Open source software and nice hardware

TIL: Emacs rectangle-number-lines

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 10:12:23 +0200

+++ Saturday  5 September 2026 +++

TIL: Emacs rectangle-number-lines
=================================

Note from the "today I learned" department.

Emacs never cease to amaze me. This time I ran into the nifty command

    C-x r N rectangle-number-lines

Which exactly does what it says on the tin.

A small example
---------------

Before:

   'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
   'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
   'I don't much care where—' said Alice.
   'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
   '—so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
   'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'

   Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another
   question. 'What sort of people live about here?'

   'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round,
   'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw,
   'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

   'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
   'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
   'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
   'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

Now we mark a rectangle from "Alice felt..." to "How do you know"
and run C-x r N rectangle-number-lines:

After:

   'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'
   'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.
   'I don't much care where—' said Alice.
   'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.
   '—so long as I get somewhere,' Alice added as an explanation.
   'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'

    1 Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another
    2 question. 'What sort of people live about here?'
    3 
    4 'In that direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round,
    5 'lives a Hatter: and in that direction,' waving the other paw,
    6 'lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'
    7 
    8 'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
    9 'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: 'we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
   10 'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
   'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'

Wonderful, isn't it?

Last edited: $Date: 2026/09/05 10:12:23 $

ROOPHLOCH 2026 announced

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 20:33:00 +0200

+++ Tuesday  1 September 2026 +++

ROOPHLOCH 2026 announced
========================

Solderpunk has announced ROOPHLOCH 2026 [1]

If you are not familiar with ROOPHLOCH, read the announce, it is
a wonderful event!


Anchors in time
---------------
Very often, when a new edition of Sacha's wonderful weekly Emacs news
appears, I am astonished that another week has already passed.

I had the same kind of astonishment when reading Solderpunk's announce:
This means another year has gone by!

It is good to have these kind of anchors in our life. They keep us
from drifting and help us to stay grounded. But they can be quite
shocking non the less :)


Thoughts on ROOPHLOCH
---------------------
Every year I love to read the ROOPHLOCH posts. People can do such
amazing things!

I would love to participate, but I think this is very hard for me. I
did once wrote an ROOPHLOCH phlog on a Palm device, but it is a bit
silly to do that again. And I don't have that many special devices.

Also, writing a phlog on my Palm doesn't really fulfill all the
requirements. Although using a Palm I write the phlog outside and
off-grid, I can't publish a phlog from an off-grid position, this I
can only do from my home network.

But, there are 30 days left to think about this, so who knows...


[1]: gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/~solderpunk/phlog

Last edited: $Date: 2026/09/01 20:33:00 $

Jugulans version 1.0.3 released

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 19:48:37 +0200

+++ Thursday 27 August 2026 +++

Jugulans version 1.0.3 released
===============================

Jugulans [1] is a text mode mind map application.
Build your mind map with a TUI, and save it as an org-mode file.

Create a new mind map from scratch, or open a previous saved map.

Changes
-------

Added
- Search function to quickly jump to nodes
- Toggle between mind map and tree as map model
- Command line accepts map name with or without .tmm extension.

Fixed
- Direction scroll-up/scroll-down
- Insert-deleted-label


About
-----

Jugulans is build in Chicken Scheme.

There are ready compiled binaries for:
- Debian Trixie
- FreeBSD 15.1
- NetBSD 11
- OpenBSD 7.9

On those systems you don't need Chicken Scheme to run it.

Have fun mind mapping!

[1]: https://codeberg.org/mattof/jugulans


Last edited: $Date: 2026/08/27 19:48:37 $

Beautiful Emacs on 7 inch HDMI display

Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:58:53 +0200

+++ Monday 24 August 2026 +++

Beautiful Emacs on 7 inch HDMI display
======================================

Some time ago I purchased a cheap 7 inch 1024x600 HDMI display, for a
project is was working on. After the ending of the project, I
attached a Raspberry Pi 4B with 4GB RAM to it, and installed FreeBSD
15.1 on it.

I keep the FreeBSD install lightweight. I runs Xorg, with ratpoison,
my favorite tiling window manager. Apart from Emacs, I didn't
install much software on it, to keep it light. Besides, Emacs covers
almost all your needs.

First I thought of installing the text mode version of Emacs, but then
I remembered that those variants can be compiled very minimal and decided
to install the graphical version.

In the .Xresources file I added a line:

    emacs.font: Deja Vu Sans Mono-12

and installed the `Acme' theme. This is theme inspired on the
color scheme of the Plan9 ACME-editor.

With these two, the Deja Vu mono font and the Amce theme, Emacs
is beautiful on the 7 inch display. The characters are crisp, good
to read and it is marvelous to look at :)

This is a great setup to explore the Gopher-verse using `Elpher',
the Emacs Gopher- and Gemini browser.

Also following RSS feeds is nice on this setup, using `Elfeed', the
Emacs RSS-reader. Fetching of the feeds is a bit slower than on my
laptop, but once the feeds are in, it works just as fine. Only I
don't have a graphical web browser on board, and just use Eww, the
built-in Emacs Javascript-free web browser. Eww can display images,
but it doesn't do Javascript. Which is a great way to avoid the
trackers. Most sites in my RSS feed can be visited with Eww, so it
don't miss much this way.


Last edited: $Date: 2026/08/24 13:58:53 $

Set my phone on greyscale

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 09:34:59 +0200

+++ Sunday 23 August 2026 +++

Set my phone on greyscale
=========================

To reduce the lure of my smartphone, I enabled greyscale on it.

I really looks shitty, and makes the whole thing less
attracting.

Now we'll have to see how effective it is.

For starters, as I am not used to this look. When I open my
smartphone, the grey display immediately reminds me that I want
to spend less time using it.

Probably, as I get used to it, this effect will fade over time.
But who knows, maybe it is enough for a habit-change.


Last edited: $Date: 2026/08/23 09:34:59 $