Last Pretest Emacs Released

Barring a major bug, the last pretest release of Emacs is out.  The windows binaries are here.

The tentative release date of Emacs 23.1  appears to be July 22. Mark your calendars.

Quickly looking up words in Google through Emacs

Here is a post by Joe Fineman that outlines how to quickly look up something in Emacs.  You need to have w3m installed for it to work.  And it is indeed easier than switching to the browser and looking it up.

(defun google (what)
"Use google to search for WHAT."
(interactive "sSearch: ")
(save-window-excursion
(delete-other-windows)
(let ((dir default-directory))
(w3m-browse-url (concat "http://www.google.com/search?q="
(w3m-url-encode-string what)))
(cd dir)
(recursive-edit))))

(global-set-key "\C-Cg" 'google)

Sourceforge voting has started

As I mentioned in a few of my previous posts here and here, org-mode has been nominated  for the community choice awards 2009.

Well, the voting is now open.  Please vote for org-mode which is under the category 'Most likely to change the way you do everything'.  It hardly takes a minute.

Another Emacs Pretest is out

A new version of the Emacs Pretest is available for download.  The Windows version can be found here, though it seems you might have to wait a bit, as the binary is not available as of posting.

Org video for the SourceForge Commmunity Choices Award 2009

In case you didn't know, org-mode has been shortlisted by Sourceforge for community choice award.  In the course of submission, the org-mode developers and users produced a video that showcases orgmode.

The youtube video is here.

Org-mode presentation

Maybe this will convince you to use orgmode?

A damn good introduction to org-mode

I'll have to second Carsten here on the awesome new tutorial on all things org by Bernt Hansen.  In Carsten's own words

If you are serious about using Org-mode to get organized, this is simply an awesome resource of ideas, customization snippets, tips and tricks.  I am learning looking at that, too.

And that's from the creator of org-mode!

it's just fantastic.  Give it a read or better still, take a printout and curl up with it.

Deleting mail source files in Gnus

When Gnus fetches mail, it typically stores them as Incomingxxxxxx files under ~/Mail directory and then splits it into nnml or nnfolder depending on your backend preferences.  If you fetch mail frequently, there will be lots of such files under the Mail directory.  One reason why these files exist is, in the rare case you corrupt some recent email or delete it accidently, it can still be retrieved by checking the Incoming files.

However if you want to delete them, you could set the following and it will automatically delete them after 2 days.  You could set it to any number you wish.

(setq mail-source-delete-incoming 2)
(setq mail-source-delete-old-incoming-confirm nil)

More information about other customisation options can be found at the node Mail Source Customization in the Gnus Manual.

Firefox users flip out over sneak MS add-on

This is certainly not going to go down well, is it?  Basically, Microsoft is supposedly pushing an add on that users cannot uninstall and probably not want in the first place.

The last paragraph alone is enough to make people think more about switching to Linux.

Methinks, there might be a lawsuit in the offing.

Well, the new Pretest Release is out now

Well, whatever issue that seemed to have delayed the pretest seems to have been fixed.  You can get the latest pretest here and the Windows binaries are here.

This had me keeling over with Laughter

From here

<rmrfResume> So let me get this straight.

<rmrfResume> You built a linux system from scratch using hardened GCC

<rmrfResume> secured the whole system with RSBAC

<rmrfResume> Developed private chroots for each and every service ran on it

<rmrfResume> which include an http, ftp, smtp, pop3, imap, irc, and dyndns server

<rmrfResume> WITH mail filtering and dynamic mysql databases for each service

<rmrfResume> with the mysql daemon in its own chroot

<rmrfResume> then did same system networking for the whole lot

<rmrfResume> and had everything running in a single night?

<Pryoidain> I do cocaine.

<cjk> oh

<asaph[Away]> WOW

<rmrfResume> suddenly it all makes sense.