On IRC, someone asked for help configuring Emacs
to have a keyboard shortcut that would either open
the URL at point or search the web for the region
or the word at point. I thought this was a great
idea that I would find pretty handy too.
Let's write the interactive function that
I'll call from my keyboard shortcut.
First, let's check if there's an active region.
If there isn't, let's assume we're looking at
the thing at point (could be a URL, an e-mail
address, a filename, or a word).
If there are links, open them.
Otherwise, if there are e-mail addresses,
compose a message with all those email addresses
in the "To" header.
Are we at a filename? Let's open that.
Otherwise, do a web search. Let's make that
configurable. Most people will want to use a web
browser to search their favorite search engine,
such as DuckDuckGo or Google, so we'll make that
the default.
(defcustommy-search-web-handler"https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=""How to search. Could be a string that accepts the search query at the end (URL-encoded)or a function that accepts the text (unencoded).":type'(choice (string :tag"Prefix URL to search engine.")
(function:tag"Handler function.")))
(defunmy-open-url-or-search-web (&optional text-or-url)
(interactive (list (if (region-active-p)
(buffer-substring (region-beginning) (region-end))
(or
(and (derived-mode-p 'org-mode)
(let ((elem (org-element-context)))
(and (eq (org-element-type elem) 'link)
(buffer-substring-no-properties
(org-element-begin elem)
(org-element-end elem)))))
(thing-at-point 'url)
(thing-at-point 'email)
(thing-at-point 'filename)
(thing-at-point 'word)))))
(catch'done
(let (list)
(with-temp-buffer
(insert text-or-url)
(org-mode)
(goto-char (point-min))
;; We add all the links to a list first because following them may change the point
(while (re-search-forward org-any-link-re nil t)
(add-to-list 'list (match-string-no-properties 0)))
(when list
(dolist (link list)
(org-link-open-from-string link))
(throw'done list))
;; Try emails
(while (re-search-forward thing-at-point-email-regexp nil t)
(add-to-list 'list (match-string-no-properties 0)))
(when list
(compose-mail (string-join list ", "))
(throw'done list)))
;; Open filename if specified, or do a web search
(cond
((ffap-guesser) (find-file-at-point))
((functionp my-search-web-handler)
(funcall my-search-web-handler text-or-url))
((stringp my-search-web-handler)
(browse-url (concat my-search-web-handler (url-hexify-string text-or-url))))))))
I've been really liking how consult-omni lets me do quick searches as I type from within Emacs,
which is actually really cool. I've even extended
it to search my bookmarks as well, so that I can
find things using my words for them and not trust
the internet's words for them. So if I wanted to
search using consult-omni, this is how I would do
it instead.
(setopt my-search-web-handler #'consult-omni)
Now I can bind that to C-c o in my config
with this bit of Emacs Lisp.
With DuckDuckGo handling searches: (setopt my-search-web-handler "https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=")
antidisestablishmentarianism
With consult-omni handling searches: (setopt my-search-web-handler #'consult-omni)
antidisestablishmentarianism
Depending on the kind of URL, I might want to look
at it in different browsers. For example, some
websites like https://emacswiki.org work perfectly
fine without JavaScript, so opening them in EWW
(the Emacs Web Wowser) is great. Then it's right
there within Emacs for easy copying, searching,
etc. Some websites are a little buggy when run in
anything other than Chromium. For example,
MailChimp and BigBlueButton (which is the
webconference server we use for EmacsConf) both
behave a bit better under Google Chrome. There are
some URLs I want to ignore because they don't work
for me or they tend to be too paywalled, like
permalink.gmane.org and medium.com. I want to open
Mastodon URLs in mastodon.el. I want to open the
rest of the URLs in Firefox, which is my current
default browser.
To change the way Emacs opens URLs, you can
customize browse-url-browser-function and
browse-url-handlers. For example, to set up the
behaviour I described, I can use:
June 2025
2025-06-30-04
playdates, splash pads, sewing, Stardew
🖼️ art gallery
💦 splash pad
🪴 jump rope, seedlings
🪡 lots of sewing
🪡 sewed a hat
🙃 upside down with friends
🍦 radishes, ice cream
🚲 biked through rain
🪡 storage bag
🍪 cracker
😴 tough bedtime
🍦 ice cream bar
🚲 friend delivery
🥔 potato print, pizza party
👴 visited grandparents
👰 wedding dress in Stardew
🍓 hulled lots of strawberries
🌧️ rainy day, golden walnuts
🦕 ROM
🌡 sick day for A+
🥧 apple pies
😷 my turn to be sick
🌡 fever, naps
🍓 strawberries, lettuce, report card
🎵 stayed up for music homework
🪡 aprons
🏊 last day of school, first day of wading pool
🏺 pottery, two pies
🐸 hopping with J- & K-
🪡 swim skirt, 23x9= math
A+ finished virtual grade 3 and is now on summer
break. I let her decide between mostly structured
and mostly unstructured time. She picked mostly
unstructured time, with one set of private
swimming lessons at an outdoor pool and one
week-long afternoon summer camp focused on pottery
wheels. The rest of the time is for hanging out at
splash pads, wading pools, and swimming pools,
often with A+'s friends. When it's too hot even
for that, we stay inside. There haven't been as
many "I'm booored!"s as I expected. I think
dealing with school gave her a lot of practice in
managing boredom and coming up with her own
activities, which is fantastic. It's important to
be able to check in with herself and figure out
what she's curious about, what she wants to do,
and to know that she can come up with that instead
of needing someone else to direct her day.
Sometimes A+ uses Claude to help her write
stories, sometimes she builds LEGO, sometimes she
plays Minecraft or Stardew Valley, and sometimes
she watches Clone Wars. Sometimes we tag along on
W-'s Bike Brigade deliveries, so that's nice.
Sometimes she helps me with sewing by doing
straight seams, winding the bobbin, or threading
the needle. She's been cubing again, packing a 3x3
Rubik's cube when she thinks there might be some
waiting time. I still have the timer app on my
phone, so she can check how she's doing. This
feels like a good kind of busy: not externally
imposed, but intrinsically motivated. Not
regimented, but going with the flow.
A+ has lots of ideas for things to sew based on
things she wants to wear or use, and is very much
into having us both wear matching outfits. It
turns out that I fit into kid-sized Crocs, so it's
easy to get matching colours there too. The
pendulum of childhood, I guess. We're currently on
the "let's match" side, and then we'll swing over
to individuation, and then we'll swing back, and
then further out to individuation, and so on. I
love that we can explore this through our clothes,
shoes, and interests. Some days she wants to be
just like me, and almost physically tries to
occupy the same space. (Cuddles are great! I know
this opportunity is time-limited.) Other days she
grumps at me and nothing I say is right. It's
great to be able to not take it personally. It's
all part of healthy development.
We're making quick progress through my fabric
stash. I've been making clothes: mostly training
bras, skorts, and swim skirts out of Spandex so
that we can wear it straight into the pool and out
again. I've even been able to make a few clothes
for me instead of just for her. I used godets to
turn last year's swim skirt for A+ into a swim
skirt for me, and I added in-seam pockets. Pockets
are great for stashing goggles, glasses, and
diving toys. I want pockets in everything now.
It's nice getting the hang of more of these little
techniques, especially since it means I can turn
more scraps and outgrown clothes into new things.
I sewed a large zippered liner for W-'s drawer so
that we could protect out-of-season wool clothes
and blankets from moths. I used the leftover
canvas to make a bag for A+ so that she could shop
for snacks independently, since the reusable bags
from the store dragged on the ground when she held
them in her hand. This one is just the right size.
It's great to be able to make things that fit. I
also made aprons for her and one of her friends,
whom we treated to a pottery class. A+ enjoyed
potato-printing her bag and apron at the Bike
Brigade x Not Far From the Tree pizza party at the
park, which was a lot of fun. It might be
interesting to pick up more paintable/dyeable
fabric and some fabric paint so that we can make
our own designs.
A+ was briefly sick with a fever, and then I had a
sore throat and a fever too. Now no one has a
fever, but I still have a persistent cough. We
think we might have picked something up at the
party. Even though it was outdoors it was a bit
crowded, lots of people were talking, and we
hadn't worn our masks. Oh well, just gotta do
better next time and mask up at big events. At
least I'm still testing negative for COVID. I'm
masking at home so that W- doesn't get sick, and
generally taking it easy. We got a membership for
the ROM, but the annoyance of this cough is making
me extra grumpy about crowds and indoor things, so
it might be a while before we're back. Plenty to
do outdoors now that the weather is warm and her
friends play outside.
I probably should sleep more, but I've been
staying up to play Stardew Valley, which you'd be
able to tell from my time records. I like the
game. Even the kiddo is learning to slow down and
take care of her farm. Sometimes we play co-op,
and sometimes we work on our own playthroughs. I
have a fairly built-up standard farm playthrough
where I let A+ take over Ginger Island. I'm proud
of how I successfully didn't grump when she
decided to rip up most of my starfruit plants
there and then ended up not replacing them with
anything. Not even a blip of grumpiness. I already
had more money than I felt like spending, thanks
to the ancient fruit winery I'd set up. Aside from
cooking and puttering around with the sewing
machine, A+ also liked giving my character
relationship advice. She encouraged me to marry
Emily, pronouncing her the most compatible. (She
married Elliott in her own playthrough.) After I
gave Emily the mermaid pendant and came back to
the farmhouse, A+ had set up a mannequin with a
full wedding outfit as a gift for me. She was
proud of gathering all the materials needed and
sewing the virtual outfit herself. I love that the
sandbox nature of the game lets her come up with
her own ideas and make things happen.
I also have a four corners farm with remixed
bundles where I've just completed the community
centre and I'm now slowly collecting hardwood for
the boat to Ginger Island. I've developed an
appreciation for the fishing minigame that I used
to avoid. It's a great way to get treasure.
Anyway, Stardew is a pleasant enough way to spend
little bits of time here and there, and to relax
after A+'s bedtime. It's encouraging to see that I
could actually find plenty of discretionary time
in my day for playing, and I can use that time for
other things once this hyperfocus passes.
Our real-life garden is doing all right, too. Most
of the remaining radishes have bolted, although
some of the larger ones are still growing well. In
spring I gave A+ a bunch of seed packets and let
her plant entirely at her own discretion. I've
been having fun figuring out how to identify and
manage the results, thinning out the ones that are
definitely not what we're looking for in that
space or that just need a little more spacing. We
get a lot of volunteer tomatoes, perilla,
goosefoot, wood sorrel, and clover. I've been
putting those in the compost to make room for the
marigolds and poppies that I recognize from the
seed packet pictures. I'm learning to identify
other plants as they grow. It's fun letting A+ try
whatever she likes and then figuring out how to
work with that. It's also fun blending the
real-life world and the virtual world. We make the
sound effect from Stardew Valley when we uproot
our radishes and hold them up above our heads.
Taking advantage of those last days of predictable
focus time while virtual school was in session, I
got the ball rolling for EmacsConf 2025 with the
call for participation. I also enjoyed attending
the virtual Emacs Berlin meetup and taking notes.
I wrote a bunch of blog posts, too.
We'll see how my focused time settles down now
that we're on summer schedule. It turns out that I
still have plenty of free time. The daytime part
is just more interruptible now because I want to
be ready to do something with A+ or head out the
door when A+ expresses an interest in going to a
playdate or a pool. I still want to get my own
stuff done instead of feeling like I'm on standby,
so it's great that my notes make it easier for me
to make progress in stop-and-go segments. I want
her to feel like I'm happy to spend time with her
instead of being distracted by an interrupted task. I also want
her to see how I choose things to do with my time
and how I use notes to help me work around the
limitations of my brain and my attention. It's an
interesting challenge balancing between occupation
and flexibility. I want her to enjoy unstructured
time and to be able to shift between solo
interests and shared time according to the rhythms
of her energy.
July is probably going to be about hanging out
with A+ near some kind of water. I like this
approach of trusting her to manage her time and
attention, letting her take the initiative when it
comes to going out and playing with friends or
swimming in the pool. In the meantime, there's
time for me to write and play.
9 PM on a schoolday, time for me to nudge A+ off
to bed. A+ is clicking through the Stardew Valley
wiki, slurping up all sorts of trivia that she'll
probably trickle into our conversations. There are
two pieces of homework left to do, one with quite
a few slides to complete. And drawing. She's not a
big fan of drawing assignments. "My hand is
tired," she says.
I try to be calm and supportive. I wobble.
Could've done this earlier, I think. I manage to
keep myself from saying it. I teeter, noticing
myself mentally fast-forwarding decades ahead. Oh
no, she's not going to get the hang of doing
things that she finds boring, she won't develop
study skills or executive control, she'll cram
through all the classes she can coast in, and all
of it will come crashing down in university when
she might actually need to buckle down and study.
She's 9! She's a long way from university.
I'm learning to embrace my anxiety and appreciate
how it tries to keep us all safe. This feeling
makes sense. I want to help her avoid mistakes,
especially when the feedback cycle is long and the
results of choices will only be seen much later.
But anxiety gets in the way of parenting. If I let
the fearful part of my brain take over, I'll
inadvertently teach her that mistakes are
catastrophic rather than just ordinary Tuesdays. I
want to hold her steady, but the wobbles are how
we learn.
It's somewhat manageable now, when we can talk
about these things openly. A+ can laugh off my
worries ("Mom, you're fretting again,") and W- can
remind me to slow down when it runs away with me.
He's usually pretty chill about all this. It'll be
harder when the cognitive rewiring of puberty or
menopause turn ordinary conversations into
minefields right when the stakes get higher. The
more I tighten my grip, the more star systems will
slip through my fingers. (There I go again with
catastrophizing.)
Besides, I want to help A+ avoid the paralysis of
perfectionism or self-recrimination. I want her to
be able to experiment, and to pick herself up and try
again if things don't work out the first time
around. To do that, I need to learn to change my
perspective from being anxious about mistakes to
seeing the opportunities for re-takes.
There are many things I can't teach A+. Some
things can't fully be taught, they can only be
learned, like how to balance the clay on the
pottery wheel. Sometimes I don't even know what
the right answer would be, like what kinds of tips
work for her particular brain. Some things change
over time and she'll need to change with them,
like how to adapt to life's situations. She'll
need to learn how to learn instead of relying on
one fixed answer.
Fortunately, life comes with so many opportunities
to practise. The Toronto public school calendar
has 187 instructional days, so she gets plenty of
chances to manage her homework and get feedback.
The repetitive nature of things used to frustrate
me when it came to my tasks (always more dishes to
wash, always more clothes to fold), but it's good
for learning, especially while the stakes are low.
It's her experiment, I remind myself. About half
the time, she doesn't even want my help. ("I can
do it, Mom.") She's sensible enough to try
things out on small experiments instead of scary
ones: shopping at the grocery store on her own,
not skydiving.
There's plenty of stuff for me to learn while she
learns. When I get the urge to correct her work
("How does that line up with the rubric?") or nag
her to get her work done, I tell myself:
Is it really a problem? The teacher isn't
expecting her to completely master all the
skills, and the teacher is in a good place to
give developmentally-appropriate feedback. I can
let her experiment with how much work she wants
to put into things, and she can see what that
results in. Despite all my twitchiness about how
she puts off her daily homework until 9 PM, she
still manages to get things done. Judging from
the frequent reminders her teacher gives the
virtual class, she's probably ahead of the
curve. So maybe it's not a problem.
Whose problem is it? Something might not be my
problem. It might not even be her problem. She
reads during class time, for instance. Sometimes
she misses something that can't be figured out
from just the homework slide deck. Maybe that's
partly her experimenting to find the right
balance between attention and stimulation. Maybe
that's also partly a consequence of how school
is designed to go at the group's pace. Not
entirely her problem.
The more I let go of the small stuff, the more
experience she'll be able to draw on for the big
stuff. I hope she'll get the hang of thinking of
life as mostly series of little experiments, and
to notice when there's a bigger choice that needs
more thinking because it's more long-term. The
more she decides, the more confidence we both
develop in her decisions.
This reminds me of how kids learn how to bike. The
popular approach uses training wheels to prevent
falls. The idea is to gradually raise them as the
kid improves, but I usually see kids pedaling
along (perhaps slightly leaning over to one side)
to match the slowness of parents' walking. It's
hard to balance when you're going slow. But
pedaling isn't the hard part. Balancing is, and
you develop balance by balancing. Maybe that's a
little like how I get tempted to rescue A+ from
the results of some of her choices, but letting
her try things is how to help her learn.
A+ learned how to bike using a balance bike
instead of using training wheels. When she was
two, she toddled along on a Strider, which was
light enough for her to manage. Eventually she
figured out coasting. She was proud of being able
to do it on her own. Then we upgraded her to a
Cleary Gecko freewheel bike, with proper
hand-brakes and everything. After a few attempts
with us holding her under her armpits, she was
ready for us to steady her with a hand on her
back, and then for us to be close, and then she
was off on her own. She fell and skinned her knee
many times, developing an appreciation of pants
for protection and ice cream for comfort. The more
she biked, the more she learned how to notice that
feeling of being slightly off-balance, and the
better she got at correcting it. Now we can bike
on the streets together.
You can't learn how to bike if the training wheels
are always on, or if someone's always holding you
steady. It's okay to wobble and fall and get up.
You learn that you can survive a skinned knee, and
so you keep going.
Sometimes, when A+'s in the middle of a meltdown,
I have to remind myself not to try to fix it in
the moment. That doesn't work, anyway. Just take
the loss and try again next time. Sometimes, once
we've both calmed down, I ask A+ to imagine
rewinding back to a situation so we can play it
out a little differently. Sorry, I meant to say
this, not that. Would that work better? Next time.
Not mistakes. Data. Just another step in the
journey.
Getting better at getting better helps me, too.
I've been practising piano, making steady progress
through the Simply Piano app. I've been playing
for about four months now. I took piano lessons as
a kid, but not to any serious extent. Back then, I
got bored with the simple exercises I had to do.
Now I feel slow, snail-slow, but I can savour the
way my mind is beginning to get the hang of
things, knowing that it will take me many tries to
get the hang of it. I'm starting to be able to
look at the notes and remember the phrases,
imagine what the next sequence will sound like
before I play it, and notice how my hands move to
make it happen.
When my fingers wobble on the keys, I slow down
and try again. There's no point in berating
myself. If my mind keeps hiccuping or my fingers
keep stumbling, I can think: ah, is this because
I'm tired, or because I want to do something else,
or just because I'm learning and it takes time to
get the hang of things? I'm getting better at
figuring out when I should probably call it a day
so that I don't practise mistakes into my muscle
memory and when I might benefit from just slowing
down the segment.
I still stumble through pieces I've successfully
played before. Remembering is hard. But I'm
getting better at being patient with myself,
accepting that it's because I'm still in the
middle of the journey. It's not a mistake that I
should grump at myself about. It's just part of a
re-take. This is what learning looks (and sounds)
like. Of course it doesn't start out perfectly
smooth.
Here's me learning Mozart's "Rondo alla Turca",
with the app providing accompaniment in the
background. It's not perfect, but it's progress.
・・・・・
We were at the playground. I ate the remaining
crackers in the snack box because I thought A+ was
done. Turns out she was saving them for later. She
was very upset. I apologized and promised to ask
next time, but she was too far gone to hear.
That was a tough moment. A+ was already
emotionally off-balance because the playdate
hadn't gone as well as it usually does.
Discovering I had eaten the crackers she was
looking forward to was the last straw. She
dissolved into tears. I snuggled her and settled
in for a long wait. I think: Where's the line
between comforting her and coddling her? Does my
anxiety teach her this is too hard to handle?
We're not quite at the point of being able to
shrug off mistakes. I remind myself that she'll
learn what she's ready to learn.
Looking around while A+ drenched my left shoulder,
I noticed a skateboarder on the park road. Maybe a
man in his thirties? He was trying to jump his
skateboard over a low concrete lane divider. He
had been at it for a while before I noticed. Most
times, he was able to clear the divider, but the
skateboard slowed down too much on the other side
and he had to jump off. On the seventh try that I
saw, he landed back on the skateboard and rolled
on for a bit. Success! He tried again and failed.
Four more failures before his next success. One
more attempt–another failure–and then he called
it a day. I'm sure he'll be back at it.
A+ continued to cry. My phone buzzed, reminding me
that we probably wanted to get going before the
rain in the forecast. I carried her as I picked up
our bags and put them in my bike. Eventually I
needed to gradually ease her off me. She curled up
in the bucket of my front-loader cargo bike, still
crying. I tucked the towel around her like a
blanket, buckled her bike into the tow-bag, and
walked the bikes home. She fell asleep.
A wobble, a fall. But I'm sure we'll be back at it
too. (And we did; the next day, she was happily
playing with her friends again.)
・・・・・
It's hard to be in the moment. Sometimes the
moment sucks. It's hard to be far ahead in the
future. It makes decisions feel too big. Do-overs
make things just the right size. If we can get
good at shrugging off the inevitable failures and
treating them as data so that we can sketch out
ideas for the next experiment, I think that'd be
pretty cool. Instead of "Oh no!" or even "Are you
sure about that?" (what kid likes to be
doubted?), I can lean towards, "Hmm, let's find
out."
As predicted, we had another late-night homework
situation. This time she had a headache and wanted
to go to bed, homework unfinished. I was able to
let go and just focus on snuggling her in. The
next day, after morning routines and without any
nagging, she did the homework and submitted it.
Late, but done.
There'll be another bedtime homework session,
I'm sure. I have to trust that even though I want
to shortcut the learning for her, she's got this.
She's figuring things out. If we stumble, that
just helps us practice for next time, and there
are so many opportunities to try again. The wobble
is not the obstacle, it's the way.1
Related: The Obstacle is the Way, Ryan Holiday's book on Stoicism; the title rephrases this thought from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations: "… and that which is an obstacle on the road
helps us on this road."
Sometimes I just need to rewind 15 minutes.
That's the length of A+'s recess at virtual
school, which she does at home. At recess, she
often likes to get hugs and sometimes a snack. If
I'm working on something that requires sustained
thought, like code or a blog post, I can't hold
those thoughts in my head for that long while
cheerfully listening to A+ share the trivia she's
read on the Stardew Valley wiki. If I try to keep
my train of thought, I get grumpy. I'd rather get
better at time travel instead. Naturally, this
calls for Emacs.
For people who are unfamiliar with Emacs or Org Mode
GNU Emacs is a highly customizable program for
editing text, writing code, and doing mostly
whatever people want to get it to do. Org Mode is
a package (or ecosystem of packages, really) that
modifies GNU Emacs to make it easier to take
notes, plan tasks, export documents, and so on. If
you're not into Emacs yet, this post might be a
little technical, but maybe there are ways to
translate some of the ideas to things you're
using.
Sometimes recess totally resets my brain and I
can't even think of what I was just working on. To
make it easier to hit the ground running, I try to
make a habit of creating a task in Org Mode before
I start working on it. Or, more realistically,
halfway through, when I realize I have to first do
another thing, so then I jot down a quick task
for the work I was previously doing and another
task for the tangent I'm about to go on. That way,
I can quickly check my notes to see what I was
doing. org-capture (which I've bound to C-c r)
is handy for that. I have a template (t) that
creates a timestamped TODO that links to the
context I created it in (files, note headings,
etc.) and saves it to my inbox file. Then I can
jump to my inbox file with a keyboard shortcut and
look at what I need to get back to doing.
Sometimes I vaguely remember that I've already
created a task for this before and I can find it
with C-u C-c C-w (org-refile). When
org-refile is called with a universal prefix
argument (C-u), it will prompt for a heading in
org-refile-targets and jump to it. I have it set
to complete the outline path, so I can try to find
things by project. Failing that, I might have a
quick rummage in my inbox. I usually don't
remember the exact words I used in the the task
title, though. Maybe someday I'll get the hang of
org-ql or p-search (Emacsconf talk on p-search),
resurrect the Remembrance Agent so that it can
continuously do bag-of-words matching, or use
embeddings to find semantically similar tasks and
notes. In the meantime, capturing the task is more
important than avoiding duplicates. I can find and
clean up duplicates later on.
All of that is moot when I'm away from my
computer, which is most of the time. My phone is
pretty handy for quick notes, though. I use Orgzly
Revived to capture a quick note in my inbox. This
gets synchronized with my Org Mode notes using
Syncthing.
Hmm, I gotta do this first…
Often the interruption doesn't even come from
outside, but from my brain's endless stream of
interesting ideas. Some of those ideas can be
saved as tasks to work on eventually, but
sometimes I need to pause my current task and work
on the new idea. I have a template for an
interrupting task (i) that automatically clocks
out of the previous task and clocks into the new
one.
("i""Interrupting task" entry
(file ,my-org-inbox-file)
"* STARTED %^{Task}\n:PROPERTIES:\n:CREATED: %U\n:END:\n%a\n":clock-in:clock-resume:prepend t)
Okay, that's done, what was I doing before?
If I clock into tasks, I can use org-clock-goto
along with the C-u universal prefix (C-u C-c
C-x C-j) to see a list of recently-clocked-in
tasks. This is great for "popping the stack,"
which is how I think of backtracking once I
finished an interrupting task.
I usually forget to clock out. That's okay. I'm
not looking for precise total times, just
breadcrumbs.
… What was I thinking?
Sometimes a few keywords aren't enough to jog my
memory. Whenever I think, "Ah, this is easy, I
don't need to take notes," I inevitably regret it.
Sometimes I realize I have to re-do my thinking
fifteen minutes later, when singing 4-Town songs
with A+ has pushed those thoughts out of my brain.
Sometimes I have to re-do my thinking several
months later, which is even harder.
Notes are super-helpful. I love the way Org Mode
lets me write notes, paste in hyperlinks, add
snippets of code, save the results of my
explorations, include my sketches, and even export
them as blog posts or documents to share.
Sometimes I have to go back farther into the past
It can take me months or even years before
I can circle back to a project or idea. It can be
hard to reconstruct my thinking after a lot of
time has passed, so it's good to write down as
much as possible. Taking notes feels slower than
just plunging ahead, but they help me travel back
in time to try to remember.
This really gets hammered in when I run into
things I've forgotten, like when I dusted off my
time-tracking code so I could make some changes.
In the four years that elapsed between Aug 2020
(my last change) and Oct 2024 (when I decided to
upgrade it to the latest version of Rails), I'd
forgotten how to even run a development version of
my code. Whoops. I ended up taking more notes
along the way.
I try to keep project-related notes as close to
the project files as possible, like a README.org
in the project directory. Sometimes I don't even
remember what the project is called. I try to keep
another file that indexes things on my computer as
well as things in real life.
Sometimes I know I wrote tasks or notes down
before but I can't remember the exact words I used
for them. I'm curious about whether embeddings
might help me find those things again. So far it's
been okay to just add a new task or note, and then
periodically clean up entries that are no longer
needed.
Going sideways
Sometimes I want to visit
alternate timelines, trying different ways to do
something. I really like the way undo works in
Emacs. It's different from most programs. Emacs
keeps the things you undo/redo.
Let's say I start writing a paragraph or a piece
of code. I change my mind about something. Maybe I
undo, maybe I cut, maybe I delete. I write again.
I change my mind again. The first way was better,
maybe. I can go back to that, step through any of
the intermediate changes, consider the other
version again. It's not lost.
Actually navigating the Emacs undo history can be
tricky. I like using the vundo package for that.
It shows a compact view of the different branches
of this timeline so that I can easily jump between
them or compare them.
If I'm working on something more complicated, like
code, I might make changes over several sessions.
This is where version control is handy. I like
using the Git version control system, especially
with the Magit package. I can commit versions of
the files manually along with a quick note about
what I changed or what I'm trying. This allows me
to easily reset to a certain point.
Sometimes I'm good about picking the right point
to commit: I've made decent progress and things
are working. Sometimes I realize only later on
that I probably should have saved a commit a
little while ago, and now I'm halfway through
another idea that I'm not going to have time to
finish and that leaves my project in a non-working
state. In that situation, sometimes I'll use the
visual undo provided by the vundo package to go
backwards to a version that looks about right,
save that file, commit it with a quick note, and then go forward in
time again.
Saving revisions in Git makes it much easier to go
backwards in time even if I've restarted my
computer. magit-blame and vc-annotate give me
slightly different views showing me the changes in
a file. They don't show me information on deleted
sections, though. For that, I can use the
magit-diff command to compare versions.
Sometimes it's easier to flip through the history
of a single file with git-timemachine.
Git lets me name different experimental timelines
(branches) and logically group changes together.
It means I don't have to worry so much about
messing up a working file, since I can travel back
in time to that version. It also means I can
easily compare them to see what I've changed so
far.
In addition to using version control for various
projects, I also save backup files to a separate
directory by setting my backup-directory-alist
to (("." . "~/.config/emacs/backups")). Disk
space is cheap; might as well keep all the
backups. I sometimes manually go into this
directory to find older versions of things. It
occurs to me that it might be good to flip through
the backups in the same way that git-time-machine
makes it easy to flip through git revisions. I'm
trying out lewang/backup-walker, which shows the
incremental diffs between versions. It was last
updated 12 years ago(!), but can easily be dusted
off to work with Emacs 30 by defining some
functions that it's looking for. Here's my config
snippet:
It's not all about going back to the past.
Sometimes I want to plan ahead: tasks that I want
to schedule for a certain date, pre-mortems to
help me make decisions, gifts for my future self.
I use Google Calendar for appointments and other
things I might want to share with W- for planning,
but there are lots of other things that aren't
tied to a specific time and date. The agenda
feature of Org Mode is handy for scheduling things
and moving them around.
Scheduled tasks don't work out so well if my
agenda gets cluttered by things I ignore, so if I
find myself procrastinating something a lot, I
think about whether I really want to do whatever
it is I've written down.
Some notes aren't associated with specific dates,
but with other events that might happen. I have an
Org Mode outline with various subheadings under
"In case of…", although I often forget to check
these or have a hard time finding them again.
Maybe someday I can write a script that analyzes
the words I use in my journal entries or tasks and
finds the notes that approximately match those
keywords.
Things I want to try
Thinking out loud more might be worth
experimenting with, since I can do that while I'm
working in a different file. I've used my audio
recorder to record braindumps and I have a
workflow for transcribing those with OpenAI
Whisper. I think it would be even more useful to
have an org-capture equivalent so that I can
capture the thought by audio, save the recording
in case there are recognition errors (highly
likely because of the technical terms), and save
the context. Or maybe an even neater interface
that keeps an ear out for keywords, executes
commands based on them, and saves the rest as
notes? whisper-ctranslate2 has a live_transcribe
option that works reasonably well after a short
delay, and maybe I can use a process filter to
pull the information out or write a custom Python
script.
I appreciate how working with plain text can help
me jump backward or forward in time. I'm looking
forward to seeing how this can be even better!
