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SachaChua

Sacha Chua
sacha@sachachua.com
http://sachachua.com

How I use Emacs

Planning

I used to use PlannerMode a lot. Then I switched my blog to Wordpress (http://sachachua.com) and started using Emacs Org + Toodledo for my task management. Now I use org2blog to post some entries from my Giant Org File of Awesomeness.

Communication

I used to use Gnus, the built-in mail/newsreader that slices, dices and juliennes - not as easy to integrate into a Windows-based workflow, though. When I used it, I had basic splitting set up to file my mail into separate groups neatly organized in a hierarchical tree that allows me to see at a glance how much mailing list messages I’ve received. I used “c” to catch-up groups or even whole subtrees, mark threads as read or even uninteresting. Adaptive scoring meant that I don’t have to manually specify my reading preferences - gnus learned what I don’t like to read, so that I don’t have to read related messages next time unless I really want to. I’d set it to score down all messages from hotmail or aol unless I like the author. ;) I elided mailing list identifiers so I don’t see those [….] things, banners like the ads at the end of yahoogroups, really long signatures or To: headers. Gnus is definitely a mail/newsreader for the netiquette-sensitive. :-)

BbdbMode integrated well with Gnus, so I could easily bring up or create contact records for the people I receive mail from. I had Gnus automatically add notes for the people I know, and it’s interesting to see what mailing lists people are subscribed to. I could add notes, check phone numbers, and even see when someone wrote me last. (Time to write a “Haven’t heard from you in a while!” note…)

Mail is a somewhat dangerous thing to experiment with, of course. :-) I had lost some outgoing mail due to masqmail silently failing if you specify the -f flag (evil!), but some debugging later turned up a message-sendmail-f-is-evil variable I could set to t. I have since then moved to postfix so that I could use + as an address separator, so I haven’t needed that.

(outdated - I no longer send text messages from my computer. I’m in Canada now, and text messages are expensive!)

Ah, yes, text messaging. SMS is pretty big here in the Philippines. I am a lazy computer geek who would rather type than fish out my cellphone and start texting. Besides, I kinda like having all of my text messages stored on my laptop - search, store, reply, and even see threaded displays. :-) I used to use gnokii, alamin, postfix, bbdb and gnus in order to have practically seamless SMS sending. :-) Here’s how it works. I’ve set up alamin (a GSM-SMS gateway that can talk to a gnokii-supported phone) to poll my cellphone for incoming text messages and convert any such to e-mail messages from alamin+<SOMENUMBER>@localhost to sacha@localhost. I receive those messages in Gnus in my mail.text group, and BBDB steps in to fill in the name from my contact database thanks to (gnus-summary-line-format “%U%-40,40uB %S\n”), (bbdb/gnus-summary-prefer-bbdb-data t) and (bbdb/gnus-summary-prefer-real-names ‘bbdb) in the group parameters. My reply is processed by postfix and piped through email2sms, a short Perl script I wrote that just invokes alamin’s client program. Alamin queues the message and tries to resend it at regular intervals until it is finally sent. No more dealing with “Message failed.” or lack of signal, and I get a full record of all of my text messages, and I can text while in class.. ;) Unfortunately, I don’t have a serial port any more, and my phone is not Linux-friendly. Can’t pull off this neat hack these days.

Taking notes

I keep my notes in plain text files. I find that typing on my laptop encourages me to keep more complete notes because I can type faster than I handwrite (and it’s much less tiring!). OrgMode makes it easy to keep my notes in outline mode.

Internet relay chat

ERC! EmacsIRCClient forever. Well, not really forever, but I’ve tried quite a few Internet relay chat clients and I must say that ERC is really cool. erc-track lets me keep track of channels that have changed even though I’ve got my notes maximized, and since it’s part of my editor I can easily cut/paste/navigate/tweak/do-funky-stuff. I hang out on Freenode #emacs, and it’s tons of fun.

Blog

2013-05-24

  • 12:00 UTC How to make a hand-drawn highlighted web page header
    For the longest time, I’d been meaning to make my website look more hand-written and to take advantage of Google Web Fonts to make my site feel slightly different. After some design-related nudging from Matt Tanguay, I finally got around to it. Here’s how! =) For comparison, here’s the “before” picture: After (I tweaked the [...]

    Read the original or check out the comments on: How to make a hand-drawn highlighted web page header (Sacha Chua's blog)

2013-05-23

2013-05-22

  • 12:00 UTC First impressions of Artrage 4
    I occasionally use Artrage Studio Pro for tracing images or animating sketchnotes. The interface doesn’t lend itself as well to real-time sketchnoting, although the natural media support might be interesting to play with if I want to play around with watercolours. The latest version (Artrage 4) introduces some interesting features that might help me with [...]

    Read the original or check out the comments on: First impressions of Artrage 4 (Sacha Chua's blog)

2013-05-21

2013-05-20

  • 19:50 UTC Emacs Chat: Bastien Guerry
    In this chat, Bastien tells stories about getting started in Emacs, reading his mail/news/blogs in Gnus, and hacking his life with Org. =) Enjoy! Want just the audio? You can get MP3s or OGG from archive.org. Read the original or check out the comments on: Emacs Chat: Bastien Guerry (Sacha Chua's blog)

    Read the original or check out the comments on: Emacs Chat: Bastien Guerry (Sacha Chua's blog)

  • 02:51 UTC Slice of life: Home improvements
    It’s a little intimidating doing something that’s very different from what I usually do, but if I focus on small ways to help, it’s easier. =) And then I can build strength and endurance and knowledge gradually, interleaving challenges with things I can do. Read the original or check out the comments on: Slice of [...]

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2013-05-19

2013-05-17

2013-05-16

2013-05-15

  • 12:00 UTC From cats to keystrokes
    Whenever we sit on the couch to watch a movie, the cats inevitably gather. Neko prefers to sit on W-’s lap if he’s available (I’m only slightly jealous, harumph), but will curl herself up on my lap if W- is working on his laptop. Luke will jump on my lap for a bit if Neko [...]

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2013-05-14

  • 12:00 UTC Learning update May 2013
    Every so often, I make a list of things I would like to learn or work on. Not only does thinking about what I want to learn help me decide how to spend my time, it also makes it easier for me to ask for help. I don’t refer to the previous lists while making [...]

    Read the original or check out the comments on: Learning update May 2013 (Sacha Chua's blog)

2013-05-13

  • 12:00 UTC Stepping sideways into Alternate Universe Sacha
    My parents were having problems with their company’s recent web hosting migration. No e-mail was getting forwarded to the e-mail accounts that they had set up previously, and the two blogs that were separate from the main site didn’t get transferred either. My mom asked me to help restore the blogs. They needed someone to [...]

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2013-05-12