Author: grant

How To Choose The Perfect Emoticon

Emoticons are pretty fun to use but they are hard to choose because there are so many!

Here is how to make it easy: go over this list and then use search to find the noun or verb that you are looking for like “triumph” or “savouring” or “unamused”

Even if you don’t have anything to search for, it is still in alphabetical order and it is pretty fun to see all eighty faces out there available right now!

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(Emacs+Org-Mode) Choosing The Best Writing And Publishing Software

In regards to writing and publishing literature (mostly articles, books, essays, and dissertations) there is a lot of discussion about choosing the right (software) tools for the job. And for good reason—literary endeavors are mentally laborious difficult work. As anybody would expect the software should help you a lot. At best you only want to worry about choosing the right software to help you write.

Yet the sad and all too common reality is that you are really worried about choosing the software that is the least-worst painful impediment to your creative process. Discussions that praise particular tools are pretty difficult to take any value from until you’ve suffered greatly at the hands of the tools deemed inferior by them. When people are suffering that is the worst time to get their feedback. First get them better, then find out what works and what doesn’t.

This post is what I’ve got to share with you, when I am feeling pretty great about life, and have something good to share about the topic, in regards to \(\LaTeX\) and Org-Mode.

If you are considering using \(\LaTeX\) and Org-Mode for some reason then please read on:

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(AppleScript+macOS) Maybe The Only Working Applescript For Toggling Grayscale And Inverting Colors On macOS Sierra In The World

THANK YOU SILESKY

Toggle Grayscale 

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    delay 1 # needs time to open universal access
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences" to tell window "Accessibility"
        tell scroll area 2 to tell table 1 to tell row 6 #open display preferences
            select
        end tell
        click checkbox "Use grayscale"
    end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit
# Sierra: System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display -> Use grayscale

Invert Colors 

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
    delay 1 # needs time to open universal access
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences" to tell window "Accessibility"
        tell scroll area 2 to tell table 1 to tell row 6 #open display preferences
            select
        end tell
        click checkbox "Invert colors"
    end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit
# Sierra: System Preferences -> Accessibility -> Display -> Invert colors

Aliases

Run them from the command line. Maybe make your screen black and white at night or invert colors for screencasts or working in sunligh. 

alias togglegrayscale='osascript /Users/gcr/util/sspadtogglegrayscale.scpt'
alias invertcolors='osascript /Users/gcr/util/sspadtogglecolors.scpt'

(Emacs+Org-Mode) Close Magit-Process Related Buffers When They Become Obselete

My old Magit setup left a bunch of buffers around that I didn’t need anymore. Here is the posted solution to close them automatically: 

(defun help/magit-kill-buffers ()
  "Restore window configuration and kill all Magit buffers.
Attribution: URL `https://manuel-uberti.github.io/emacs/2018/02/17/magit-bury-buffer/'"
  (interactive)
  (let ((buffers (magit-mode-get-buffers)))
    (magit-restore-window-configuration)
    (mapc #'kill-buffer buffers)))
(bind-key "q" #'help/magit-kill-buffers magit-status-mode-map)

(Emacs+Org-Mode) A Literate LS

I can never remember what parameters I want for ls so I made an alias for it. I still couldn’t remember them so I copy and pasted the documentation into a literate document and tangle that into a function to do what I want:

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(Emacs+Org-Mode) Quickly Figure Out How To Write A Function By Decompiling A Macro Using It

When I can’t figure out how to write a function to do what I want then I record a macro of what I want to do and then “decompile” it to Elisp using elmacro. This is a super-power package if you want to figure out how something works.

(Emacs+Org-Mode) Don't Dash Your Hopes Of Utilizing Dashes

You’ve got Unicode and Emacs so take advantage of the 3 kinds of dashes available to every writer. Here is how with a little detail you might find pretty useful totally unrelated to dashes!

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