~sachachua_com | Bookmarks (85)

Summary: Life with a cargo bike has been working out really well for our family. I used to walk for an hour to get to some of A+'s playdates, pushing her in the Thule bike trailer / stroller that she still fit into. I liked bringing popsicles during the summer so that A+ could share them with her friends, so I often balanced a...

Emacs 30 and Emacs 31: Emacs 30.0 pretest packages for Fedora (Reddit) Build Emacs 31 for Windows · GitHub (@ldbeth@mastodon.sdf.org) Upcoming events: 200ok: EmacsConf 2024: Join Us in Lucerne for a Celebration of Free Software! Emacs Paris: S: Emacs workshop in Paris (online) https://emacs-doctor.com/ Tue Nov 5 0830 America/Vancouver - 1030 America/Chicago - 1130 America/Toronto - 1630 Etc/GMT - 1730 Europe/Berlin - 2200 Asia/Kolkata...

The Toronto Public Library (and many other libraries) offers e-book access through Overdrive, which I can read through the Libby app on my phone. It turns out that I can select passages to highlight. It also turns out that I can use the Reading Journey view to export the highlights as JSON, even for books I've returned. This is what the JSON looks like....

I sometimes want the inverse of org-refile when I create a subtree and think of things that should probably go into it. This function prompts for a heading that matches org-refile-targets and then moves it to the current location. (defun my-org-refile-to-point (refloc) "Prompt for a heading and refile it to point." (interactive (list (org-refile-get-location "Heading: "))) (let* ((file (nth 1 refloc)) (pos (nth 3...

Embracing the shallows: Now a blog post: Embracing the shallows Thinking about testing my VPS backup - 2024-10-28T19:51:18.735Z I want to test backups of my virtual private server by setting them up in some kind of environment on my laptop. Some of the things on my server are in Docker containers, so I might need to either figure out Docker in Docker or use...

[2024-10-30 Wed]: Added more notes from my experiment with semi-retirement. I'm sitting in the same room as A+ as she attends virtual grade 3. She uses the computer speakers instead of her headphones. I feel there's a part of my mind that I can't access with stuff going on in the background, but I don't mind so much. Listening in is a good way...

Download the video I use org-link-set-parameters to define a lot of custom links in Org Mode for things like my blog or my Emacs config. Then I can code how I want to complete, open, and export those links. These links don't make sense to other people, of course. I want to be able to quickly copy or replace my custom links with regular...

I want to get better at making sense of things and sharing what I'm learning. Nudged by Chris Maiorana's post on Second Brain, Second Nature, I borrowed How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens (2017). Here are my notes. 2024-10-26-01 How to Take Smart Notes - Sonke Ahrens 2017 #visual-book-notes #writing #pkm #book Text from sketch How to Take Smart Notes - Sönke...

I wanted to follow up on my post on large language models and me from January and do some more thinking/learning out loud. Data I have >= 8000 posts in my blog, almost 4000 sketches (mostly public, many with OCR results), and lots of text notes in my Org Mode files, many of which are in a hierarchy and many of which are just...

UPDATE: I'm moving Emacs News to the info-gnu-emacs mailing list instead of emacs-tangents. If you're subscribed to Emacs News through emacs-tangents, you may want to switch your subscriptions. Emacs News will also continue to be available on the web and through RSS. I'll post to both info-gnu-emacs and emacs-tangents for a little while. Emacs 30.0.92 pretest is available (Reddit, Irreal) Upcoming events: Emacs Berlin...

I was curious about this passage from How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens: [Niklas] Luhmann's only real help was a housekeeper who cooked for him and his children during the week, not that extraordinary considering he had to raise three children on his own after his wife died early. Five warm meals a week of course do not explain the production of...

I want to start building up more thoughts as chunks and relating them more logically instead of just chronologically. I've been using categories to organize my posts into buckets, but within a category, it's still chronological. I also have a large outline that includes posts from 2017 to 2024. I'd like to break it up into smaller topic pages so that they're easier to...

I often want to link to an Org heading from somewhere in my org-refile-targets, which includes my agenda files and other things. I don't want to think about where the heading is, I just want to link to it. I could use C-u C-c C-w (org-refile) to go to the heading, use C-c l (my shortcut for org-store-link), head back with org-mark-ring-goto, and then...

Emacs: scroll-other-window and PDF view in Emacs - 2024-10-20T21:44:48.482Z Updating a text file based on the editing marks I drew on a PDF is much nicer when I can use scroll-other-window to control the pdfview in the other #Emacs window. https://gist.github.com/politza/3f46785742e6e12ba0d1a849f853d0b9 Inserting conference talk info in e-mail thanks to Emacs - 2024-10-17T15:29:36.186Z One of the fun things about doing so much in #Emacs (email,...

I customized my visual book notes - all view to show the thumbnails of the images, and I added You can get to it by going to the visual-book-notes category from a post and then choosing "All". I like the new "View slideshow" and "Shuffle slideshow" buttons I added. Figure 1: Screenshot of my visual book notes gallery I also fixed some of the...

Debian uses Git repository tags to notice when to update packages. I kept forgetting to tag subed's versions, so now I made a git post-commit hook which I think will do the trick. I based it on https://gist.github.com/ajmirsky/1245103, just updated for Python 3 and tweaked to work with how I do versions in subed.el. I've also added it to my README.org. #!/usr/bin/python # place...

2024-10-21-05 Atomic Habits #visual-book-notes #productivity #personal-development Text from sketch Atomic Habits - James Clear (2022) - Notes by Sacha Chua 2024-10-21-05 time vs results: valley of disappointment: (we expect linear progress) Achieving a Goal only changes your life for the moment. In order to improve for good, solve problems at the system level. Fall in love with process rather than product. Not "what do...

Emacs 30: New stuff in Emacs 30 (July 2024) Twitch video on latest Emacs features from master, buffer/file registers, golang ts tests features and more (@pizzatorque@emacs.ch) (video available temporarily) Upcoming events: Emacs APAC (virtual) https://emacs-apac.gitlab.io/ Sat Oct 26 0130 America/Vancouver - 0330 America/Chicago - 0430 America/Toronto - 0830 Etc/GMT - 1030 Europe/Berlin - 1400 Asia/Kolkata - 1630 Asia/Singapore Emacs Berlin (virtual, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/...

I enjoyed listening to Podcast #1,029: Treat Your To-Do List Like a River, and Other Mindset Shifts for Making Better Use of Your Time | The Art of Manliness (thanks @ctietze@mastodon.social for the recommendation) and checking out the Autofocus method (main website with translations) for reviewing your TODO list without worrying too much about prioritization. I also had an opportunity to reflect on similar...

Download the video I want to quickly look up and add links. consult-omni lets me search within Emacs instead of switching to a web interface. After I set up consult-omni-google with a Google custom search engine and a JSON API key, I can call it with my shortcut: M-g w. Using M-n for future history pulls in the word at point. Then I can...

2024-10-17-02 How sketchnotes fit into my personal knowledge management #pkm #sketchnoting #drawing Text from sketch worth doing even if you don't feel like you can draw well really, I just draw stick figures good for your own thoughts and other people's own thoughts: non-linear visual metaphors & organizers can be helpful can be a launchpad for more details other people's thoughts: distill key points...

I'm starting to dig into what other people have shared about personal information management and personal knowledge management. Karl Voit is one of my favourite people in this space, and I've enjoyed I thought I'd sketchnote the recording of his talk at Worklab 2023: "The Art of Organizing Yourself and Your Data". Here it is: 2024-10-17-01 The Art of Organizing Yourself and Your Data...

Here is a totally rough list of aspects that I came up with to start thinking about how I do personal information/knowledge management and how I want to explore other people's systems. 2024-10-15-08 Aspects of personal knowledge management #pkm (text from sketch duplicated as headings below) Use: What do you want to use it for, and how? Capture: How do you get stuff in?...

Personal knowledge management thought management - 2024-10-13T21:24:39.185Z I think I don't have a task management or even a knowledge management challenge, I have a thought management challenge. I want to think more thoughts through to a reasonable level of completion (blog post, commit, sketch, even a toot) while still honouring the kiddo's desire for snuggles and playtime. My brain gets cranky about unfinished thoughts...