Author: grant

Whitespace

Most modern programming languages do not consider white space characters (spaces, tabs and newlines) syntax, ignoring them, as if they weren’t there. We consider this to be a gross injustice to these perfectly friendly members of the character set. Should they be ignored, just because they are invisible? Whitespace is a language that seeks to redress the balance. Any non whitespace characters are ignored; only spaces, tabs and newlines are considered syntax.

Whitespace must be learned.

God Mode — no more RSI

Lot of posts recently about the desire to reduce RSI from too much keyboard use in Emacs. Although I didn’t look up any studies or evidence of this, the idea of hacking how to handle keybindings in Emacs is always interesting.
God mode is one way to “simplify” things.
Basically you go in and out of the mode, and when in it, single key strokes are automatically prefaced with a control, and meta commands are prefaced with a g instead.

How to keep OSX awake

If you have long-running tasks you surely want to keep your Mac awake to at allow them to complete, or more. A lot of GUI applications claimed to fit the bill but the first one I tried let the Mac go to sleep! The solution is caffeinate; run it from the terminal.
ADDENDUM
Here is the flag for preventing the machine from sleeping, perhaps the most important one:

-s      Create an assertion to prevent the system from sleeping. This asser-
             tion is valid only when system is running on AC power.