sacha chua :: living an awesome life

On This Day...

• 2011: Ruby on Rails: Extending ActiveRecord::Base to define your own ActiveRecord association methods — One of the things I really like about Rails is the ability to add to existing classes so that your [...]
• 2010: Emacs: Recording ledger entries with org-capture-templates — I use John Wiegley’s ledger program to keep track of my personal finances. It’s quick, it’s light, and it lets [...]
• 2009: Trying out visual notetaking at a workshop — The more I draw, the easier and more fun it gets. I helped facilitate a client workshop last week. During one [...]
• 2006: Crashing twice — If Microsoft Office crashes, it usually gives you back the auto-recovered document. Unless, of course, it crashes again while you’re trying to [...]
• 2006: A slice of life: laundry — Some days the laundry piles up, and up, and up, and then I realize that my favorite malong is at the [...]
• 2005: Reflections on the lab — ([[[[2005.11.23#2]]]] [[[[teaching#5]]]] [[[[TeachingReflections#23]]]]) I discussed the grading scheme for the Decision Support Systems class today. One of the good things about [...]
• 2005: Cook or Die — The dearth of recent CookOrDie posts doesn’t mean I’ve figured out how to cook consistently well. Rather, it means that I [...]
• 2004: Switching back to chronological notes — I guess most of my readers (Hi Mom!) check this site once a day, or something like that. They read from [...]
• 2003: LedgerMode — I want to be able to use Emacs for my double-entry accounting so that I don’t have to start GnuCash. I [...]
• 2003: Text messaging for the blind — http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2403913.stm accessible computing, deals with text abbreviations
• 2003: Whew! Just reviewed the history of UNIX — … and boy, are there stories to tell. =)
• 2003: Story about pipes for CS161 — http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/sohedid.html Although stymied, McIlroy didn’t drop the idea. “And over a period from 1970 to 1972, I’d from time to time [...]
• 2003: Story ideas for CS161 — - AT&T Bell Labs gave up on MULTICS - (Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and J.F. Ossanna) - really cool filesystem idea on [...]
• 2003: History from Dennis Ritchie for CS161 — http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html What we wanted to preserve was not just a good environment in which to do programming, but a system around [...]
• 2003: Recognizing coding systems in Emacs — For when Emacs doesn’t correctly autodetect it: C-x RET c CODING-SYSTEM RET M-x revert-buffer RET
• 2003: Tidbit for CS161 — The different versions of the UN*X brand operating system are numbered in a logical sequence: 5, 6, 7, 2, 2.9, 3, [...]
• 2003: Funny UNIX history — http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~omri/Humor/unix-history.html CS161
• 2003: The Object of Java — http://www.aw-bc.com/catalog/academic/product/0,4096,0321168542-TOC,00.html The outline looks like it makes sense as part of a syllabus.
• 2003: Running word count in Emacs buffers — http://gnufans.net/~deego/emacspub/site-lisp-not/wcount.el