Pens and Photos

I Should Blog More

I should blog more. That’s hardly an original start to a blog post, especially one on a long-neglected blog, but there you go.

I’m using Emacs for much of my day-to-day stuff at the moment, working in PlannerMode. I never use the ‘Schedule’ section (I use Google Calendar), so I’ve changed it to ‘Blog’ instead, with the idea of tapping a blog post into it during the day, then posting at the end of the day. If you’re reading this, it worked. Once.

So, what’s been happening recently? We’re still enjoying Devon. My calculator obsession seems to have faded somewhat, leaving me quite settled with the HP 12C financial calculator. There are far more powerful things around, but they’re sitting unused in a drawer. The 12C just does the basics really nicely.

I’m left with my current obsessions being pens, notebooks and Emacs.

Pens

I have bought a few new pens recently:

Continue reading about Pens and Photos

I had quite a phase of using Emacs a while ago. One problem I hit was that I’d find a great trick for using it for PHP and JavaScript stuff at work, then forget to copy the stuff to home. Then, I found a nice code-folding trick at home, and forgot to copy that to work. Once I realised, I had to fiddle about working out what bits I needed to copy between the two installations to make everything work the same.

I’m back with Emacs now, and trying to use PlannerMode for basic ‘GTD stuff’. If I can’t take my lists to work with me, though, it’s a bit less convenient. It’s much easier to have access to the lists there than to have to email stuff to work that I need to do there, or to home that I need to do there.

Continue reading about Portable Emacs-onna-Stick - USB Geekiness

Latest Update: Removed PlannerLove - the site is sadly departed, and the domain has been bought by some domain squatters.

Sacha is currently writing the book on Emacs. When it comes out, it would seem rude for me to not buy a copy and read it. And she’s a small powerhouse of infectious enthusiasm, which will drag me back to Emacs. So, I’m giving up early and going back now. I know when I’m beaten. I’d just got myself nicely settled as a Vim user, too…

Recently, I’ve been trying out a new way of doing GTD, and it seems pretty good to me. In the end, it was Emacs I couldn’t cope with using, but if you get on with Emacs, this could be for you. Let’s start with a disclaimer this time, though…

• This is one for the geeks.

It’s all based around using the Emacs text editor, which isn’t the easiest thing around to use, even just to edit a text file. It balances a couple of elisp programs on top of that, too, which let you do all sorts of clever things, using nothing but plain text. If you’re geek enough, though, and the idea of keeping everything in plain text appeals to you, this is one fast GTD system…

Continue reading about GTD with Emacs PlannerMode