Open source software and nice hardware
Git branches and Emacs built-in VC Emacs VC Emacs VC is the built-in Emacs version control interface. It is very capable, and its use is intuitive. Emacs VC can be used with practically all version control systems. I have used it frequently with RCS and CVS. No need for Magit For my typical use of Git, VC offers all I need, and I have stopped installing and using Magit. The default key bindings of…
jugulans a text mode mind map application Jugulans is a text mode mind map application. It lets the user build a mind map using just the keyboard, and save it in org-mode format. /- new child | /- creating nodes -----------|- new sbiling | | | \- new parent | | | | /- up | | | |- down |- moving nodes -------------| | |- left | | | \- right | | jugulans ------| | /- delete a node |- deleting nodes…
Books and some interesting stuff I read in July 2026 This month I read some though provoking books, a nice science fiction book, and had a lot of fun reading several essays and short stories. The authors of both the books "A Darwinian Survival Guide" and "To Have or to Be?" work from the viewpoint that human life as we know it is seriously threatened, and advocate a societal change as the only…
Having fun with Chicken Scheme Switch from Guile Scheme to Chicken Scheme Lately have been dabbling in Guile Scheme. Guile Scheme is very fast and since is it the main development environment for Guix, its popularity is rising. I tried Chicken Scheme because it can create a stand-alone executable. This means that once compiled, it can run on systems where Chicken Scheme is not installed. Maybe…
Books and some interesting pages I read in June 2026 This month I decided to not finish a book after reading the first 100 pages, so I just finished a single book. The warm weather and outdoor activities resulted in less screen time, but still ran into some fine web pages! Fiction Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (2002) 116 pages 4 stars A novella telling the story of the lonely life of Robert…
Start Guile shell script that listens on a port for REPL client Guile, while running a program, can listen to a port for a REPL client, like a Swank server on SBCL. Here's how to connect from Geiser to a running Guile script. Start the Guile shell-script This is how to start a Guile script: #!/usr/local/bin/guile3 \ -e main --listen -s !# (use-modules (...)) ... Note the the first line starts with…
Enhanced Motif Window Manager on FreeBSD The Enhanced Motif Window Manager (EMWM) is a fork of the Motif Window Manager with fixes and enhancements. This brings the wonderful look of Motif to the X11 desktop. Virtual workspaces EMWM version 2.0 offers virtual workspaces. The FreeBSD packages contain EMWM version 1.3. To get virtual workspaces it is better not to install the FreeBSD package, and to…
Books and some interesting pages I read in May 2026 Non-fiction The End of Everything by Katie Mack (2020) 226 pages 5 stars We know that the universe started with the Big Bang, and that it currently is expanding. But will this go on forever, or is the universe destined to end, and if so, will there be a new Big Bang? The writer, a theoretical cosmologist, gives an easy to read overview of the…
Awkiawki with slowcgi with NGINX on FreeBSD How to run awkiawki using slogcgi and NGNINX Awkiawki is a wiki written in awk. slowcgi is a server which implements the FastCGI Protocol to execute CGI scripts. slowcgi is a simple server that translates FastCGI requests to the CGI protocol. It executes the requested CGI script and translates its output back to the FastCGI protocol. slowcgi is on…
Books and some pages I read in April 2026 Non-fiction Vintage Didion by Joan Didion (2004) 200 pages 3 stars A collection of previously published essays focussed on US politics. The essays date from different periods. There are also three chapters from her book "Miami" in it. Usually I like to read Didion, but several parts of this collection were boring. Short-stories The Last Question by Isaac…
Explore the smol web with Bubbles All Aggregators Are Equal but Some Aggregators Are More Equal Than Others Bubbles is a new, brilliant, blog aggregator. Bubbles combines the power of RSS feeds with the power of voting. Of course there is lobste.rs , but that has a focus on technical publications. Non-tech blogs Hacker News and Lobste.rs have community voting figured out, but non-tech content gets…
Install minimal Recoll on FreeBSD 15 Recoll is a full text search application. Recoll is based on the very capable Xapian search engine library. The FreeBSD package comes with a ton of dependencies, which is great for use on your desktop, but can be a bit of overkill for non-graphical systems. Minimal install The idea is to install with as minimal dependencies as possible and start working with…
Books of March 2026 Below are the two books I finished reading this month. Fiction The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954) 423 pages 5 stars This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago. I also have seen the movie directed by Peter Jackson several times. During reading the book I discovered that my memory…
My Emacs misconceptions Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions Philip Kaludercic has started the Emacs carnival on the subject Mistakes and Misconceptions . Here's my contribution. Vim to Emacs In 2021 I switched to Emacs after using Vim for more than 20 years. I was thinking about learning Lisp and Forth, and somehow I had the notion that programming in these languages is better supported in…
Deploy a Matrix server using Conduit and Cinny on FreeBSD in the homelab Here is a small post about deploying a Matrix server in the homelab. The goal is a Matrix server running on a FreeBSD jail that can be used from the web browser on your desktop. It is a quick-and-dirty configuration, to get you started. This setup is for testing purposes. The server will not be exposed to the internet and it…
Books of February 2026 Below are the two books that I finished this month. I started a third one, but didn't like and decided not to finish it. Non-fiction The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner (1994) 332 pages 5 stars A book about scientific research aimed at better understanding natural selection, sexual selection, and evolution. Much of the book is about two…
Translate Texinfo files using po4a Texinfo Texinfo is a brilliant hypertext system that predates HTML. You access it with info , which is a text mode application. The content consists of a number of nodes. Each node is an information element. You access the nodes through menus, hyperlinks, and indices. Also you can "walk" through a info file with keys like [ and ] . See info info . Leveraging the…
Books of January 2026 I started this year with re-reading "Pattern Recognition". This is the first book that I re-read within a year. Because I really enjoyed this book, I followed it with the other two books of the Blue Ant trilogy. Non fiction Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future by Neil Shubin (2025) 288 pages 5 stars A book about…
A collection of internet evergreens I started a new web page, to publish a collection of awesome and inspiring web pages that are worth reading. Currently the collection is modest, I hope to build over time. Find this collection of evergreens here .
denote-review Implement a simple review process for denote notes with denote-review How an Emacs package came into existence Systems in use Over time I have grown into using several different note systems next to each other, like taking notes in awkiawki wiki and in denote . Both were a succession of earlier systems: My notes in awkiawki once started as notes in vimwiki . My notes in denote once…