Opinion on /usr

The Other Emacsen

Sun, 30 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

While Emacs remains my primary text editor, there are times when starting a full Emacs session with tons of packages is simply too slow, especially on a terminal window, and when the task at hand is simply to make a few lines of changes in a configuration file.

Yes, I do know about the handy -q command-line option, which prevents the init.el file from being loaded, thereby ensuring a sub-second initialization of Emacs, or the emacsclient route (which I have enabled, and do use), but sometimes it is just more convenient to have a fast editor that has the Emacs feel, without the bloat. And for a text nerd such as myself, it is also a matter of curiosity to try out other editors once in a while.

How I Learned to stop using Firefox and love the Chrome

Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

One word: SPEED.

Seriously. I have been a long proponent and user of Firefox, having been lured into it by its relative elegance and the extension framework many moons back. Also, the web development support has always been far better than its competition, with Firebug and Web Developer to name just two great reasons for it being the developer’s browser of choice.

The sheer number of Firefox add-ons and extensions (about 13,000 in the last count) is staggering - and list absolute essentials such as Adblock Plus, XMarks and DownThemAll! This combined with the themes (I suggest GrApple Yummy on the Mac) has been making the web browsing experience a far better one for me than Safari.

Snow Leopard - First Impressions

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I finally bit the bullet and installed Snow Leopard over last weekend. I did a clean install (i.e., reformat and install afresh) - considering the significant under-the-hood changes that this OS revision has.

The basic steps I followed are:

Cleaned up the existing Leopard install to remove applications, preference panes and documents I did not need
Reviewed the preferences under ~/Library/Preferences as well as the application support items under ~/Library/Application Support and removed the items which were out of date or detritus from old installs
Took an image backup using SuperDuper! of the Leopard install
Took a backup of the disk using Time Machine to allow easier data restore during the installation
De-authorized my iTunes to prevent increment of the install counter after reinstall of the OS
Popped in the Snow Leopard DVD and started the install
During installation, I used the Disk Utility to reformat the Mac OS partition
I also did a custom install to prevent the printer drivers (over 2 GB) being installed. In addition, I selected the optional Rosetta and Quicktime 7 components (seriously Apple, these take less than 10 MB - why the optional tag?)
Waited for around 20 minutes to have the base image installed, and then used the migration assistant to restore data from my Time Machine backup

The install was relatively smooth, and restoring the data from my Time Machine backup also went without any issues. However, post-install, some of the glitches started appearing:

Musings on my Inbox Zero and GTD workflow

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

My time-management revolves around email, Calendar and to-do lists. While tools definitely help, it is more important to understand that we are processing information and acting on them, and it is just managing or tracking the items. A few pointers on what I use for Emails:

Email

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say and how to say it. - Edward R. Murrow