Search
519 results for “jameshowell”
-
UPDATED BLOG POST: Finally tracked down and fixed a little bug in "Custom sorting of mu4e headers"
https://jamesendreshowell.com/2026-01-08-custom-sorting-of-mu4e-headers.html
-
(setopt shr-use-colors nil)
THIS SETTING COMPLETELY FIXES what has been by far my biggest annoyance with mu4e. Namely the ghastly clash of awful foreground and background colors in messages that can only be rendered as HTML.
Thanks to Wouter Groeneveld for this tip and many other improvements to mu4e!
https://brainbaking.com/post/2026/01/customizing-the-emacs-email-experience-with-mu4e/
-
@marlinz's "Constantly fighting for structure" includes "constantly fighting against friction, because the slightest friction can become paralyzing, especially additively."
Conversely, removing distractions becomes a long-term exercise in continuous subtraction. Removing UI elements until only the essential is visible. Removing steps in workflows. Paradoxically, ADDING steps (single keystrokes) to workflows in order to reveal options in steps rather than presenting all the choices. Each reduction is tiny, but the cumulative effect—over years—is a huge reduction in stress and a huge increase in productivity throughout the day.
Much more of the day in focus. Much more of the day in flow.
For someone else's brain, context switching between a bunch of desktop apps might feel like the same cognitive burden as switching between #Emacs buffers. But for me, #OrgMode, #mu4e, and #magit have not just changed how I work.
They allow me to control how I work, with results that have been a binary, qualitative improvement.
-
NEW BLOG POST: Custom sorting of mu4e headers
I love mu4e for dealing with email under Emacs: with a little Emacs Lisp you can make it do email how you want to do email.
https://jamesendreshowell.com/2026-01-08-custom-sorting-of-mu4e-headers.html
-
"The history of #Emacs completion frameworks is a progression from monolithic solutions toward composable ones."
This is a comprehensive summary, with a thorough and fair history. A long read, but worth it.
I plateaued at #Vertico #Orderless #Marginalia #Consult years ago. Maybe time to learn the others, one at a time.
-
You know I went to the doctor
Said I'm feelin kinda rough
"Let me break it to you, son
Your shit's fucked up"I said My shit's fucked up?
I don't see how! He said
"The shit that used to work
Won't work now" -
@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).
As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined
-
@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).
As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined
-
@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).
As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined
-
@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).
As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined
-
@publicvoit @sysedit As for the markup syntax itself, I prefer #Orgdown over #Markdown, mostly from habit. But Org wipes its feet on Markdown in terms of functionality, and that's even before the nightmare of Geschmacksvermehrung ("flavor proliferation," if you will permit it).
As long as you're forgiving me: do you really draw your Roman majuscule O with a clockwise stroke of the pen? Because my neurodivergent day has irrevocably been ruined
-
Be like Dr. Howell, nerds
https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit
https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience
https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode
Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/
-
Holy crap, you guys. Seriously?
Only EIGHT of us are supporting Fediscience.org?
Chip in, everybody.
P.S. Its governance is solid, it's all about scientists, and it is NOT BASED IN THE UNITED STATES.
-
@rangek As you know, "Stable" does not mean "doesn't crash," it means "doesn't change often."
-
Jacob Bronowski, 1953:
"Has there ever been a society
which has died
of dissent?Several have died
of conformity
in our lifetime." -
#Emacs, #OrgMode, and #Denote, like @randyridenour and so many others
-
@ericsfraga @mstempl I learned about all three of #Emacs, #TeXLaTeX, and #literateprogramming at the same time in the late 1980s.
The first two always went together, and the third was a dream, a thing only the gods upon Mount Knuth-lympus could do.
Then, much later! Oh happy day! #OrgMode came along, and all three were baked into a warm, delicious pound cake. The tool that decisively allowed me to become a confident Emacs user was to make my config a literate Org document. Inspired by @sacha's example! Having it be a document, structured as an outline, with paragraphs of prose, was just qualitatively different from a monolithic lisp file.
Collapsing outline elements (1) allow fractal movement between a gestalt and detailed view, and (2) impose structure. There is no way to overstate how necessary are both of these for managing even as small a project as my ... HOLY SHIT, I JUST LOOKED, and my config is more than 1,800 lines of code!
Okay, point proved
-
What's your January 1 mood?
Mine is the photograph of my little boy at Kindergarten orientation in the CLASS OF 2026 T-shirt
-
@ctietze I need to be able to make slides from #OrgMode files. But #Beamer cannot (and will not) be made to produce #taggedPDF output (thanks, @mxp). So rather than bang my head against #TeXLaTeX, I took a step back.
Check this out:
pandoc why-yes-i-am-a-wizard.org -o why-yes-i-am-a-wizard.pptx && soffice --headless --convert-to pdf why-yes-i-am-a-wizard.pptx
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/start_parameters.html
No Haskell noodling required.
-
Be like Dr. Howell, nerds
https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit
https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience
https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode
Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/
-
Be like Dr. Howell, nerds
https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit
https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience
https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode
Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/
-
Be like Dr. Howell, nerds
https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit
https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience
https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode
Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/
-
Be like Dr. Howell, nerds
https://liberapay.com/tarsius #magit
https://liberapay.com/fediscience #fediscience
https://liberapay.com/org-mode/ #orgmode
Find your favorite projects: https://liberapay.com/explore/
-
@DrHyde You would not believe what you can do under a dissecting microscope with a pair of very sharp forceps in one hand and a human eyelash wand in the other.
I taught a room full of undergraduates to repeat these classic experiments in one afternoon in 1999.
-
So apparently I have to amend my
ASK ME ABOUT MY CATS
t-shirt to say
ASK ME ABOUT MY CATS ONLY AFTER WE ALREADY HAVE BEEN FORCED TO SPEAK, IN ORDER TO CHANGE THE SUBJECT FROM, I DUNNO, WORK, I STRESS AGAIN, ONLY IF WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN TALKING, BUT DEFINITELY NOT IF WE ARE SILENTLY RIDING AN ELEVATOR TOGETHER, CRAZY LADY, WHAT SIGNAL ARE YOU READING THAT DOES NOT SCREAM INTROVERT
TL;DR THREE OF THEM, ALL BAD