Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Regulating Your Writing Workflow With Emacs - Irreal

2026-01-18T15:43:09.000Z

A few days ago, Chris Maiorana wrote an article, The 10-Commit Rule: how git version control can improve writing quality, about how he uses Git and Emacs to regulate his writing workflow. The idea is to track how many changes he’s made to his text since the last commit and to stop and review his work when he reaches about 250 changes, deletions, or additions. The advantage of this system, he says, is that it keeps you from burning out in an initial burst of enthusiasm by forcing you to stop periodically and see where you are.

To help him with this, he has a mode line display that shows him how many changes he’s made since the last commit and how many commits he’s made today. It seems like a system that could be useful to many writers. The problem is, he didn’t explain how he got the numbers for his mode line display.

Now, however, he has a new post that explains how he generates that display. The TL;DR is that he interrogates Git to get both numbers. The number of commits is pretty easy, of course, but getting the number of changes is a bit trickier. Basically, he runs a script that does a git-diff and pipes the results through grep and wc to extract and count the “words” that have changed. To keep from running the script continuously, he caches the results and updates them only every 30 seconds.

I’m not sure I’d like using his exact system but I must admit that I do pretty much the same thing without the software assist. Every so often, I stop, reread and edit what I’ve written, and, if I remember, commit what I have so far. As any writer will tell you, there are as many writing methods as there are writers so whether Maiorana’s method works for you will be a matter of your preferences.

The Sunday Papers - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-18T10:44:05.000Z

Sundays are for walking around your home, looking for somewhere to install the home security camera you got for your birthday, and realising a) how few unused surfaces actually exist in this space and b) it was pretty stupid to ask for a home security camera when you knew full well its only purpose would be keeping an eye on the cat while you’re out. And she’s the cat equivalent of a human octogenarian. What, exactly, is she going to do, that might warrant establishing a surveillance state in your own living room? And seriously, how is there not a single inch of unused shelf?

Better, it sounds like, to have a seat and reason quality articles. Go on, while no-one’s watching.

Four stable kernels for the weekend - LWN.net

2026-01-17T19:27:19.000Z

Greg Kroah-Hartman has released the 6.18.6, 6.12.66, 6.6.121, and 6.1.161 stable kernels. As usual, each has important fixes throughout the tree; users are advised to upgrade.

Emacs: Updating a Mailchimp campaign using a template, sending test e-mails, and scheduling it - Sacha Chua

2026-01-17T17:59:01.000Z

I'm helping other volunteers get on board with doing the Bike Brigade newsletter. Since not everyone has access to (or the patience for) MailChimp, we've been using Google Docs to draft the newsletter and share it with other people behind the scenes. I've previously written about getting a Google Docs draft ready for Mailchimp via Emacs and Org Mode, which built on my code for transforming HTML clipboard contents to smooth out Mailchimp annoyances: dates, images, comments, colours. Now I've figured out how to update, test, and schedule the MailChimp campaign directly from Emacs so that I don't even have to go into the MailChimp web interface at all. I added those functions to sachac/mailchimp-el.

I used to manually download a ZIP of the Google Docs newsletter draft. I didn't feel like figuring out authentication and Google APIs from Emacs, so I did that in a NodeJS script instead. convert-newsletter.js can either create or download the latest newsletter doc from our Google Shared Drive. (google-api might be helpful if I want to do this in Emacs, not sure.) If I call convert-newsletter.js with the download argument, it unpacks the zip into ~/proj/bike-brigade/temp_newsletter, where my Emacs Lisp function for processing the latest newsletter draft with images can turn it into the HTML to insert into the HTML template I've previously created. I've been thinking about whether I want to move my HTML transformation code to NodeJS as well so that I could run the whole thing from the command-line and possibly have other people run this in the future, or if I should just leave it in Emacs for my convenience.

Updating the campaign through the Mailchimp API means that I don't have to log in, replicate the campaign, click on the code block, and paste in the code. Very nice, no clicks needed. I also use TRAMP to write the HTML to a file on my server (my-bike-brigade-output-file is of the form /ssh:hostname:/path/to/file) so that other volunteers can get a web preview without waiting for the test email.

(defun my-brigade-next-campaign (&optional date)
  (setq date (or date (org-read-date nil nil "+Sun")))
  (seq-find
   (lambda (o)
     (string-match (concat "^" date)
                   (alist-get 'title (alist-get 'settings o))))
   (alist-get 'campaigns (mailchimp-campaigns 5))))

(defvar my-bike-brigade-output-file nil)

(defun my-brigade-download-newsletter-from-google-docs ()
  "Download the newsletter from Google Docs and puts it in ~/proj/bike-brigade/temp_newsletter/."
  (interactive)
  (let ((default-directory "~/proj/bike-brigade"))
    (with-current-buffer (get-buffer-create "*Newsletter*")
      (erase-buffer)
      (display-buffer (current-buffer))
      (call-process "node" nil t t "convert-newsletter.js" "download"))))

(defun my-brigade-create-or-update-campaign ()
  (interactive)
  (let* ((date (org-read-date nil nil "+Sun"))
         (template-name "Bike Brigade weekly update")
         (list-name "Bike Brigade")
         (template-id
          (alist-get
           'id
           (seq-find
            (lambda (o)
              (string= template-name (alist-get 'name o)))
            (alist-get 'templates (mailchimp--request-json "templates")))))
         (list-id (seq-find
                   (lambda (o)
                     (string= list-name
                              (alist-get 'name o)))
                   (alist-get 'lists (mailchimp--request-json "lists"))))
         (campaign (my-brigade-next-campaign date))
         (body `((type . "regular")
                 (recipients (list_id . ,(alist-get 'id list-id)))
                 (settings
                  (title . ,date)
                  (subject_line . "Bike Brigade: Weekly update")
                  (from_name . "Bike Brigade")
                  (reply_to . "info@bikebrigade.ca")
                  (tracking
                   (opens . t)
                   (html_clicks . t))))))
    (unless campaign
      (setq campaign (mailchimp--request-json
                      "/campaigns"
                      :method "POST"
                      :body
                      body)))
    ;; Download the HTML
    (my-brigade-download-newsletter-from-google-docs)
    ;; Upload to Mailchimp
    (mailchimp-campaign-update-from-template
     (alist-get 'id campaign)
     template-id
     (list
      (cons "main_content_area"
            (my-brigade-process-latest-newsletter-draft-with-images
             date))))
    (when my-bike-brigade-output-file
      (with-temp-file my-bike-brigade-output-file
        (insert (alist-get 'html (mailchimp--request-json (format "/campaigns/%s/content" (alist-get 'id campaign)))))))
    (message "%s" "Done!")))

Now to send the test e-mails…

(defvar my-brigade-test-emails nil "Set to a list of e-mail addresses.")
(defun my-brigade-send-test-to-me ()
  (interactive)
  (mailchimp-campaign-send-test-email (my-brigade-next-campaign) user-mail-address))

(defun my-brigade-send-test ()
  (interactive)
  (if my-brigade-test-emails
      (mailchimp-campaign-send-test-email (my-brigade-next-campaign) my-brigade-test-emails)
    (error "Set `my-brigade-test-emails'.")))

And schedule it:

(defun my-brigade-schedule ()
  (interactive)
  (let ((sched (format-time-string "%FT%T%z" (org-read-date t t "+Sun 11:00") t))
        (campaign (my-brigade-next-campaign)))
    (mailchimp-campaign-schedule campaign sched)
    (message "Scheduled %s" (alist-get 'title (alist-get 'settings campaign)))))

Progress, bit by bit! Here's a screenshot showing the Google Docs draft on one side and my web preview in the other:

Figure 1: Google Docs and Mailchimp campaign preview

It'll be even cooler if I can get some of this working via systemd persistent tasks so that they happen automatically, or have some kind of way for the other newsletter volunteers to trigger a rebuild. Anyway, here's https://github.com/sachac/mailchimp-el in case the code is useful for anyone else.

This is part of my Emacs configuration.

View org source for this post

You can e-mail me at sacha@sachachua.com.

Does One Call Oneself a Poet? - Take on Rules

2026-01-17T17:26:19.000Z

Bending Emacs 10: Agent Shell - Irreal

2026-01-17T15:40:52.000Z

Álvaro Ramírez has a new Bending Emacs video up. This time it’s about his agent-shell app that serves as uniform Emacs interface to LLM agents supporting the Agent Client Protocol (ACP).

I’m not interested in LLM technology so you almost never see an Irreal post about it. I don’t know—and therefore have no opinion on—if it’s something real or just another venture capitalist fever dream. Still, if you are interested in LLMs, it’s nice to have an app like agent-shell that provides a uniform interface to most (all?) of them.

There’s a huge number of options and details to negotiate so an app like agent-shell is a real boon. Almost none of those options involve picking which shell you want to use. You simply choose one from a list of supported shells and work within that shell for the rest of your session.

There are way too many details for me to cover here. The video itself is 36 minutes, 34 seconds so there’s a lot of content to cover. If you are interested in LLMs, and especially if you use more than one, you should definitely watch this video and download agent-shell. It’s available on Melpa so installation is easy. Like all of Ramírez’s work, agent-shell seems like a well engineered app and it’s free so you have nothing to lose by trying it.

Valve tweak Steam AI disclosure form for developers to clarify it's for content consumed by players - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-17T14:40:39.000Z

Back in early 2024, Valve put up new rules for game developers on Steam to pull in some information about generative AI, and they now seem to have tweaked it.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Proton Experimental brings updates for MonoGame, Rockstar Launcher and more - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-17T14:22:14.000Z

Valve launched a new update for Proton Experimental for January 16th to improve various games and launchers working on SteamOS / Linux.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-17T10:00:00.000Z

Many of today's game designers have, like me, grown up with Japanese Y2K style - the style of the late 90s and early 2000s that gave us not only fear of the end of the world due to a calendar change, but also the WipEout series, futuristic PlayStation 2 ads, and fashion that incorporated everything from glitter to holographic fabrics and cute crop tops.

In a media landscape that seldom shies away from homages and sequels, I’ve waited a long time for the influence of childhood favourites such as Dance Dance Revolution and Space Channel 5 to pop back up. After all, plenty of Western developers have taken inspiration from Japanese role-playing games, giving us Sea of Stars, Undertale and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to name a few. Recently, I found some really cool games by Western developers that are living the Y2K dream with me, so it was time to dive into their inspirations and compare some childhood anime with some nerds.

What are we all playing this weekend? - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-17T08:00:00.000Z

Saturdays are for… drat, look at the time! I shouldn't be writing an article. I should be loading boxes into vans. Frantically disassembling furniture. And stopping the friends who are 'helping' me move house from pausing to sip cups of tea. It's like they don't know how long I spent on the phone to the council booking parking permits. No, I couldn't possibly tell you. Well, twist my arm. 45 minutes.

So, if you're curled up in bed having a relaxing morning, I envy you. But know that I'm in that blessed window where I can 'accidentally' lose all the personalised mugs and t-shirts I've been given as presents over the years. You know, the ones the gift giver is always asking after or expecting to be on display. This is a window that only opens once every few years, and with both hands I'm throwing 'Boyz on tour mugs' out of it.

These Deep-Sea Creatures Liked You on Hinge - McSweeney’s

2026-01-16T18:00:00.000Z

Black seadevil anglerfish
Twenty-five-years-old, monogamous, wants children

What I’m looking for: A confident, independent female roughly twenty times my size with a dangly, glowing orb attached to her forehead.

Don’t hate me if I: Latch on to you and permanently fuse to your body until my head dissolves and our circulatory systems become one

This year, I want to: Delete this app <3

- - -

Giant squid
Fifteen feet long, Catholic, figuring out my dating goals

Give me travel tips for: Two-thousand feet below sea level off the west coast of Norway—Spring break 2026 gonna be a movie!

If loving this is wrong, I don’t want to be right: The Office

My love language is: Physical, tentacle-y touch

- - -

Hexactinellid sponge
Software engineer, nine thousand years old,
twenty-eight centimeters tall

I bet you can’t: Pronounce my name

Unusual skills: Asexual reproduction, limb regeneration

My perfect first date: You come over to the same spot where I have been rooted, and will be rooted, for my entire life, and we filter feed and chill

- - -

Greenland shark
Four hundred years old, Pisces, open to children

I’ll fall for you if you: Trip me

Typical Sunday: Gym, football, video games

My simple pleasures: Cold, open waters and a dead animal carcass dinner

- - -

Sea lamprey
Four hundred fifty million years old

I go crazy for: Blood

Change my mind about: Blood

I want someone who: Blood

- - -

Bobbit worm
Three years old, five centimeters tall, conservative

My greatest strength: Burrowing my entire scaly, eyeless, brainless body into the sand

Let’s debate this topic: Be honest, do female bobbit worms really deserve the right to vote?

All I ask is that you: Don’t take yourself too seriously

- - -

Giant isopod
Freelancer at Freelance, Taurus, drinks occasionally

I know the best spot in town for: Deep-sea detritus

I’m weirdly attracted to: Redheads

All I ask is that you: See me not for my hard, bony exoskeleton, but the empathetic, gooey water bug underneath. <3

[$] A free and open-source rootkit for Linux - LWN.net

2026-01-16T17:57:32.000Z

While there are several rootkits that target Linux, they have so far not fully embraced the open-source ethos typical of Linux software. Luckily, Matheus Alves has been working to remedy this lack by creating an open-source rootkit called Singularity for Linux systems. Users who feel their computers are too secure can install the Singularity kernel module in order to allow remote code execution, disable security features, and hide files and processes from normal administrative tools. Despite its many features, Singularity is not currently known to be in use in the wild — instead, it provides security researchers with a testbed to investigate new detection and evasion techniques.

Third-person mech-action shooter roguelike RIG Riot gets a demo - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-16T17:14:50.000Z

Give me some of that sweet mech combat action - RIG Riot looks pretty fantastic, and now there's a demo available for you to try.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Don't worry about The Division, Ubisoft say as series executive producer jumps to Battlefield amid layoffs - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-16T16:39:06.000Z

Julian Gerighty, a long-time key cog at Massive Entertainment, has announced that he's departing the Ubisoft-owned studio after 12 years to go and work on Battlefield at EA. His departure swiftly follows Ubisoft revealing earlier this week that they're planning to lay off staff at Massive, with a voluntary redundancy process late last year reportedly having not resulted in enough departures to stave off this bloodletting.

Meanwhile, the publishers have opted to take the opportunity of Gerighty's departure to reassure folks that The Division series is just fine.

DLSS 4.5 does look nicer, I just wish it would explain itself better - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-16T16:18:19.000Z

DLSS 4.5 is out now, and while previous new versions of Nvidia’s performance-massaging upscaler would have required waiting around for game implementation – beyond the inevitable Cyberpunk 2077 debut, anyway – it follows more recent additions in letting you impose it upon existing games from the off. That’s done via the Nvidia App and its DLSS Override tools, which following an update on January 14th, is tooled up with what version 4.5 promises to be tangible visual improvements.

I’ve been testing it, both on this public Nvidia App release and on a pre-release beta build, and DLSS 4.5 can indeed deliver on the right settings. But it’s also more of a specialised tool than DLSS 4, and although backwards compatibility is welcome, it’s presented with an opaque naming system that has as much in common with algebra as it does with upscaling.

Multiple Editing Instances Of A Single File - Irreal

2026-01-16T16:15:57.000Z

Emacs has a couple of builtin ways of dealing with separate windows that are looking at the same file. The default method is to simply “open” the file again in a separate window. In this case you have two views into the same file. The windows may be looking at different parts of the file but any change made in one window appears in the other as well because both windows are using the same buffer.

Alternatively, you can open the second window by cloning the first buffer. That creates a second buffer with the same text and properties but they are distinct buffers that can have different point values, different narrowing, different major modes, different markers, different overlays, and different local variables. Nevertheless, any text or text property change made in one buffer is reflected in the other. Take a look at the Emacs manual for the details.

You’d think that those two options would cover whatever you needed to do but Sacha Chua has a post that describes a case not covered by either. In this case the user wants to display an SVG file in one window and the XML that generates it in another. The problem here is that the image is displayed with text properties so toggling the display in one window will cause it to affect the other window as well even if the other window is a cloned buffer.

Chua shows how to solve this by writing a bit of Elisp. The TL;DR is that she bypassed the code that checks if the target file is already opened in another buffer and simply creates a new buffer unconditionally. Of course, now you have to worry about syncing the text between the two buffers. Chua solves this by turning on global-auto-revert-mode so that when one file is saved, the other gets updated.

I’m always prattling about how having the Emacs source available from within the executable image coupled with the ability to make on the fly changes is one of Emacs’ magic powers. Chua’s solution is a nice example of this.

Skyrim co-lead claims The Elder Scrolls 6's helm was once promised to him, and he envisioned a plot mirroring the best Star Wars film - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

2026-01-16T15:38:00.000Z

According to long-time Bethesda developer and Skyrim co-lead designer Kurt Kuhlmann, he was originally told he'd be leading the charge on basting the great turkey that is the The Elder Scrolls 6. That didn't end up coming to pass and, having left Bethesda back in 2023, the developer's now spilled the beans as to the sort of story he envisioned the follow-up to The Elder Scrolls 6 telling.

Tabulo is chess meets Balatro and it's out now - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-16T15:04:42.000Z

Is it chess? Is it Balatro? It's both, sort of. Tabulo is a pretty clever mixture of gameplay elements that looks set to hook you in.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Security updates for Friday - LWN.net

2026-01-16T14:14:02.000Z

Security updates have been issued by AlmaLinux (gnupg2), Debian (firefox-esr), Oracle (cups, gnupg2, libpq, net-snmp, postgresql, postgresql:15, postgresql:16, transfig, and vsftpd), Red Hat (firefox), SUSE (apache2, curl, firefox, gpg2, hawk2, libcryptopp-devel, openCryptoki, python310, python311-urllib3, rke2, squid, and tomcat), and Ubuntu (cpp-httplib, git, python-apt, and simgear).

EndeavourOS Linux gets an upgraded release with Ganymede Neo - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

2026-01-16T14:14:00.000Z

After a major update released for EndeavourOS late last year, a new refresh is out with Ganymede Neo with a big tweak for NVIDIA GPU owners.

Read the full article on GamingOnLinux.

Just my blogroll - BlogFlock

Regulating Your Writing Workflow With Emacs - Irreal

The Sunday Papers - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

Four stable kernels for the weekend - LWN.net

Emacs: Updating a Mailchimp campaign using a template, sending test e-mails, and scheduling it - Sacha Chua

Does One Call Oneself a Poet? - Take on Rules

Bending Emacs 10: Agent Shell - Irreal

Valve tweak Steam AI disclosure form for developers to clarify it's for content consumed by players - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

Proton Experimental brings updates for MonoGame, Rockstar Launcher and more - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

What are we all playing this weekend? - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

These Deep-Sea Creatures Liked You on Hinge - McSweeney’s

Black seadevil anglerfish Twenty-five-years-old, monogamous, wants children

Giant squid Fifteen feet long, Catholic, figuring out my dating goals

Hexactinellid sponge Software engineer, nine thousand years old, twenty-eight centimeters tall

Greenland shark Four hundred years old, Pisces, open to children

Sea lamprey Four hundred fifty million years old

Bobbit worm Three years old, five centimeters tall, conservative

Giant isopod Freelancer at Freelance, Taurus, drinks occasionally

[$] A free and open-source rootkit for Linux - LWN.net

Third-person mech-action shooter roguelike RIG Riot gets a demo - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

Don't worry about The Division, Ubisoft say as series executive producer jumps to Battlefield amid layoffs - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

DLSS 4.5 does look nicer, I just wish it would explain itself better - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

Multiple Editing Instances Of A Single File - Irreal

Skyrim co-lead claims The Elder Scrolls 6's helm was once promised to him, and he envisioned a plot mirroring the best Star Wars film - Rock Paper Shotgun Latest Articles Feed

Tabulo is chess meets Balatro and it's out now - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

Security updates for Friday - LWN.net

EndeavourOS Linux gets an upgraded release with Ganymede Neo - GamingOnLinux Latest Articles

Black seadevil anglerfish
Twenty-five-years-old, monogamous, wants children

Giant squid
Fifteen feet long, Catholic, figuring out my dating goals

Hexactinellid sponge
Software engineer, nine thousand years old,
twenty-eight centimeters tall

Greenland shark
Four hundred years old, Pisces, open to children

Sea lamprey
Four hundred fifty million years old

Bobbit worm
Three years old, five centimeters tall, conservative

Giant isopod
Freelancer at Freelance, Taurus, drinks occasionally