Blogging is alive and well under Emacs
in reaction to http://www.sfu.ca/~gswamina/BlogsAreDead.html
I’ve had a blog for roughly a year and a half now, and I think I’m
pretty much settling into the routine. Reading Ganesh’s BlogsAreDead post, I think about how I use Emacs to keep track of my notes.
Linearity – Blogs are linear, ie usually in chronological
order. My knowledge/experience is non-linear (fortunately). There is
an obvious mismatch here. I don’t see how I can write coherently about
recursive functions, pipelines, privacy and chicks in the same
post.
I split this up into several remember-to-planner-plan-page-dwim posts,
usually cross-linking them with a topic page.
Lack of time – Everybody seems to be bringing this up. I
don’t post very often, but when I do, they are long ones. If you’ve
noticed, my titles are usually one or two words – “Skills”, “04-1
Registered”, “Talks”, “Its Tuesday”, $(rand dict). Not very
descriptive. Often, I remember writing about something, but not able
to track it down. Sad, really.
My titles aren’t all that descriptive either, but that’s what M-x
planner-search-notes in planner-experimental.el is for. And yes, I
really hate it if I know I blogged about something but I can’t
remember how to bring it up.
Non-conformance to standards – When you put together an entry, do
you check if it confirms to W3C standards every time ? Honestly,
that’s insane. A standard transformation mapping will make life so
much easier. I now face a problem, how do I convert my old entries ?
I seem to have used three to four different ways to post my code,
all of them every inelegant, except for the last.
I work with plain text.
Immature – Blogging software is not powerful enough. What
if I want to quote an email message, or a news thread ? Or simple
syntax highlighting ? Or even on the fly spell checking (known as
flyspell-mode in emacs, BTW). Couple this with my non-descriptive
titles, how do I cross reference things ?
Emacs is wonderful!
Not cool – Blogs aren’t cool anymore, since every kid
happens to have his own. When you come across somebody’s blog which
appears to be very interesting, do you take the time to read through
his archives ? Ofcourse not. More bit bricks.
I often read through other people’s archives. I hope that the
cross-references with plan pages make it easier for people to see
related stuff, but I plan to have some kind of search someday.
Stagnant – “The only thing that is constant is change.”
Spring->Summer->Fall, so many things change around you. About 28.5%
(eh !) of your content is stale. Your views on life constantly change
(you may deny it). Going back and changing stuff just doesn’t make
sense when your entries are chronological.
I frequently go back and post updates. I also tend to reorganize the
plan pages fairly often, although that does mean semi-broken day
links. (Must get those GUIDs up and running!)
Emacs is way cool.
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