Linux

Converting the library to flacs/mp3s because they let me add multiple duplicate tags

I’ve been living a little dangerously when posting stuff on the blog. While it’s true that I compose my posts locally on my desktop, with a locally installed Hugo, I always catch a ton of things that I miss, after I publish a post. Nearly every single time. So the process then becomes … Open the post on the server in Emacs (after logging in, via ssh) Make an edit. Build and publish. Reload the page and re-read the post. Find a typo. Fix it. Repeat steps 3 & 4. Keep the Emacs pane to keep editing and open another terminal pane, just to build and deploy. Twenty three edits later … Be ok with what I have. (with a build and deploy, and reload and reread every couple of edits) Do a final build and deploy Having done this, for God knows how long now, I’m used to this workflow and decided to just lean into it. But while I loved my edit, build, deploy, reload, reread, workflow, I felt like I was tempting the fates, everytime I did it. Besides I did not like messing with the live website like that. ...

I kept wondering why Syncthing releases on one of my Pis would lag behind my other one.1 The big difference between the two is that one runs Raspbian and the other, Manjaro23. This wouldn’t happen earlier when they ran Arch and Manjaro. And today, I head-slappingly remembered, that it did lag and I had to do stuff to get at the latest software stuff. What I had to do, was to switch Manjaro’s software branch to unstable (as opposed to the default stable. Read more here.) The only reason I use Manjaro, instead of Arch4, is that the Arch kernel does not boot on this Pi and I want the latest Arch stuff, which is what the unstable Manjaro software branch offers. ...

Updated to Emacs 29.2, just now. Took me and my four core workhorse about fifteen minutes tops, from start to finish. Emacs 29.0 was the first version I compiled from source, because I wanted the latest release as soon as it was out and I no longer had the patience for the kindly distribution folk (or third party packagers) to give me a binary. The first time was a nightmare. I didn’t have various bits and bobs that were needed. Stuff that the guides say should work a certain way wouldn’t. But it did happen eventually and I learnt a lot along the way about what I wanted compiled in, in my Emacs. I also appreciated just how much easier it is now to compile stuff and recover from errors. I tried this last in the late 90s1 and it scared me off. ...

If someone had told me three and a half years ago, that I would: Use Emacs as my primary editor nearly everywhere. Not just as an editor. In fact, I would stop thinking of it as an editor and come to see it for what it really is. A whole computer with an editor bolted on. Use Emacs not just for writing, but also have it serve as the cornerstone for two other extremely important activities in my life, organising my life (with Org Mode) and tending to my commonplace book (with Org Roam) Come so far as to scrape a web page, set it up as a connected node in my Zettelkasten, strip close to fifty superfluous lines, edit the rest to my liking, change the title to title case, and then file it way within minutes, and learn do all this by osmosis and research over the years, just by using it daily and being curious1 Have a kind community support all my crazy attempts to bend Emacs to my will I would have told you, you were off your rocker. But I do, do these things (which, I’m ridiculously pleased with) and have this wonderful community (which, I am earnestly grateful for). Here’s to three and a half decades! ...

Every evening, after my shutdown ritual, I move my current day’s branch to the bottom of my Org Mode file, so I begin the next day at the same fixed place, at line 36.1 The day is done; moving it to the bottom of the pile ...