tags: #emacs | #howto

2023-03-16 12:00

Use Emacs for GTD Universal Capture in Linux

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I like having a system-wide keyboard shortcut that activates some form of text editor. That allows me to press the shortcut, type whatever I have in mind, navigate away from the editor, and get back to what I was doing. (This is sometimes called “universal capture” or “ubiquitous capture” in GTD-land.)

I’ve used lots of different programs to accomplish this over the years: NotationalVelocity/nvALT, SimpleNote, Obsidian, just to name a few. However, I wanted to combine the quick access of universal capture with the editing power of Emacs. I spent some time recently setting up my Linux laptop to accomplish this.

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tags: #linkpost

2021-01-15 12:00

Linkpost: Command-line date utilities

http://www.fresse.org/dateutils

These look incredibly useful, but I am most excited that the project website includes comprehensive examples for each tool! I can’t count the number of times I found something that looked useful but which gave me basically no idea of how to use it or what it could really do (I’m looking at you, q).

tags: #linkpost

2021-01-05 12:00

Linkpost: Command-Line Interface Guidelines

https://clig.dev/

I am excited to see this reference. I’ve long felt that the most important part of building a tool for people to use is thinking through how they’re going to use it, and even considering what you would want out of a tool if you were supposed to use it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve given the feedback of “how would you feel if you had to use this?”, followed by an acknowledgement that they’d built something less friendly than it might have been. If you’re going to build a tool to help someone with a task, you might as well go the extra mile and make it satisfying and intuitive to use too. I’m pretty open to variety in technical architecture and implementation details, but I’m a real stickler about not building tools that are hard, confusing, or unpleasant to use. A relatively small up-front investment in thinking about usability pays exponential dividends throughout the life of the tool in the amount of time and pain it saves its users relative to the least-effort implementation that lacks empathy for the poor souls who are going to be stuck using your tool.

tags: #howto | #windows

2020-06-03 12:00

How I reinstalled Windows 10 on a Surface Go

I purchased a Microsoft Surface Go recently. The other day, it blue-screened and refused to start up again (cycling through the “Automatic Repair” screen and failing repeatedly). I write this as a reference for myself for how to fix this if it happens again, and also to explain some of the dead ends I encountered along the way.

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