Emacs tip o’ the day!

This Emacs tip brought to you by Steve Yegge!

Make Emacs prefer backward-kill-word over Backspace

Emacs Wizards try to avoid hitting the backspace key, because it’s just remote enough from home-row to be annoying. We make typing mistakes all the time, but if you type faster than about 50 wpm, it’s more economical to kill the entire word and re-type it than to painstakingly backspace to your error.

Here’s what you add to your .emacs file:

(global-set-key "\C-w" 'backward-kill-word)
(global-set-key "\C-x\C-k" 'kill-region)
(global-set-key "\C-c\C-k" 'kill-region)

Note that because Ctrl-w was already bound to kill-region, a very important command, you need to re-bind something else to kill-region. I chose Ctrl-x Ctrl-k (and its sloppiness-forgiving companion, Ctrl-c Ctrl-k), primarily because that’s the way they did it at my old company, which was filled with wise Emacs Wizards who taught me a lot of what I know. Rebinding Ctrl-x Ctrl-k means it’s no longer available for edit-kbd-macro, but you’ll use that infrequently enough that it’s not something you’ll miss having a shortcut for…

For a more in-depth look at this tip and how to use it effectively, and nine count ‘em nine more great Emacs tips, check out Stevey’s “Effective Emacs” post!

Spotlight Application: HOWTO rock better, faster, harder with cmus (Part 1 of ?)

I promised some more serious in-depth reporting now that my life has calmed down a little bit, so here we go with a walkthrough for a wonderful and underappreciated application, cmus. This post started as just a brief introduction, but as I dug into it, I realized this sucker was gonna get long. Also, although the documentation for cmus is really good, there’s a total lack of howtos for this application on the interwebs, and as Greg will tell you, we here at Guerrilla Tech are committed to caulking all the holes! (There’s a good story that goes along with that, but you know, never mind.)

So I’ve been idly looking at text-based audio players for a while, but yesterday I was sitting here playing Civ 4 on my Windows partition (I have a dual boot machine, Kubuntu/Civ 4) and was suddenly and irresistibly seized with the need to listen to some Nightwatchman right now. So I fired up the laptop and looked at some of my notes from last time I had this thought, and did a little google fishing for a non-graphical music manager. My criteria:

1. Not a player, a manager. I’m demanding when it comes to my music management software. I run Amarok on my Kubuntu desktop and gmusicbrowser on my Gnome laptop. After experimenting with just about every free software music management/jukebox application that I could find in the repositories at least once, I am convinced that these two are absolutely the best of their breed (yes, that was two plugs for the price of one, slick, eh?). Music is a large part of what I do with my computer every day, I need a program that can keep up with my listening.
2. Something with a relatively easy initial learning curve, and solid documentation. I don’t expect to master the program in half an hour (in fact, if I can master it in half an hour, it’s probably not what I’m looking for), but I should at least be playing music within half an hour.
3. .mp3, .ogg, and .flac support.
4. It must exist in the Ubuntu repositories.

Enter cmus, the c* music player. Install with sudo aptitude install cmus, fire it up with cmus, and we’re on our way. Let’s do a walkthrough, huh? (Remember, kids, for best results with any howto, always follow along in The Fabulous Manual! It’s quite comprehensive, and much of the material here was been lifted verbatim. I hope no one minds.)

The funniest thing just happened.

I was in the kitchen making a screwdriver, and something happened and I turned my head for a second and I just kept pouring and pouring. And then I turned back and the glass was half full of vodka, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just made it like that and drank it.

Now I’m going to bike to the grocery store with no hands. That’s the secret to bicycling when you’re drunk. It minimizes the number of limbs that you have to keep track of. Bye!

-pd-

Gary Gygax, 1938 - 2008

The creator of Dungeons and Dragons and the man generally called the Father of Role Playing Games, Gary Gygax, died today at age 69. He had been in poor health for some time. There’s a memoriam thread going on on Slashdot today, where people can talk about Gary’s creation touched their lives. You can go ahead and chuckle and shake your head at the dice-chucking geeks and their silly game, but Gary’s creation has touched millions of lives and counting, and brought geeks of all generations together, people who otherwise might not have come out of their basements (so to speak) made new friends, fell in love, some even got married. People who otherwise might have given up on ever finding anyone like them found a tribe to call their own. And you can laugh at that if you want.

Now bartering!

If any of my faithful readers can offer any of the following services, I am presently looking to barter for:

• A bike trailer
• General bike service (I really need someone to teach me how to adjust a derailleur, or at least tell me how to spell it)
• Small business accounting/administrative knowledge, especially relating to registering with the small business administration, publishing a dba, and suchlike bullshit that I know nothing about

If anyone out there in blogland has any of these skills and would be willing to make a deal for our fine services, please reply to this post (you can just leave your email address if you want and I’ll get in touch with you).

-pd-

Thanks for the oatmeal!

So we made it through the hacktivism workshop without too much stuttering, and I certainly hope that everyone who was there learned a little bit; I sure learned a ton from y’all. As nervous as I was going into it (and I know it showed), it was a real pleasure getting to do that, and getting to meet so many incredibly passionate people. I just wanted to make a quick “thank you” post, because I really am grateful for the opportunity to do that, to step out of my own comfort zone and meet some people who are making their own difference in their own way. You guys inspire the hell out of me. Thanks for a phenomenal time. Oh, and the oatmeal.
-pd-

One last word about the hacktivism presentation before I actually go do it

I made an executive decision this morning. The script I’ve spent two weeks agonizing over every waking moment of my life? Yeah, chucking it. We’re gonna go in there and wing it and see what happens. Wish me luck, I’ll certainly need it.

Look for a full update on my experience at the Unconventional MN Regional Consula after the weekend!

-pd-

It came from LJ: The movie quote meme

All right, this presentation is driving me fucking insane. I made the last half-pot of coffee in the house at 5 this morning, and the store doesn’t open for another 45 minutes, and that’s flat-out unacceptable. So seeing as how I’m not getting a damn thing done over here, I thought I’d cross-post an LJ meme for the hell of it and see if it takes off. Here ya go, ya heathens:

The movie quote meme

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies Pick 10 of your favorite movie quotes. Not fifteen because I need to get real work done today. Not necessarilyyour favorite movies; for instance, unless I happen to recall a real gem there probably won’t be any quotes from Tombstone.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie. See above.
3. Post them in bold for everyone to guess.
4. Unbold the quote when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it.
5. No cheating, fuckers!

I’m gonna be busy as hell all weekend long, so take your time guessing, I’ll go over the comments on maybe Monday. First correct guess wins, but if you think someone’s wrong, go ahead and take your shot.

1. I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right.
2. Life is like that. We change, that’s all. The guy I am now is not the guy I was then. If they guy I was then met the guy I am now, he’d beat the shit out of me.
3. What you want is irrelevant. What you have chosen is at hand.
4. Behind every good man there is a woman, and that woman was Martha Washington, man, and everyday George would come home, she would have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he come in the door, man, she was a hip, hip, hip lady, man.
5. I’ve been to gold towns, silver towns, I’ve even been to turquoise towns. But I have never been to a bat shit town. Can’t wait to see the women!
6. My son, we are pilgrims in an unholy land.
7. It’s true, you are a good woman. But then again, perhaps you are the Antichrist.
8. I’m a butler, sir. I buttle. Clue -jlm
9. How’s your wife and my kids?
10. Don’t think; it can only hurt the ballclub.

All right, go to it. I promise I will have posts of substance and insight again after this presentation is in the books.

-pd-

Ubuntu Brainstorm

If you haven’t heard the word, there’s a new site up where you can submit your brilliant ideas for the future of Ubuntu, and vote on others’! It’s called Ubuntu Brainstorm, and I think it’s the best idea since… well, since user-friendly desktop Linux! Go check it out! Now! Quit wasting your time reading my nonsense and make your voice heard!

(Image shamelessly swiped from here.)

Dear lazyweb…

This is one of those that I’m sure I could figure out if I wasn’t so fucking busy trying to put together this presentation for Sunday.

I’m looking for a calendar synchronization solution. Here’s my setup. I have a desktop (KDE) on which I run Kontact. I have a laptop (Gnome) on which I run Thunderbird with the Lightning extension. They both pull from my nfs server (except when I’m away from home with the laptop). So my question is this: How can I get them to sync at home, and how can I automate making a local copy of the calendar on the laptop, say, every day, so that when I’m out I’m still using the same calendar, and how can I re-sync my calendars when I get home?

-pd-