chicago - 1900 America/Toronto – Thu Feb 6 0000 Etc/GMT - 0100 Europe/Berlin - 0530 Asia/Kolkata - 0800 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Feb 7 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto...

Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog How to Take Smart Notes Mathematica peer-to-peer education Emacs Calendar Emacs News EmacsConf Emacs.tv Writing helps you refine your thoughts Writing helps you find your tribe Text and links from sketch Through blogging, we discover our thoughts and other people. Henrik Karlsson's "Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog" nudged me...