Compiling emacs for Crostini/chromeos

0. Introduction

NB: I am in the process of adopting this : https://www.jamescherti.com/compiling-emacs/

I will update the following as I aaprogress

I read an excellent article called Using Emacs 81 Elfeed Webkit by Mike Zamansky.  The ability to see more content whilst staying within Emacs is a good idea. Spoiler alert: It turned out to be even better than I thought, in fact, it is my favourite way to consume RSS/Atom.

I also wanted to get a newer version of Emacs than is readily available from standard sources, plus I also wanted to try tree-sitter. Note the is a much fuller explanation of compiling emacs with tree-sitter here; more importantly it gives extensive insight into why you will want it!

In summary, it worked, it wasn't too difficult and I found it fun!

I have highlighted what seemed to be Chromeos specifics in red.

1. Setting up the environment

I did the following

• setup deb-src entries in /etc/apt/sources.lst. This can easily be done in the UI of a normal Linux distribution - and it can be done on Chromeos but it seemed more trouble than it was worth!
• sudo apt update
• sudo apt build-dep emacs ; this should install the required dependencies

2. Get extras

In addition to tree-sitter and widgets (for reading RSS) I also wanted to have native compilation

• tree-sitter (many full distributions have easier ways of getting this)
  • git clone git@github.com:tree-sitter/tree-sitter.git
  • make
  • sudo make install
• get xwidgets
  • sudo apt-get install libwebkit2gtk-4.0-dev
• sudo apt install libgccjit-13-dev
• sudo ldconfig

3. Build emacs

This is standard stuff, with the augmented configure line, which you may wish to vary.

• git clone -b master git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git
• OR
  

  git clone --single-branch --branch=emacs-30 http://git.savannah.gnu.org/r/emacs.git emacs-29

• OR

           git pull

           git checkout refs/tags/emacs-30.2

OR

          git fetch origin tag emacs-30.2 --no-tags (to reduce download volume)

• checkout required version ( I just went with master and so I am on version 30! It works fine for me but you could be more prudent
• sudo apt-get build-dep emacs
• export CC="gcc-14" for ubuntu  (or 12 on debian)
• Install libgccjit-14-dev
• sh autogen.sh

• ./configure --without-compress-install --with-native-compilation --with-mailutils --with-tree-sitter 

• make (may need to make bootstrap if there are errors)
• sudo make install

If there is a config.h error try 'git clean -fdx' then make

systemctl stop --user emacs

systemctl --user daemon-reload

systemctl start --user emacs

4. Conclusion

The above list of commands is quite straightforward and you end up with a nice modern emacs which seemed a bit quicker to me.  In reality, the above list was obtained by a lot of trial and error, hence why I am documenting it!

Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

Review of Magonomia: a FATE rpg of Renaissance Wizardry

 

Summary:

• A large ( approx 380 pages) RPG ruleset based on FATE (Core but with Condensed additions)
  
• Published by Shewstone , available as a PDF and physical book on Drivethru RPG. There is also a pay-what-you-like intro scenario and a free set of starter rules.
  
• This book covers Elizabethan England and all PCs are some form of wizard.
• I consider this to be a great introduction to FATE with many of the trickier concept of that ruleset explained clearly. As a bonus several aspects of how to play and collaborate are covered including safety tools this is all done is a pragmatic fashion
• The layout and art are good, and I had no problem reading the text against the manuscript style background - YMMV
• Bottomline: although I haven't played it yet, I am very glad I got this book.
• I aim to revisit this initial review as I learn more!
  

Context:

A few things about me which may help you discern if this review will help you.  I love RPGs but don't get to play them that often.  I prefer story-telling RPG to crunchy ones, and as such I like FATE.  I have many FATE rulesets.

I love the Elizabethan period of history - it was a time of great changes as England emerged from the Middle Ages and started to enter a more modern era. Culture, politics, religion: all were in great flux.  John Dee (astrologer), Francis Wallsingham (spy master), Sir Francis Drake (adventurer) are just some of the larger than life characters of this period. Plus Shakespeare and what did happen to Christopher Marlowe?

Magic:

All the player characters are wizards and there are 5 styles of magic, 5 Sciences: Astrology, Alchemy, Sorcery, Theurgy and Witchcraft. Wizards specialize in just one ( though there are overlaps).

FATE has a wonderful Bronze Rule: you can treat anything as if it were a characters, with its own Aspects, Skills, Consequences etc. There are things called Extras  which are controlled by a character - well, spells are Extras  and follow the Bronze rule. I think this is wonderful; I suspect this is one reason why FATE was chosen to underpin Magonomia.

FATE RPG intoduction:

This ruleset takes the time and space to introduce role playing games, give advice on how to help the group enjoy themselves, but also how to collaborate, run a campaign and may other things which will help groups new to RPGs in general and to FATE in particular. Hence, despite being a big book it is a good introduction. 

In addition, there are chapters for the Games Master including plot hooks.

Other materials:

To round things out there are chapters on the background of the era, the country, a grimoire, and magical Lore

Around the internet:

• • Youtube: Magonomia Design Discussion Meet the designers (many of whom worked on Ars Magica)
  • Youtube: Magonomia with author Andrew Gronosky GMSMagazine
  • 
    
  
  

Setting up mu4e for gmail for emacs

I am doing this in crostini on my Chromebook

• Setup your gpg certificate if you don't have one (I used the instructions here)
• setup pass if not installed
• pass init <userid>
• Get an application specific password for gmail here
• Add this password to pass
• pass insert Mail/MyGmail
• Then setup ~/.mbsyncrc as per this link (Thank you SystemCrafters!)
• Change userid
• Use pass Mail/MyGMail to retrieve the password
• I also added MaxMessages to the local channel as the crostini container is small!
• Check the certificates path for your distribution (it was fine for debian)
• Initial sync
• mbsync -a
• Setup mu4e
• Note that the instructions in the previous link are now out of date...
• After installing
• mu init -m ~/Mail --my-address=userid@gmail.com
• mu index
• Then follow these instructions to use mu4e-org

Keybase

Hopefully this web site is now verified on keybase!

Try slack:// now

Test

Test post/publish

Minimalist Running

My running history

At school I was a sprinter and loathed cross-country runs.  In my low 20s (and sporadically thereafter) I tried jogging which I found a) boring and b) gave me shin splints.

To address the shin splints I went to specialist running shops and was given heavy pronation (anti-pronation?) shoes - but promptly got injured again.

Many years later I am still struggling to run any distance.

Enter minimalist shoes

I noticed the 5 fingers shoes and wondered about trying them.  I didn't find any locally and then I saw this post on G+  by Tim O'Reilly: he caught his little toe with painful results.  Down in the comments someone mentioned "Vivobarefoot"; I did a search and found a pair on amazon for a special offer.  It was obviously "a sign", so I got some:

I went off for a walk/run: 30 seconds run every 3 minutes (though it was just walk after the first 20 minutes!).  It was great - I felt really good, the birds sang in the sky......

For the second walk/run I went out with my wife, who runs 3 times a week. This was a mistake - pushed a bit too far and had terrible Achilles pains the next day. And basically that meant walking only for 4 months - every attempt to run triggered the Achilles again.

Minimalist walking

So I felt it was time to do a gentler form of exercise for a while: walking. Where do I do most walking?  At work: to, from and around the park at lunchtime.  The Airmesh above were fine but after a while I felt the need to have something less showy (and reserve the Airmesh for the gym); enter the Vivobarefoot Ra:

I now have 2 pairs of these: blue canvas and black leather.  Both very nice and usable at the office.  I had to "sugru" the inner heel of the canvas pair as they chafed a little.

So now I get to gently stretch my achilles for hours a day.

Back to running?

Right now I am going back to walk/running (60-90second run, 3 minute walk) - so far so good.  To do that over the winter I got a pair of Vivobarefoot Trails which I use when walking the dog.  Again excellent: nice broad toe box, more traction, highly waterproof (which surprised me).  I my look at some Breathos if summer ever arrives.

Summer?

Did I mention summer?  Towards the end of last summer I got a pair of Vivobarefoot Achilles:

A distinctive design! I find them comfortable but I have not used them much yet!

Vivobarefoot

I know the above will make me appear a Vivobarefoot fan boy - this would be correct!  Their shoes are great, they have varied designs, I like their efforts to be green and to provide education to help people transition to minimal footwear with less chance of injury

Xero Shoes

That said I have just got a pair of Xero Shoes  huraches (from Xero Shoes UK actually):

Again a summer shoe.  I have assembled them, and learned to tie them - which was fun.  Getting the tension right is a bit of an art but I think I am there now.  As with the Achilles I look forward to more sunshine!

Conclusion

So that was a whirlwind tour of my growing minimalist shoe collection.  Important points:

• Transition carefully!  I have found being able to wear minimalist shoes at work and mainly walking to be a great way of training my feet.  This is especially important for the older ones, and those who do a lot of running miles in heavy-weight running shoes.
• You don't have to have the 5 fingers! Vivobarefoot and others make relatively normal looking shoes (Achilles excepted) which are easier to fit and can cut down on one form of injury.  That said many people love VFFs.
• The minimalist shoe community is great.

So hopefully this will be the summer where I complete my transition to minimalist running and not just walking - I'll  let you know!

Emacs Conf, 30th March 2013, London

Intro

So a slightly belated write-up of my Saturday jaunt up to the Big Smoke.

Just so you know, I really use Emacs mainly for org-mode but I am also playing with Common Lisp ( is slime/swank) and Clojure (via nrepl).  I am not a power user, and have not done any elisp except twiddling with init.el.

Why did I go? I fancied a day out, hoped to learn some new stuff and to be at the first Emacs Conf so I could tell my grandchildren (for the record my children didn't care!)

Did it meet those expectations (except the last!): yes, and more!

Venue

I can claim another first - never been to Mornington Crescent tube station ( which is just north of London's Euston (main station for the North of the UK).

The venue ( 2nd Floor, Centro 3) belonged to Forward and was great: auditorium, canteen area with a plentiful supply of beverages.  A big shout out to them and @Jon_Neale in particular for supporting this conference.

There were issues with the streaming so not all talks were recorded for posterity; there is an explanation here.  As someone said on that thread - this was a free conference done by a first-time organising team, so these things happen...  That said people are pulling together with audio, video from phones, and (obviously) the side decks ( or org files!) etc.- all is not lost!

Alex Simic (+Aleksandar Simic) led the organising team and was the MC.

The weird internet life 

A couple of odd things:

• At work I know only one other person who uses emacs - but here everyone was taking notes in it!  (except me who thought he'd be smart by just taking the Galaxy S3, when I could have completely re-engineered my init.el by the time I left!!)
• This was the worst case for me so far of meeting people who I have seen on vimeo/you tube, read on Twitter/G+/blogs etc. but you have never spoken to before. I felt I knew them, they wondered who I was. Luckily nearly everyone was very approachable so I felt they were best buddies by the time I left.

Keynotes

Sacha Chua and John Wiegley did a joint Keynote. 

Sacha did a a fantastic "Why Emacs is so great" presentation to an emacs conference - everyone loved it and everyone around where I was seemed to learn something new from it; no mean feat to 100 emacs experts (well, 99).

Sacha is a person of boundless enthusiasm!

John did a history of Emacs and its antecedents together with personal anecdotes of his own.  Sounds as if it would be a dry topic but I learned some new stuff and he delivered it in an amusing and engaging way.

A great start to the conference!
(Audio here)

Other Highlights

Nic Ferrier talked in his usual entertaining and unique style about loads of stuff: emacswiki, elnode, the nature of lazy collaboration and more! Oh and he used org mode for his notes.

Dimitri Fontaine spoke about el-get which is the package system I tend to use as a preference - partly because I found it first, it worked on Emacs 23 and it can use other package systems as methods.  Dimitri, Nic and Steve ("Luna Sandles") Purcell also gave an interesting panel on package managers and resisted over complicating the domain!

Sam Aaron talked about emacs-live (pointer to foundation packages). As one of the oldest people there I needed to get home for an early bedtime, so I missed his emacs driven music performance (with free beer and pizza!) later on.

But really there is almost too much to mention (sorry if you didn't get an explicit mention) - a very good day!

Other information

Sacha's sketch notes: http://experivis.com/collection/emacsconf2013/

Vivibarefoot and Sugru

I am a great fan of both +VIVOBAREFOOT and +sugru .

I will write more on my experiences with minimalist shoes, but I have now acquired a number of pairs of Vivobarefoot's shoes and love all of them.

The one problem pair were the Vivobarefoot Ra (Blue, canvas) - look good, can be worn to work(although the white sole is definitely "business casual"), but after a while the heel rubbed on the edge.

I am happy to report that a "smear" of blue sugru around the rear edge of the shoe seems to have done the trick; it was tested by the local Xmas disco!

The future of Emacs and humanity

"But ... Emacs will still be there, waiting. It will be there when the icecaps melt and the cities drown, when humanity destroys itself in fire and zombies, when the roaches finally achieve sentience, take over, and begin using computers themselves - at which point its various Ctrl-Meta key-chords will seem not merely satisfyingly ergonomic for the typical arthropod, but also direct evidence for the universe's Intelligent Design by some six-legged, multi-jointed God." Kieran Healy

Hilarious and insightful! Personally, I think it will be some form of octopus that inherits the earth, but tellingly a mutated version of the last line will still apply.

Found at https://www.deviantart.com/earlcolour/art/emacs-user-at-work-195326745
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

Terry Pratchett Going Postal

Terry Pratchett Going Postal: I just bought the Blue ray of this and got round to watching it last night.  And I very much enjoyed it !

I have read and liked many of the books: The Colour of Magic had me LOL which is rare for a book.  But I only "quite enjoyed" the TV films of  Colour of Magic and The Hogfather.  Great cast, super production values, but not Really Funny(tm).  Quite Funny(tm).

Going Postal had a great cast, great production values, great timing ( except perhaps the ending was a bit rushed).  David Suchet was splendidly evil!.  I thought that Jeremy Irons could not be bettered as Lord Vetinari, but Charles Dance was great ( and had a very prominent part cf. Colour of Magic). Clare Foy ("Little Dorrit" says my wife) as Adora Belle Dearheart and  Richard Coyle as Moist Von Lipwig(!) were also superb.  Tamsin Greig, Steve Pemberton - the list goes on and on!


So I hope this met with commercial success so that other Discworld novels will be brought to our screens.

Gnome 3 update

I am still enjoying Gnome 3.  However, issues ( I think with my ATI driver) on my home machine have led me to upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 (alpha!).  This has gone very well, and seems very reliable - I hpe it stays that way.

I am making use of Gnome extensions anfd have found several useful ones - even though they are to put back some Gnome 2 items (like trash cans window bar)

One thing that I am missing is having the "hot corner" duplicated on a second screen. In fact i would like the top bas also duplicated on the 2nd screen! Any pointers welcomed.

Gnome 3 - recommended

Well, this is interesting - some famous people (Linus Torvalds, Mark Shuttleworth) plus folks I respect at work have a real downer on Gnome 3. I installed it today (3.2.1) whilst trying to get something else to work, and gave it a try.

 And I think it is great. It looks good, performs well, and is highly usable.

•  Mouse to the top left of the screen (or press Windows key) gives thumbnails of the running apps (Activities-> Windows) 
• or you can click on Applications to get a list of apps, which are categorised (All, Accessories, Games etc.). 
• Hit the Windows key and start typing: this searches for Apps or Contacts (I wonder if it can be made to search for files?) 
• Also on the Activities screen is a dock which shows favourites. It looks very similar to the Unity side bar except it doesn't pop up irritatingly when you put the mouse over it whilst trying to use the windows max/min/close buttons which are on the left in Unity. 
•  max/unmax is just double clicking on the windows top bar 

 So I was getting used to Unity, and could see where Canonical were going with it. But it seems to me that Gnome 3 is here now and working well - recommended!!

 (PS: Using Ubuntu 11.10 on Lenovo W520)

Steve Jobs and the WWW

Fascinating background on Steve Jobs influence on software engineering with things such as hypercard.  What I didn't know was that Tim Berner-Lee used a NeXT machine!

Thoughts on reducing delivery cycles

Mary Poppendick:LeanEssays: How Cadence Predicts Process makes some excelent points about the efficiency of delivery from requirement to delivery of thesupporting feature.  Along the way she mentions Kent Beck and the affects of reducing the release cycle on sales, support etc. Close to my own heart at present is automated testing and a mention of the book Specification by Example

Android tablet

I have dipped my toe in the tablet pond. I have got an Advent Vega, a £200 Android tablet.  Cheap price but the processor and screen are great.

I have upped the rom to include Android Market,and have gradually added more Apps.

Have had a couple of glitches where the wi-fi stopped, the screen rotation was 90degrees out, and reboots gave an error.  Backup system works!

Why Android rather than Apple? USB port, SDcard, terminal.......

The Vega does not look as sexy as an iPad, but I am happy with its function!

Limits of data

1.0FTE

LaTeX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses

I have long been a fan of Latex for large complex documents. Over the years I have found that it can do more, even for small documents.

However, this presentation is awesome: Malaysian LaTeX User Group: LaTeX: More Than Just Academic Papers and Theses.

The breadth of things Latex can do is fantastic, and the quality is great.

Great presentation.

weblogger.el

Just trying out another blog entry system from emacs!

Phil Windley's Technometria | Capture Mode and Emacs

Finally got round to setting this up: Phil Windley's Technometria | Capture Mode and Emacs: "Capture Mode and Emacs".

Very easy to add anything to an org-mode file from anywhere. I will have to look at the time-date hierarchy and see whether and how to add to the workflow.  In addition to the elements in Phil's video, of course  C-c C-l to store a link is also available

Quicklisp needs more love

To hear the GigaMonkey Overlord is to obey!!
Quicklisp is fantastic: lisp libraries. In all seriousness this is THE way to install many excellent lisp libraries in a way which also takes care of dependencies.

Buildapp - Create executables with SBCL

Buildapp - Create executables with SBCL -cool!

Emacs goes Hollywood

"I was tickled that I got emacs into a block buster movie."

Couldn't happen to a nicer editor!!

Using the commandline network utilities from Emacs | Mastering Emacs

Using the commandline network utilities from Emacs | Mastering Emacs

I should have known!!

blog 12/31/2010

• Test Your GTD-Q

  tags: GTD

• IBM - Installing help content from a local update site using the Local Help Updater

  tags: Rational ibm

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

test new e-blog

Is e-blog working on new install?

Ubuntu and Trackpoint

How did I miss this gem before?  At last I can turn off the trackpad!!

Subtleties of search-and-replace in Emacs - I Still Know What You Learned Last Summer

Subtleties of search-and-replace in Emacs - I Still Know What You Learned Last Summer : a great summary of all that is good in Emacs search ( and replace). Now all I have to do is remember the key strokes!!

It definitely helps if you can "live" in emacs. Hmm, I just need an RTC emacs client !!

Results day - the long wait

Today is AS result day for one member of the household. It seems that everyone elses child as reported ack in person or by phone... but not ours!! Good sign or bad sign? Or just torture?

Kill the cull, not Wales's badgers

Kill the cull, not Wales's badgers | Brian May | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "Kill the cull, not Wales's badgers"

Just saw Brian May talking on the Channel 4 news after the proposed cull was stopped.

I don't know what the facts of the case are, but Brian May came over as a very reasonable, articulate and patient person. He refuted many assertions by the interviewer (e.g. "the cull is the only way to stop bovine tuberculosis", "no, it could make matters worse, inoculation is the only way to stop it"), and as the interviewer did not demure he was either not sure of his facts or Brian May was correct.

I was impressed at how polite Brian remained as he had to repeat his facts several times.

10 out of 10 for what appeared to be a fact-based interview - they seem to be a rarity these days.

Test from e-blog

This is a test post from e-blog in Emacs 23

Google Wave

Just got my Google Wave account. Looks good, but I am amased at how few of my contacts have accounts. This put a bit of a damper on the collaboration !

Nokia n900 announcement .. I think I'm disappointed

So I was indeed correct a new Nokia Internet tablet is on its way. And there are many things to like, such as a phone, a much more powerful processor etc.

On the other hand it looks like the new OS will not run on the N8xx hardware, which is disappointing as I don't think I will be buying the new machine.

I agree with this blog by Pengiunbait, in that the reduced size means a smaller screen ( I need a bigger screen but the N810 is the smallest my varifocal eyes can now deal with), and a less adequate keyboard.

This release seems to be heading to be a phone, but I actually want better internet tablet !! I am happy to have a separate (small) phone if necessary.

So I think my requirements and the Nokia Internet family are diverging. Still perhaps they will have the resources to have 2 variants in the range?

Peter Siebel's new book: Coders at Work

Interesting preview by Marc Hedlund. If this book is anything like as good as Practical Common Lisp ( which is very good indeed) then it will be worth owning. Rather a change of topic from Peter but, as Marc points out, the fact that Peter is a coder too allows for a different sort of book from say a journalist doing the interviewing.

See here for a previous entry

N810 prices falling...

I am very happy with my Nokia N810. I noticed that the price was starting to fall again.

Perhaps this is the reason why: RX-51/N900
Now with phone! Obviously, the Google Android is not the only Linux based phone from a major player.

I hope that the (non-phone) parts of the OS are backward compatible with the N810.

A great overview of how to use org-mode

This is super:
Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text!

Org Mode - Organize Your Life In Plain Text!

I have not studied all of it, but it certainly clarifies a few things for me, points out some new features which had slipped through my net, and shows how to avoid using one huge file for everything! Storing to-dos etc. in a holding file and then working through (weekly review?) looks good.

I am expecting to be spending some time in .emacs again!!

Google Wave

A bit behind the wave (groan), but this looks cool:



Can we integrate it with RTC?

#tweekly summary

Kelly hosted a really useful one-hour Weekly review on Twitter yesterday (6pm BST). Every five miutes or so, Kelly would fire out a tweet marching us throught the 11 steps of the GTD weekly review. Why was this a valuable session (as opposed to following the book by oneself on a Friday pm. say):

1. Having a defined public time was a great way of getting people to actually do the review. For hours, in some cases days, before the event, tweets were going out creating a real buzz.
2. In addition to someone keeping the time (Kelly), she also sent out advice with each 5 minute period to prompt ( "No waiting on list? Check your sent mail!")
3. Kelly was able to answer folks questions - for example, when someone expressed a fear of the "mind sweep" adding too many new to-dos, Kelly was able to offer reassurance!

I'm sure these sessions are not strictly necesary, but the crowd and the great advice/coaching are great motivators - with greater experience I'm sure people will be more suceessful in doing Wekly Reviews alone.

Here is a summary ( with helpful tips) from the Tweets:

* GET CLEAR

** Collect loose papers and materials

*** Gather everything that's loose into an Inbox, Tray or folder.

** Get “In” to zero

*** a good way to process in is 4D's: Delete it, Do it (under 2 mins), Delegate it, Defer it (onto a list)

** Empty your head

*** Open a Word doc, or grab and pad and clear your head for 5 minutes

*** SOME MINDSWEEP TRIGGERS: Family, health, meetings you've had, meetings you're going to have...

*** MORE MINDSWEEP TRIGGERS: Your direct reports, finances, 401k, the dog, your car, health appts you've been putting off...

* GET CURRENT

** Review Action Lists

** Review past calendar data

*** Many times reviewing your old calendar (go back about 3 wks) catches things you meant to do. 3 more mins left)

** Review upcoming calendar

*** REVIEW UPCOMING CALENDAR TIP: if you find something you need to process, you can add to your mindsweep for now.

*** if you don't get anything on reviewing your calendar, try going further out. Recurring Tasks are great for calendar

** Review Waiting For list

*** if you've got a list review it. If you don't have one, what are you waiting on?

*** WAITING FOR TIP: Review your email Sent folder. Usually some waiting for's hiding in there.

** Review Project (and larger outcome) lists

*** Projects are your outcomes that require more than one action step

*** PROJECT TIP: If you are not willing to take any next action on a current project, are you sure it's not Someday/Maybe?

*** PROJECT TIP: Most people we coach have 30-100 current personal & professional projects. Don't be surprised!

*** PROJECT TIP: Projects are typically completed within 18 mos. If you can NEVER mark it done, it's likely an Area of Focus.

** Review any relevant checklists

*** birthday checklists? travel checklists? home mntce?

*** CHECKLIST TIP: Maybe you want to CREATE a checklist? Anything recurring that would be good? What to always pack for vacation?

* GET CREATIVE

** Review Someday/Maybe

*** If you have one, update it. If you don't have one, create it!

*** SOMEDAY TIP: You'll trust S/M list(s) more if you know you're actually going to review them again. Otherwise they'll die.

*** SOMEDAY /MAYBE TIP: S/M is not just a "fantasy wish" list. It can be a fantastic place to stage "not yet" projects.

** Be creative & courageous

*** Any new thought-provoking, creative, risk taking ideas to add to your system?

*** What's REALLY got your attention in your job, family, environment? This is the last step!

Supporting org-mode!

I am a great fan of org-mode (for Emacs) I started using it to Getting Things Done, where it is super for entering tasks, prioritising, tracking and closing. But it is also good for note taking, time recording, simple tables, publishing to a variety of formats.

Strongly recommended - in fact, install Emacs for no other reason !!

Vote for org-mode!!

A modern view of starting Clojure in Emacs with Slime

This looks promising:
in which are found tricks of the trade concerning clojure authorship - Technomancy

Now what about co-existing with SBCL?

YALB - Yet Another Lisp Book

Land of Lisp - O'Reilly Media

Lisp is a uniquely powerful programming language that, despite its academic reputation, is actually very practical. Land of Lisp brings the language into the real world, teaching Lisp by showing readers how to write several complete Lisp-based games, including a text adventure, an evolution simulation, and a robot battle. While building these games, readers learn the core concepts of Lisp programming, such as data types, recursion, input/output, object-oriented programming, and macros. And thanks to the power of Lisp, the code is short. Rather than bogging things down with reference information that is easily found online, Land of Lisp focuses on using Lisp for real programming. The book is filled with the author Conrad Barski's famous Lisp cartoons, featuring the Lisp alien and other zany characters.

Conrad's other stuff, such as Casting Spels, has been humorous and informative - on pre-order!

Common Lisp has been blessed with some great books, even if few in number ( Practical Common Lisp, On Lisp etc. spring to mind). I wonder how the advent of Clojure will affect Common Lisp and the flow of great books?

Cool - live MDA via Google App engine

Epsilon + AppEngine + Ajax = Epsilon Live « Epsilon Weblog

The Epsilon website already includes several screencasts and examples that demonstrate the tools and languages it provides. The preview release of the Google App Engine for Java has made it possible to go one step further and allow people to actually write and execute EOL (the core language of Epsilon) programs straight from their browser without needing to download or install anything.

Diplomacy - a long neglected game

I can remember some distant games of Diplomacy - the board is still around. I have even talked with some friends about restarting. Now this:
Practical Leadership: Diplomacy is Fun Leadership Training

I just got back from chaperoning a high school trip to Costa Rica. While there, some of the kids put together a make-shift Diplomacy game out of a pizza box top. Playing gave the kids and me fun lessons in leadership and negotiation.

Diplomacy as training in trust ? Hmmm.

The game recently celebrated its 50th anniversary - with a rather disappointing reissue of the game.

stumpwm under Linux

True to my normal form I find something interesting but am loathe to do anything too irrevocable!

In this case, I have found stumpwm which is a mouse-less window manager inspired by emacs - lots of key commands! Very fast ( when you know what you are doing)

The instructions talk about changes to .xinitrc which sounds much too difficult if things go wrong. Then I found this gem which describes how to add stumpwm (or any other window manager) as a choice under Ubuntu on login.

Works great.

Now I just have to remeber a new set of key bindings!!

Update: Found this screencast. Very cool - note 2 things: 1) the ogg version is far clearer, C-e is used as the prefix whereas C-t is the default.

Noah 3988 box update

Well, after my post here, mini-itx.com came through - they sent me a new front panel very promptly after I e-mailed them. Apparently the new Noah boxes have a better switch - though unfortunately the replacement for mine was of the old type.

So 10 out of 10 for doing business with mini-itx, but still a little concerned about Noah boxes - I will have to look closely at them when the next system is due. Hopefully there will be a good review somewhere......

Emacs Command of the Day on Twitter (ecotd)

Another great pointer from emacs-fu but this time to a Twitter account!

emacs-fu: emacs command of the day

Anyway, reason to bring up twitter again is the Emacs Command of the Day-twitter feed. The idea is that every day, it provides some useful command, and it's a response to a similar feed for Vim. It's only just started, let's see where this goes.

I am following! I particularly like the way that this ecotd account is following vim - competition is good,

Package management in GNU/Emacs?

Emacs-fu:

but the one thing I remember that it still somewhat missing in GNU/Emacs, is package management. XEmacs has a nice system where you can mark packages for installation, and then get them from a website; much easier than the GNU/Emacs way, where you need to manually download things, maybe compile them, and update your .emacs - at least for things that your OS or distribution does not provide.

This has changed now with ELPA, the Emacs Lisp Package Archive. It's Tom Tromey's answer to the XEmacs package manager

Need to give this a try. Update: Tried it - works fine; some concerns on inadvertently getting rogue software but otherwise great strart.

Noah 3988 Case problems

Last July I built a kit from Mini-ITX.com and it has proved to be a very nice box: quite, small, powerful enough for a NAS, but it can also act as a reasonable workstation (but not gaming machine!)

Last night however, the pretty blue power button disappeared inside the case - an inspection showed that the plastic "spring" element had broken. To make matters worse the actual power button is not directly behind the hole in the front panel, so temporary fixes (like poking in a pencil!) won't work.

I can see this being a very irritating problem to fix - gluing plastic never works for long. So if anyone has any insights into how to approach this, please let me know!

Steampunk Snowboard

Jake found this: http://steampunkworkshop.com/steampunk-snowboard

but wanted to know more. Well here is some more:

http://zaskoda.com/2009/04/13/the-worlds-first-steampunk-snowboard/#more-163

I would have commented on Jake's site but the captcha image didn't work for registration

emacs-snapshot for ubuntu jaunty

Good pointer http://jfm3-repl.blogspot.com/2009/04/nice-ubuntu-emacs-snapshot-ppa.html

N810 as a real Linux machine

Now this 'box' is proving to be both a consumer internet tablet and a Linux machine:

• consumer: instant messaging, great sound including podcasts, video etc. I have now got maximise window and zoom hardware buttons off pat and scrolling by pointer makes browsing faster
• linux: shell, getroot, apt-get, ssh. Used ssh to install stuff ona nother machine

Great stuff!

nokia N810

Received my new toy this morning! Very small and a beautiful build. The screen is very clear.
Not sure about the built in keyboard - troublesome on a slippery surface.
A comprehensive set of internet type applications, with the browser able to cope with most formats.

One thing to work on: how to get dependent packages installed automatically

M-x proced

From yrk:

I stumbled across M-x proced, which gives you a Dired-like-esque-ish view of system processes. I especially liked "T", which toggles a tree view.

For some reason I am really blown away that it works under Windows!! I am so surprised:-)

Gloomy day - let's test twitterfeed!

Does this entry on my blog get to twitter?

Gloomy day - let's test twitterfeed!

Does this entry on my blog get to twitter?

Pilot Capless Pen

I am now the proud owner of a Pilot Capless pen.

I have been keen to get one for a while now but a few things came together:

• My old pen leaked when I was with a client - not a major problem on that occasion, but I took it as a warning
• That pen kept drying out - I must admit that I use a laptop so much that my pens get very intermittent use ( I also got some Namiki ink to solve this problem - some people have cited Quink ink as a problem for pens which aren't used frequently)
  
• My wife allowed me to buy my own present :-)
  

Initial experiences are positive - looks great and writes smoothly. Leaking and drying up will take time to test.

I hadn't seen this article until just now, but the advantages of the pen are well put and the same on-line site Cult Pens was used: great price and very fast delivery.

More on doing GTD

A very interesting post by Venkatesh Rao.

Interesting to see how a 7-year GTD veteran deals with lifes uncertainties - and his memory! Actually that last point makes it especially valuable - hearing from from super-organised , never forget anything people is so unrealistic..... well isn't it?

Blogging from emacs with g-client

Just to add a new , weird and wonderful way of blogging, I have now
added (re-added?) Emacs as an environment. A bit of messing about
with Emacs 23 and w3m-snapshot to make it work.

New David Allen book arrives

My copy of "Making It All Work" has arrived, yet more to read
post-Xmas, but I think this will be near the top of the pile

Pocket Informant on Blackberry

One of my favourite applications on my dear old iPAQ is Pocket Informant. The iPAQ is now mainly a (rather large) music player.

I was delighted to find that PI is now available for my Blackberry

Excellent news - really looks good and has many great functions - everything seems very easy to see ( I love the Agenda view) and adding new stuff is easy. My categories etc. for GTD work just fine.

This version lacks things that I would like from the Windows version: hierarchies of tasks, links from tasks to contacts are a couple that I used to use a lot. As this is an early version on this platform I am confident there will be new features coming along regulalrly

From Bad Science:

Writing this column really scares me because I wonder whether everything else in the media is as shamelessly, venally, manipulatively, one-sidedly, selectively reported on as the things I know about. But this week the reality editing was truly without comparison.

Interesting on 2 counts: 1) the particuares of MMR and the fact it could prevent arthma, 2) another data point for the power of the media and its ability to influeunce and mislead.

Certainly, whenever I see artices in normal newspapers aboutr a subject I know well I marvel at how misleading they are.  This is usually appears to be down to the ignorance of the reporter rather than deliberate attempts to misinform.  But then most of these topics that I know well are not politics, big business etc.

Worrying - perhaps the demise of newspapers won't be such a bad thing ( so long as Bad Science maintains a blog!) 

For how much longer? Revisited

I asked "For how much longer?":

I think, with the UK pre-budget, the affordability of a lot of programmes is now in question, including education and health.

For how much longer?

Student grants at risk after botched costing | Education | The Guardian

A department spokesman said: "The government is fully committed to the expansion of higher education and can ensure finance should not be a barrier to those that want to do a degree."

My emphasis added - I suspect we are very close to the point where this statement will prove impossible to fulfill. We ran a huge deficit when times were good - now we have decreasing tax income and extra costs.

The future of Lisp is.........

Lisp50 Notes part VI: The Future of Lisp « Learning Lisp

And unlike some of the talks that were tinged with a little bitterness, a sense of loss, or a sense of nostalgia, Hickey was upbeat and forward looking. “Lisp as an idea is still vibrant, especially among young developers,” he said. “People are excited about Lisp and the idea of Lisp.” ........... After JonL was finished responding, a young developer in the back could not contain himself. “This is the best thing I’ve ever heard in any conference,” he said. “Great work.”

And that’s what the Lisp50 conference was about.

Great series of reports from Lisp50, and a great deal of excitement about Clojure.

Footnotes in Google docs

Official Google Docs Blog: Adding footnotes to your documents

Last week, we added support for footnotes. You can find footnotes in the Insert menu. When you create a footnote, it'll appear to the right of the document margin and a footnote marker (#) will appear within the actual document. You can drag and drop footnotes anywhere you'd like by clicking on the pound sign and dragging it.

But in a printed do or PDF it appears as a normal footnote; nice!!

How to think like Leonardo da Vinci

How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci

Since my childhood, I was utterly fascinated by the figure of Leonardo da Vinci and his achievements. It never ceased to puzzle and amaze me how a single person could be a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.

Luciano has done a great summary of a book that I have had for years - a great book which I must look at again. In addition he has pointed to a technology I was not aware of - Freemind Flash browser.

He also has an interview with Mark Forster

Will the credit crunch affect Open Source more than Closed Source projects?

James Robertson raises an interesting point:

Open Source Directions

In the midst of all of this financial uncertainty, I'm really curious as to how various open source projects will fare. Will they suffer because the corporations backing them will pull back? Or, in the midst of layoffs, will they keep plugging away because people have nothing else to work on? Or will corporations keep investing in open source - assuming services revenues hold up?

I have no idea, to be honest - but I imagine that there's going to be an impact.

I have no idea either ( aren't bloggers useless), perhaps there is some data somewhere.  The answer depends on many things including the types of participant, license, business model etc.  For instance:

• Amateur programmers: the students and others chipping in for the fun and experience of it will continue - perhaps they will do more as their willingness to spend on movies, restaurants, bars goes down?
• Open source projects which support a pure services play
  
• Open source projects which are a foundation for other projects (e.g Eclipse) - affected by the down turn in the license sales but perhaps gaining from sharing development of the commodity components
• Combinations of the last 2 points - could be spreading the risk.

Of course, what about businesses depending on non-open source?  These will slow down for sure, but more or less than those based on Open Source?

My gut feel says that everyone will hurt, but that any business model which sidesteps a business model which makes their customers shell out large lumps of money will suffer most.  Lot's of small transactions or amateurism will win out !

Pratchgan - wonderful

Ramblings of a yarn junkie: The Pratchgan 2008 - MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!

The Pratchgan was handed to Terry

This is just fantastic!

A good piece of philosophy and a reinforcement of GTD

Merlin Mann makes a learning point out of a minor crisis:Gmail Outage or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love GTD Contexts | 43 Folders

Like thousands of people yesterday, I was annoyed and inconvenienced by Gmail’s unexpected 2-hour dirtnap. But, wow. Apparently, it just irrevocably hijacked the whole day for some folks. And even sent a few into a Dark Afternoon of the Soul that most 19th-century Romantic poets would have found a bit histrionic.

It reminds me that I am not diligent with my context labels; must do better, though even here contexts can be assigned when needed so there is no excuse not to know wht you can do at a particular point in time and space. For instance, I quite often scan my to-dos and can spot the context from the text - assigning contexts just makes this faster, and searchable if you use the right tool

Jython 2.5 Alpha Released!

Frank Wierzbicki's Weblog: Jython 2.5 Alpha Released!

On behalf of the Jython development team, I'm pleased to announce that
Jython 2.5a1+ is available for download. See the installation instructions.

This is great news - I am so glad to see Jython coming back to life!

What do they know?

A new site to find Freedom of Information (FoI) requests:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

Another cool emacs utility

Life Is Too Short For Bad Code: Emacs Tip #21: pabbrev (predictive abbreviation expansion)

pabbrev is a yet another package for abbreviation expansion in Emacs. Unlike dabbrev, this one analyzes the contents of the buffers during idle time, and shows potential expansions based on word frequency. This package also shows potential expansions as you are typing. For example if you were typing 'pred', this is what you would see:


p[oint]
pr[ogn]
pre[-command-hook]
pred[ictive]

Affordable Tea

The Half-Dipper: Affordable Tea

Best April Fool by far!!

Damien Katz: CouchDB Language Change

So, after a lot of heated discussion internally, I'm somewhat sad to say that Erlang will not be used in future releases of CouchDB. We are switching the whole codebase to (...drumroll..) Java.

Saving Lisp applications as SBCL images

Nice article on saving and distributing Lisp applications from SBCL:

Freezing Lisp in Time | Mikael Jansson

So, when you're done with the heavy processing and finally want to distribute your work as an application, or maybe resume work later after that RAM upgrade, here's how!

Looks nice and simple. However the image is large! Hopefully someone will chip in with a way of improving this.

Emacs the dark side? huh?

Use Emacs with all your hatred.. « Keeping it Small and Simple

My path towards the dark side has already begun: I’m currently reading the Emacs tutorial (C-h t)

Conferences and sponsorship

reddit.com: Pycon 2008 disappointment

All of this is to say that it is possible to get sponsorship without selling the conference. Not only that, but our experience with PPW suggests that all parties - including sponsors - benefit when the conference remains focused on the attendees' interests.

I think this is important:

Surprisingly, we got lots of sponsorship. Moreover, our sponsors tended to be companies that "got" the programming community and that our attendees were more likely to be interested in. In the end, our sponsors were happy and our attendees were happy.(My emphasis)

The wisdom on conferences is obviously based on the more general case where the audiences can be very varied in interests and in experience - when manning a booth I have been quite shocked by the lack of research by some attendees, but more imprtantly their lack of focus on what they wanted from their visit.

ISO & ECMA : whither credibility

Michael Tiemann sums it up nicely:

What I see in the Geneva proceedings (that have been reported, surely not the whole story) is that ISO believed as I did that product was less important than process, and now ISO must decide whether to acknowledge that it failed, damaging its brand in the short term, or deny it was wrong and risk ruining it forever.

What do you use Common Lisp for?

Xach asked what people do with CL and got rather a lot of responses, most very interesting. None of the big CL apps get a mention yet.

Me? I am playing with it: I use SBCL, Emacs and SLIME. I think I need macros, but I'm not sure yet!

New Powerball

I bought a Powerball Pro about a week ago, as I have been having problems with my wrists (too much keyboard work).

An incredible little device which certainly seems to exercise the wrists and fore-arms. So far I am going fairly slowly (6000 rpm) as it quite quickly makes joints ache :-(

However, after a while I have found that the normal wrist and elbow aches are decreasing - so I am happy. Will post progress again after a few more weeks

Mail in the Emacs World == mew, with gmail

I got the above mail package working in emacs on Ubuntu, but more importantly I got i going with Google mail.

On Ubuntu I installed mew and mew-bin ( I used the latest beta)

To get it working with gmail, you also need stunnel. The real break-through was finding this site and updating it to my settings. Thanks to zhang.

Now I just need to find a copy of bbdb-mew.el and I can hook up with the Big Brother Database. The advertised link is not working for me today: server not found :-(

Once again Sacha Chua is doing something interesting in this space

Ubuntu Mobile

Ubuntu Mobile takes on Apple touch interface

This looks very interesting: good looks like the iPhone, but the possibility of getting lots of interesting extra packages running on it.

Apple has a few problems for me: 1) every time I think about geting a Mac or an iPhone I read something about Apple placing restrictions on what you can do - no personal ringtone loads, only stuff from ITunes store.... 2)restrictions on the software the iPhone can run.

I don't want those types of restrictions - I just feel like I am about to give money to a bunch of control freaks.

So, for people like me, let's hope the Ubuntu Mobile looks good, is open, and runs on decent hardware

Linux vs. Windows: Installation

It is a measure of how much Linux has improved , that now my latest new component was automatically picked up and used in Linux (Ubuntu) whilst I had to download new software to get Windows.

The particular component was a new nVidia graphics card - the end result was great on both systems, though again the Gnome eye-candy was better than Windows (XP).

So Linux, which used to be really bad at automatically coping with all but the most popular hardware seems to be overtaking Windows in my experience.

Is Windows Vista any better ? I won't know until i get new hardware - this box won't cope with it.

Getting the Gunk out

For GTD fans here is an excellent summary of how to get further with the system.

They are all great but the high ( or low) -lights for me were:

• No tusted place of reference. For me part of this is space - I need to get rid of clutter before getting better equipment. Part is also my hankering after everything being electronic, but life just won't conform!!
• Blocking out both doing and processing time: my new job gives me far less scope to define regular slots in my diary, so i end up with none at all. I need tro be more dynamic
• Of course the last point also applies to the weekly review!

Slime Cheat Sheet

Here is a nice summary of Slime commands.

* It includes all of the SLIME commands from the SLIME manual
* It includes all of the Emacs commands from the built in tutorial
* It includes the main Emacs help keys
* The commands are sorted and grouped by functional area
* It’s all fits on one page

Nirvana in beta - weblocks

Weblocks looks interesting:

This is one of the main reasons I started Weblocks framework - I never wanted to write a line of HTML again.

and:

with closures-based actions, continuations-based control flow, stateful widgets, and a shiny new CLSQL backend store1, it may very well be the web development nirvana

I found this amusing:

Weblocks is relatively young, so there still may be some issues that need to be ironed out. Proceed with caution!

Nirvana postponed perhaps?

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More on org-mode

Sacha's book draft continues.

I hadn't seen the filtering on tags feature before, nor the bonus code - of course!

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Emacs.Net

Is it April 1st? ".. all the remaining emacs users....."

Watch that space

clipped from blogs.zdnet.com Developers are puzzling over recent clues blogged by a few Microsoft employees regarding a new “Emacs.Net” tool the company is building. Responding in comments on the Microsoft Channel 9 blog, Microsoft “Chief Modeling Officer” Don Box added a few more bits of information: “There are two kinds of emacs users: those who start up emacs in a top-level window and use M-x shell to do shell work, and those who live in tcsh/ksh/bash and crank up emacs -nw to take over their console/terminal window. “I was always in the former camp, and I believe that’s the design point for Doug (Purdy)’s project.  If you look up and down our hallway, all other remaining emacs users are in that former camp as well.”

Horrid, horrid, horrid!

From the BBC:

The death toll from two Baghdad market bombs allegedly carried by mentally disabled women and set off remotely has risen to nearly 100, say officials. (My emphasis added)

I suppose I have been around enough that I shouldn't be surprised at the depths that a few people can stoop to, but this is real low...

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More on emacs and butterflies.... and org-mode

From Phil Windley

Of course, I use emacs—always have and always will.

Interestingly I use it more and more - the current diver is org-mode which I find to be a wonderful, easy-to-use and light-weight way of tracking things, even though I live in a corporate Notes environment. Notes has many great features, but I just love the text based approach and the ability to filter out TODOs in a single view from multiple files. If I am typing notes in a meeting and there is a TODO I just hit a key combinations and type it in the flow of the notes. Not so good for converting incoming mails to TODOS - if only one tool could do everything!!

org-mode can be found here . Congraulations to Carsten Dominik and the rest ofthe community. Sacha Chua is writing a book including org-mode.

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Real Programmers

xkcd: Damit emacs!!

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TripIt

This site looks interesting: Tripit

No need to sign-up apparently. However, my ability to test this site out is hampered by my lack of air travel. Next time I book a UK train ticket I will try it out! But I'm not optimistic!!

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Implementing a blog in Common Lisp: Part 2

Velte continues his interesting tutorial.

(defmethod initialize-instance :after ((obj blog-post) &key)
"If :url-part wasn't non-nil when making the instance, generate it automatically."
cond ((eq nil (url-part obj))
(setf (url-part obj) (make-url-part (title obj))))))

The above is an interesting example of "aspect-oriented" programming!! Note the :after keyword and the typng of the argument.

I haven't had time to set this all up and follow along yet, perhaps next weekend will be quieter!!

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More on CouchDB

The SimpleDB comparison in this post seems very important

clipped from www.google.co.uk That's a great development. Good for IBM picking it up, too. Not knowing CouchDB too deeply, but the basic gist of it, I wonder how well the approach would translate into a cloud-based system, not too unlike Simple DB?

Damien Katz of CouchDB Joins IBM

clipped from www.google.co.uk Great news! I've accepted a permanent, full-time job with IBM. My primary duties are (drumroll....) CouchDB! So all the stuff I've been doing up until now for free I'll be doing full time and be getting paid for it! Yee Haw!

Open Source Conversation is back

I lost sight of this whilst moving computers several times recently - in fact I lost many podcasts.

So I am very pleased to see this one back.

clipped from www.radioopensource.org The Open Source conversation is reborn at the Watson Institute at Brown University.

New CEO at Red Hat

COO who is an ex-programmer.....

clipped from www.news.com In a surprise move, Red Hat said Thursday that Matthew Szulik will step down as president and chief executive on January 1, to be replaced by James Whitehurst, Delta Airlines' former chief operating officer. On a conference call, Szulik said Whitehurst stood "head and shoulders" above other candidates interviewed in a recruiting process. He was a programmer earlier in his career and runs four versions of Linux at home, he said. The surprise move was announced as the leading Linux seller announced results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008. Its revenue increased 28 percent to $135.4 million and net income went up 12 percent to $20.3 million, or 10 cents per share. The company also raised estimates for full-year results to revenue of $521 million to $523 million and earnings of about 70 cents per share.

Test post from Clipmarks 3

Testing, 1,2

clipped from www.linuxinsider.com Open source software developers who were active in the late 1990s might find themselves yearning for those good old days, when venture capital flowed like wine at Napa Valley party. Open source software's fall from grace was dramatic and sobering, but it wasn't alone and it doesn't mean open source is a dead industry. In fact, while investors are magnitudes more careful than they were back in the day, money is still being offered to open source companies that meet VC's often varying criteria.

James Robertson nails advertising

You know he is right - probably less than 1000 people in the entire world don't:

Now, imagine a company with a clue: they would have bought advertising to apear with those clips, and the ads would have been something like "Like what you see here? Visit our site to buy the concert DVD or video download".

Develop Lisp applications using the Cusp Eclipse plug-in

Lisp is an excellent programming language that allows you to expand your knowledge of programming languages due to its largely typeless nature. It can also help those seasoned in the Java™ programming language, PHP, or C/C++ think in new ways when developing applications. In addition, you can do some pretty cool things with Lisp. Find out how to develop Lisp applications using the Cusp Eclipse plug-in.

Bonus: Does your ADSF package files for you!!!