Bookmarks (67)

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...

A+ eight years old and she won't always want to play with me, so while I can, we play together. Lately, she's been interested in Minecraft parkour maps. I remember when parkour was too frustrating for us to do. In the beginning, I felt my stomach flip every time I fell. I kept having to tell myself that I wasn't the one actually falling....

While putting together some notes on how to use subed.el with auto-generated YouTube captions, I decided to get subed-word-data working with the Youtube VTT format. The sample file I downloaded from one of my YouTube videos had a cue whose text started with a blank line, so I ended up redoing the way subed-vtt.el parsed cues. Twice, actually. The first time, I changed it...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Jan 29 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1730 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2300 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jan 30 0130 Asia/Singapore M-x Research: TBA https://m-x-research.github.io/ Fri Feb 7 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Sat Feb...

Now that we've survived EmacsConf, I've been looking into running a BigBlueButton server so that various Emacs meetups can use it if they like instead of relying on Jitsi or other free video-conferencing services. (I spent some time looking into Galene, but I'm not quite sure that's ready for our uses yet, like this issue that LibrePlanet ran into with recording.) BigBlueButton requires a...

I want to be able to use voice control to do things on my phone while I'm busy washing dishes, putting things away, knitting, or just keeping my hands warm. It'll also be handy to have a way to get things out of my head when the kiddo is koala-ing me. I've been using my Google Pixel 8's voice interface to set timers, send...

preprocess image edit and link text Inkscape prompt for rectangles inline SVG write about sketch Build up, drill down handwritten.blog sketch viewer Text and links from sketch Hyperlinking SVGs - 2025-01-17-01 I like drawing my notes. I can jump around, draw connections, doodle for fun. A sketch can only fit so much, though. (even if I write really small) Idea: Links: They can be...

wearable computing life-logging an M1 display Emacspeak untangle my thoughts emacs.tv Quick audio/video notes adapting to age-related changes lapel mic WhisperX Org Mode SuperNote Smart glasses upgrade lapel mic add gamepad Smart glasses Text and links from sketch Revisiting wearable computing 2025-01-18-01 I experimented with wearable computing in 2002 because I wanted to explore life-logging and access to more info on the go. I...

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs Berlin (hybrid, in English) https://emacs-berlin.org/ Wed Jan 29 0930 America/Vancouver - 1130 America/Chicago - 1230 America/Toronto - 1730 Etc/GMT - 1830 Europe/Berlin - 2300 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jan 30 0130 Asia/Singapore Beginner: Programming in Emacs | Utah.edu Emacs configuration: I wrote a simple "profile" switcher/manager for emacs. - symlink script as an alternative to --init-directory Configuring emacs is...

SuperNote Verbal to Visual Clarity Canvas Weekly Andy Draws Drewscape Sketchplanations Build bigger thoughts Visual Frameworks my blog sketches.sachachua.com Make animations Code to work with sketches Text and links from sketch Organizing my sketches What I have now: SuperNote A5X: Monthly notebooks Long-term note with links Daily moments Crafts PDFs (esp. w/ large margins) Highlighted heading ☆ for needs more No antialiasing: … Preferences...

A+ was inspired by the SapWing villages from Wings of Fire to make a couple of orb houses up in the trees. Figure 1: A+'s latest creation: tree orbs I think she used copycat blocks and vertical slabs from the modpack in order to get it to look so round. "I'm excellent at creating things that are not supposed to exist in Minecraft, in...

For the longest time, planet.emacslife.com was generated with the Planet Venus aggregator, which required Python 2.7. My recent blog post about Yay Emacs 8: which-key-replacement-alist had some emojis that the parser couldn't handle, though (unichr() arg not in range(0x10000) (narrow Python build)). I decided to rewrite the aggregator using NodeJS. Here are some differences between the current implementation and the previous ones: The website...

2025-01-14-01 Looking ahead – parenting planning skills Text from sketch A+ is 8 years old. We're letting her be part of managing more things for her future self, like keeping track of when we're running low on her laundry or her favourite yogurt or toilet paper under the sink. She doesn't always get it right, but then again, even grown-ups have a hard time....

Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): Emacs.si (in person): Emacs.si meetup #1 2025 (v #živo) https://dogodki.kompot.si/events/cb726f44-8b7f-44f7-91a5-fc9d3f9ad7a9 Tue Jan 14 1900 CET Talk by Andrew Tropin - Arei/Ares: A modern, extensible IDE for Guile Scheme https://www.meetup.com/guix-social/events/304634420/ Thu Jan 16 1000 America/Vancouver - 1200 America/Chicago - 1300 America/Toronto - 1800 Etc/GMT - 1900 Europe/Berlin - 2330 Asia/Kolkata – Fri Jan 17 0200 Asia/Singapore (@futurile@mastodon.social) M-x Research: TBA...

[2025-01-12 Sun]: u/dr-timeous posted a treemap_org.py · GitHub that makes a coloured treemap that displays the body on hover. (Reddit) Also, I think librsvg doesn't support wrapped text, so that might mean manually wrapping if I want to figure out the kind of text density that webtreemap has. One of the challenges with digital notes is that it's hard to get a sense of...

I usually write my scripts with phrases that could be turned into the subtitles. I figured I might as well combine that information with the WhisperX transcripts which I use to cut out my false starts and oopses. To do that, I use the string-distance function, which calculates how similar strings are, based on the Levenshtein [distance] algorithm. If I take each line of...

Mermaid makes pretty diagrams from text. It's Javascript-based, so the command-line tool (mmdc) uses Puppeteer to get the results of evaluating the diagram in the browser. I was running into some errors trying to get it to work from Org Mode over ob-mermaid on Ubuntu 24, since apparently AppArmor restricts Puppeteer. (Error: Failed to launch the browser process! · Issue #730 · mermaid-js/mermaid-cli). I...

2024-12-31-09 December 2024 -- monthly review.png EmacsConf 2024 was a ton of fun, and we managed to get the Q&A videos up quickly. I indexed lots of Emacs videos for emacs.tv, and I wrote some Emacs Lisp so I can manage the queue from Emacs. W- retired, hooray! He's been keeping himself active with lots of biking and various projects like fixing the toaster....

New in this video: subed-record-sum-time, #+PAD_LEFT and #+PAD_RIGHT Video not supported. Thumbnail:Download the video I like the constraints of a one-minute video, so I added a subed-record-sum-time command. That way, when I edit the video using Emacs, I can check how long the result will be. First, I split the subtitles, align it with the audio to fix the timestamps, and double check the...

[2025-01-06 Mon]: Fix typo in exitter's name Upcoming events (iCal file, Org): OrgMeetup (virtual) https://orgmode.org/worg/orgmeetup.html Wed Jan 8 0800 America/Vancouver - 1000 America/Chicago - 1100 America/Toronto - 1600 Etc/GMT - 1700 Europe/Berlin - 2130 Asia/Kolkata – Thu Jan 9 0000 Asia/Singapore Atelier Emacs Montpellier (in person) https://lebib.org/date/atelier-emacs Fri Jan 10 1800 Europe/Paris EmacsSF (in person): coffee.el in SF https://www.meetup.com/emacs-sf/events/305422188/ Sat Jan 11 1100 America/Los_Angeles...