Diary of an Emacs tragic

Author: Jason

  • WordCamp Sydney 2012

    Maissa and I bought our tickets for WordCamp Sydney. Hope to see you there!
    WordCamp Sydney July 21-22, 2012

  • Sacha Chua interviews John Wiegley

    Sacha Chua has come up with a great idea of interviewing some of the big names in emacs. Check out her first video where she interviews John Wiegley. They cover some interesting ground. It makes me realise what an emacs amateur I am.

  • change the display font size in emacs

    In emacs 24 C-+ and C-- increase and decrease the display font
    size.

  • Editing files using sudo and emacs

    I often edit config files with:
    sudo emacs /etc/whatever

    The problem with that is I would end up with ~ backup files littering my filesystem and also emacs is run as root so it gets root’s config file. I’d rather use emacs with my config.
    The solution, thanks to emacs-fu is twofold:
    First set emacs’s backup directory, which tells it to save backup files in a
    specific directory rather in the same dir as the file you edited. Put something like this in your emacs init file:

     (setq
   backup-by-copying t      ; don't clobber symlinks
   backup-directory-alist
    '(("." . "~/.saves"))    ; don't litter my fs tree
   delete-old-versions t
   kept-new-versions 6
   kept-old-versions 2
   version-control t)       ; use versioned backups

    Then you add this to your .bashrc:

    # see http://emacs-fu.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/system-administration-with-emacs.html
# edit file with root privs
function E() {
    filename=$1
    without_beg_slash="${1##/}"
    if [[ $without_beg_slash == $1 ]];then
        filename="${PWD%//}/\"
    fi
    emacsclient -c -a emacs "/sudo:root@localhost:$filename"
}

    Now just edit files with: E someconfigfile and it loads it in your emacs, asks your pw to edit and off you go.

  • Fullscreen emacs on OSX

    This works in emacs 24, not sure about previous versions. the keyboard shortcut matches Chrome’s full screen shortcut.

    ; keyboard shortcut to toggle full screen
  (global-set-key [s-return] 'ns-toggle-fullscreen)

    will define Cmd-return to toggle emacs between full screen and normal –
    the same shortcut as for chrome.

  • perspex bridge building contest

    Bridge building using perspex (probably cut using a laser cutter)
    You could make the rules very simple: use 1.5mm perspex, must span at least 50cm and best weight to strength ratio wins or something

  • Open Source Toys

    Plans made freely available for some toys, like say a toy crane. Then you can build it yourself or buy a premade one, and when child breaks toy, you can either make or buy the replacement parts for it to repair it.

  • bigcommerce support failure

    I recently wanted to customise my bigcommerce site with some custom fields. Unfortunately support was unable to help me with this request.
    Apparantly what I want to do is possible, but it is secret and bigcommerce will not divulge this information. I discussed it in a chat session with bigcommerce support. Transcript follows:

    12:58Jason Lewis: hi
    12:58Jason Lewis: hi ken
    12:59Jason Lewis: on my homepage: http://www.pukkaherbs.com.au/
    12:59Ken Suarez: hi
    12:59Ken Suarez: you can display them by using custom codes
    12:59Ken Suarez: so you need to develop a code that will handle that functionality
    12:59Ken Suarez: we do not have that in our interface
    12:59Ken Suarez: once you add the field then it will automatically added to the group of fields
    12:59Jason Lewis: see how the featured product, “wonderfully uplifting…”
    13:00Ken Suarez: address to be spcific
    13:00Jason Lewis: um
    13:00Jason Lewis: but …. can you give me an example of the code i would need to display one specific custom field?
    13:01Ken Suarez: <input type=”text”>
    13:01Ken Suarez: that stuff
    13:01Ken Suarez: sorry we are not trained for scripting
    13:01Jason Lewis: so you are saying it is possible to display one custom field, but you don;t know the code to do it?
    13:03Ken Suarez: i know how to code it but we do not support customization/scripting here
    13:03Ken Suarez: its in the support policy
    13:03Ken Suarez: you might want to check
    13:04Jason Lewis: so how do i find out that information if you won’t tell me?
    13:04Jason Lewis: can you show me a BC site that does has that customisation?
    13:04Jason Lewis: i this information secret or something?
    13:05Ken Suarez: well you need to have html/css knowledge to do that
    13:05Jason Lewis: ok, i have html and css knowledge, now what?
    13:06Ken Suarez: then you need to start developing the code then
    13:06Ken Suarez: thats all you need
    13:06Jason Lewis: is there a more senior support person I can talk to please?
    13:07Ken Suarez: most scripting issues are posted there
    13:07Jason Lewis: posted where?
    13:08Jason Lewis: can you point me to a forum post with the answer at least? I have searched the forums myself and found several people asking this question but there are no replies with information on how to do it
    13:08Ken Suarez: the reason why i let you post so you will get answer
    13:09Ken Suarez: the answer is not there yet
    13:09Jason Lewis: ok
    13:09Ken Suarez: thats why you need to post for other developers or coders can help and assist you with scripting
    13:10Jason Lewis: so this is a totally undocumented feature then?
    13:10Ken Suarez: yes sir, as what i’ve mentioned earlier we do not support scripting/customization
    13:12Jason Lewis: but it is possible, you just won’t tell me how?
    13:12Ken Suarez: is it that hard to understand that we do not support scripting?
    13:12Ken Suarez: yes it is possible and know how to code it
    13:13Ken Suarez: we just dont give support here as not everybody knows scripting
    13:13Jason Lewis: i just wanted to confirm that it was in fact possible
    13:13Ken Suarez: i already informed you that it is possible
    13:14Jason Lewis: i was just double checking
    13:14Ken Suarez: not sure which part i did say that it isnt
    13:14Ken Suarez: double checking if it is possible?
    13:14Ken Suarez: ah ok
    13:14Jason Lewis: I was double checking that I had understood you correctly that it was possible to do
    13:15Ken Suarez: i did confirm already on the very first chat that its possible the issue is we cannot further support customization
    13:16Jason Lewis: ok, message received and understood

     
    I am very disappointed in this attitude bigcommerce too in dealing with this request. I don’t quite understand why they are being so secretive about it.
     

  • Tiny fridge for milk in the office

    Today’s idea is for a fridge that is just big enough to hold a 2L bottle of milk for the office. Thats the only thing we really want to keep chilled up here so a small fridge would be great.

  • test file download

    test file:{filelink=1} |end of test