I think I need a workflow intervention (aka Stop Leaving Emacs)
Rambling about a little loop I find myself going through with Emacs vs Not Emacs
Rambling about a little loop I find myself going through with Emacs vs Not Emacs
The other day, I converted my entire TiddlyWiki into an Obsidian vault, just to see if I could. Since I still spend most of my time in Emacs, I thought it would be nice to search the vault from there. The post, From Obsidian to Emacs, by Mike Hostetler, mentioned using the Xeft package, so I thought Iād try it. Hereās my config: (use-package xeft :ensure t :defer t :config (setq xeft-recursive t) (setq xeft-database "~/.deft.db") (setq xeft-directory "/Users/jbaty/Documents/Notes/Vault/") (setq xeft-ignore-extension '("png" "jpg" "jpeg")) (setq xeft-extensions '("md")) (setq xeft-title-function #'file-name-nondirectory)) Xeft relies on Xapian for searches, so a module needs to be downloaded or built locally. I didnāt have any luck with the downloaded version, so I deleted the package, started over, and had it compile locally. The trick there was entering the prefix ā/opt/homebrewā during installation, since Iād already installed Xapian using Homebrew. ...
org-mouseĀ is a built-in package for Org mode that lets one do some handy things using the mouse in Org files. Things like checking checkboxes and toggling subtrees. (use-package org-mouse :after org) Or just (require 'org-mouse) Clicking in [ ] Do this thing to complete it is easier than navigating to the line and hitting C-c C-c for each item. Thereās no shame in using a mouse, even in Emacs. I sometimes prefer to sit back, grab the mouse, and click things. ...
I had a couple of drinks last night and opened my laptop and accidentally launched Obsidian and thought, āOh, I remember. This is pretty cool! I should use this for everything.ā so this morning Iām staring at Obsidian wondering what now? But why not just bail on the Obsidian app and drop back into my beloved Emacs? Iāve been asking myself that question all morning. Ostensibly, I simply felt like a change of venue this morning, and Obsidian seemed as good as any. But thereās something larger lurking under the surface. ...
I recently discovered Org modeās speed keys option and itās pretty great. One caveat with speed keys is that they only work if the point is at the very beginning of a heading. To help with this, I (with Claudeās help) created a small lisp function and hook to move the insertion point to the beginning of the first heading whenever I open an Org mode file. Iām recording it here in case itās useful to anyone else. ...
If I were to only have one computer, Iād use notmuch for email in Emacs. I might also import non-email stuff as notmuch messages so I can search everything in one place. But, I now have 3 computers; 2 running macOS and one running (Fedora) Linux. Notmuch takes too much of my energy to keep synced between machines. So what about Mu4e? Mu4e is probably the ānicestā Emacs package for managing email, but it still requires a local synced copy of all my messages. This means configuring mbsync on all machines, etc. ...
I saw the Irreal post about Journelly, but mostly ignored it because I wasnāt looking for a new iOS journaling app. He did mention that Journelly is by Ćlvaro RamĆrez, author of Plain Org, lmno.lol, and others, so that made things more interesting. What intrigued me most, though, was learning that Journelly is backed by plain-text Org Mode files. Bonus! Now it had my attention. Ćlvaro was kind enough to let me into the TestFlight, and Iām putting it through its paces this morning. ...
I ran across something neat while reading the Mu4e release notes A (experimental) ātransientā menu has been added for mu4e. You can use it e.g., with something like: (require 'mu4e-transient) (global-set-key (kbd "C-c m") #'mu4e-transient-menu) Itās very handy!
I was feeling envious of theĀ Obsidian Web Clipper, which is quite fancy, so I thought Iād try leveraging it for use withĀ Denote. My first run at this involves a couple of steps: Tweak the web clipper to save files using Denoteās format and front matter Save the file without adding it to an Obsidian vault Move the saved file into my Denote folder Hereās the Web Clipper template configuration I ended up with: ...
While tinkering with Obsidian recently, something I liked was having a daily notes template with a Dataview query showing the other files Iād added that same day. I added something similar for Denote. Itās a Yasnippet: # -*- mode: snippet -*- # name: Denote insert today's links # key: dnl # -- #+begin: denote-links :regexp "^`(format-time-string "%Y%m%d")`$0" #+end I just run that after first creating the daily note and I get a list of links to the other Denote files from that day. Thereās probably a way to automate that, but this is good enough for who itās for. ...
On macOS, hitting CMD-Shift-. in Finder toggles the display of hidden (.dot) files. I wanted the same thing in Dired mode.
Using both Howm and Denote for my notes in Emacs. But why?
A week ago, I toyed with the idea of using Gnus for reading Email in Emacs. As expected, I hated it at first. But then⦠...
I went down a rabbit hole with the built-in Remember mode in Emacs today. ...
lmq-10/denote-search This package provides a search utility for Denote, the simple-to-use, focused-in-scope, and effective note-taking tool for Emacs. The command denote-search is the main point of entry. It accepts a query, which should be a regular expression, and then searches the contents of all the notes stored in denote-directory for it. The results are put in a buffer which allows folding and further filtering; all standard commands offered by Xref are available as well. ...
New t-shirt is funny. Iāve been shopping for desktop computers to run Linux. Something easy and nice, like a low-mid range Thelios, maybe. This is a terrible idea and I should stop doing it at once. When do you think Iāll finally find something that Iām good at? There are too many people in my head. I like Matt Birchlerās Quick Reviews app, but I wish it would look up the year/director for me. The new iOS app might do something like that, but I wonāt use the app on iOS. ...
My use of Howm has continued to grow organically. In other words, I donāt set out to use Howm, it just happens :). One of Howmās unique features is its TODO implementation: ...
I āsettledā on using notmuch for my email, but now Iām reconsidering that decision. Notmuch is great, but using it forces me to have two email stores. One is IMAP (via Fastmail). The other is my local notmuch database. Mbsync keeps things kind of synced, but itās really only a few flags. Notmuch doesnāt delete or move email on the server. This means Iām managing, for example, my Inbox, in two places. Itās not hard, but is it necessary? ...
I hesitate to use org-goto in my Org mode files because I find the UI for it to be confusing. In a recent post, Streamlining Navigation in Org-Mode using an adapted org-goto, James Dyer makes some nifty improvements. The TL;DR is this: (setq org-goto-interface 'outline-path-completionp) (setq org-outline-path-complete-in-steps nil) Now, the target list is a simple completion window showing the entire outline.
Iād been happily using Doom Emacs until just over a month ago, when I decided toĀ start from scratch again.Ā ...