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I tend to switch Linux distributions quite often. Consequently, I tend to have this process down to a fine art and it doesn’t take me that long. The most time consuming element is ensuring the necessary backups are in place. However, you normally find some package or configuration option you forgot about and my recent switch from Arch Linux to Fedora 29 and back again unearthed a strange problem with the Dovecot IMAP server I hadn’t encountered before. ...

Occasionally, I have to search lots of files for a pattern. It was only recently I discovered the wonderful silver searcher utility which saves me a lot of time. To install ‘ag’ on Fedora, use the following (which isn’t entirely obvious or intuitive if you’re used to typing ‘ag’). # sudo dnf install the_silver_searcher I believe there is an Emacs interface which would save me even more time. $ time ag 'sql statement execute time' ~ real 0m0.125s user 0m0.128s sys 0m0.257s $ time find ~ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i 'sql statement execute time' real 0m23.725s user 0m7.965s sys 0m1.618s

It all started innocuously enough with this post from Alex Shroeder https://octodon.social/@kensanata/101052266709264418 Writing tools. Emacs Wiki What about you? I spontaneously replied. Emacs Orgmode Nikola This reminded me that since, I had recently migrated my desktop from Arch Linux to Fedora 29, I needed to reinstall Nikola and check that the blog I never use still could be built successfully. Oh - how exciting. Nikola has recently released version [8.0.1] Nikola-8 and I was on the previous version - 7.8.15. I quickly created a Python 3 virtual environment and installed Nikola. ...

I was in a fog, I didn’t notice everything Was coming all apart inside of me There wasn’t anyway for anyone to settle in You made a slow disaster out of me There’s a radiant darkness upon us I don’t want you to worry I was careful but nothing is harmless Baby, you better hurry You were a kindness when I was a stranger But I wouldn’t ask for what I didn’t need Everything’s weird and we’re always in danger Why would you shatter somebody like me? ...

When I initially revisited Emacs, I used mu4e (instead of Thunderbird) for my email. I used the wonderful Gmane service to read mailing lists in Gnus and Elfeed to read blogs and RSS feeds within Emacs. This worked fine but after a while it became a little tiresome having to remember different key bindings to essentially perform the same repetitive tasks; reading messages, navigating (next/previous) messages, moving messages, saving messages, marking messages, deleting messages, searching messages, forwarding messages, replying to messages and occasionally composing brand new messages. ...

birth At the tantalising climax of the last episode, I was invited by Steve for a whistle-stop tour of Emacs. Steve explained that the main reason he used Emacs was pure laziness. Naturally, this immediately got my attention. He explained: ‘I’m lazy. It’s not a fault. It’s a fact. Most decent programmers are lazy. You’re lazy’. ‘Hang on, just a minute ! What do you mean - I’m lazy ?’ ‘Andy - you alias ‘cd ..’ to ‘up’ and ’l’ to ’ls -ltr’. Just to save five characters typing. So don’t tell me you’re not lazy. Anyway, it’s not a criticism’. ...

the early years 1962 Entered the world as I intend to leave it. Kicking, screaming, naked, held upside down by a nurse slapping me on the backside. a night at the Lesser Free Trade Hall 1977 Wrote my first basic program in BASIC on a Tandy TRS-80. Editing facilities were fairly limited. I think to modify Line 10, you had to simply re-enter Line 10. In its entirety. This was rather time consuming, tiresome and almost put me off computers for life. ...

I have used the Unix bash shell for many years. As I am incredibly lazy and forgetful, I have become accustomed to using ctrl-r ‘find’ to find and scroll though the latest ‘find’ commands I have issued. Occasionally, I noticed that a lengthy, complex, useful ‘find’ command’ (which I mercilessly plagiarised from a clever person via Google) was no longer in my shell history. Investigations revealed the default bash history is a paltry 1000 commands so I decided to increase this to 10000 by adding the following line to ‘~/.bash_profile’. ...

I had been contemplating and researching the purchase of a dedicated Network Attached Storage (NAS) for a long time. Initially, I considered a few different options; an entry level unit like a Synology DiskStation, a small server like the HP Gen 8 Microserver or Dell T20 and installing the disks or even buying the individual components and building the unit myself. However, I’m pretty useless with hardware and as a NAS should be high quality, reliable and solid, I decided to purchase a ready made unit. ...

On Thursday, a friend offered me two unwanted corporate tickets for the FA Cup Final at Wembley. I gleefully accepted and offloaded the second ticket within minutes. Saturday dawned cloudy and overcast. I realised I’d planned the journey for a traditional 3pm kick-off. I had the tickets in my hand although it was a bit weird for something so valuable and sought after to be printed out on my mate’s cheap inkjet printer. No holograms, no watermark - just plain A4 paper from WH Smiths. ...