• Shell commands in org files

    I'VE BEGUN experimenting with adding shell commends into org files as org-babel blocks. This allows me to record my common actions and 1. explain what they do, 2. make them quickly repeatable from within emacs. To start with I've just added the command to run my Jekyll server locally into...

  • SQL queries on ORG tables

    ORG MODE TABLES are a lot of fun to play with. To have a fully text-based table which will grow an shrink cells to fit their contents is very useful when getting organising your thoughts on screen, producing content for text only mediums, or just showing off. One more nifty...

  • Ditaa digrams in org mode

    ORG MODE is great for writing documents, and its flexibility when it comes to exporting means writing documentation is a snap. There is a limitation, however - producing diagrams often requires the dreaded application switch. Org-babel is a literate programming parser for org files. We looked at Org-babel's tangler in...

  • Editing latex documents in emacs

    NEW YEAR, new me. Now is a pretty good time to get your CVs and similar documents up to date. I wanted to have a play with typesetting it in Latex. Being a pretty lazy person, I quickly tired of the workflow of making a small change, saving the file,...

  • Spellchecking in emacs

    EMACS IS gorgeously extensive, but there is very little hand-holding. Short of packages like Spacemacs, it provides very little functionality out of the box. A pretty basic function of a editor is spellchecking. Fortunately, it's fairly simple matter to set it up. Check Flycheck is installed Flycheck should already be...

  • Not for you

    THIS IS not for you, or so goes the dedication line for Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves. It's a fantastic line that creeps me out a little. It both acknowledges the reader, but also establishes a sense of hostility with them. You're here, but you really shouldn't be. A...

  • Making your emacs config a little more literate

    EMACS IS an incredible application, more text interface than editor. Like an old baseball glove, it slowly molds to the user's hand over a period of many years. This is achieved by keeping a .emacs settings file. The user edits this file with all their customizations - snippets of Elisp...

  • Building a better Building 20

    I'VE ALWAYS enjoyed the idea of being able to take something as chaotic and ill-defined as creative genius, and build a machine to produce it. There's something satisfying about the mechanisms of a machine. Each part achieves its purpose because it has no choice but to be effective. From the...