Srijan Choudhary's Articles and Notes Feed

I didn't know that Aloe Vera can have flowers!

Read Jeremy's post on quickly switching the default browser.

I had a shell script to do this as well. Doing it from Emacs makes more sense because I can have a completion UI.

So, here's my modified version for Linux:

(defun sj/default-browser (&optional name)
  "Set the default browser based on the given NAME."
  (interactive
   (list
    (completing-read
     "Browser: "
     (split-string
      (shell-command-to-string
       "find /usr/share/applications ~/.local/share/applications -name \"*.desktop\" -exec grep -l \"Categories=.*WebBrowser\" {} \\;")
      "\n" t))))
  (let ((browser-desktop (file-name-nondirectory name)))
    (shell-command (format "xdg-mime default %s text/html" browser-desktop))
    (shell-command (format "xdg-mime default %s application/xhtml+xml" browser-desktop))
    (shell-command (format "xdg-mime default %s application/x-extension-html" browser-desktop))
    (shell-command (format "xdg-settings set default-web-browser %s" browser-desktop))))

As a plus, it automatically lists the installed browsers based on .desktop files on your system.

I had been facing an issue in #Emacs on my work Mac system: C-S-<tab> was somehow being translated to C-<tab>. I tried to look into key-translation-map to figure out the issue, but could not find anything.

Finally, turned out that I had bound C-<tab> to tab-line-switch-to-next-tab and C-<iso-lefttab> to tab-line-switch-to-prev-tab, but the actual C-S-<tab> was unbound. C-<iso-lefttab> only works on linux: something to do with how X11 sends the event to the application (and probably some compatibility mode due to which wayland was doing the same).

On Mac, once I explicitly bound C-S-<tab> in my Emacs config, it started working correctly.

Read an interesting set of posts today: https://lethain.com/extract-the-kernel/ and https://lethain.com/executive-translation/ . The basic concept is:

... executives are generally directionally correct but specifically wrong, and it’s your job to understand the overarching direction without getting distracted by the narrow errors in their idea.

This resonates well with my experience. I have been doing this unconsciously, but it's good to put it in these words.

Tried using X11 on #Linux the last few days due to some issues with Zoom screensharing in Wayland with the latest pipewire, and I already miss #Wayland.

Issues I faced with X11:

1. Smooth scrolling broken
2. Apps work noticeably slower
3. Screen tearing
4. This bug in Emacs GTK build: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=67654 (To be fair, this is a GTK-specific issue, not X11 specific)

I will go back to Wayland as soon as Zoom fixes this: https://community.zoom.com/t5/Zoom-Meetings/share-screen-linux-wayland-broken/m-p/203624/highlight/true#M112235

I have been using #karousel on #KDE for several weeks, and yesterday shifted to #PaperWM on #GNOME. Took some time to configure things like I wanted, but it's much smoother than karousel (and fancier).

Overall, I like the scrolling tiling pane paradigm. I realized I've been manually doing something like this using workspaces with 1-2 windows per workspace with two keybindings - one to change workspace and one to switch windows inside a workspace. So, this window management model really clicks for me.

I switched from GNOME to KDE several years ago due to getting burnt by extensions breaking too frequently, but hopefully things are better now.

#Emacs #TIL : I learned about save-interprogram-paste-before-kill - which saves the existing system clipboard text into the kill ring before replacing it. This ensures that Emacs kill operations do not irrevocably overwrite existing clipboard text.

A common workflow for me is to copy some text from a different application and paste it inside Emacs. But, if I want to first delete a word or region to replace, the deleted word or region goes to the system clipboard and replaces my copied text. This config saves the previous entry in the system clipboard so I can do a C-p after paste to choose the previous paste.

Something precious stolen by magic.
#WitchHatAtelier #Manga #Magic

My small #emacs #orgmode #gtd customization of the day:

org-edna is a plugin that can be used to setup auto triggers (and blockers) when completing a task. org-gtd uses it to auto-forward the next TODO item in a project to NEXT when a task in the project is marked as DONE. The #orgedna trigger it uses is: relatives(forward-no-wrap todo-only 1 no-sort) todo!(NEXT).

This works okay for me, but also results in tickler tasks configured as repeated tasks to go to NEXT state instead of TODO state when they are completed. This results in them showing up in the org agenda even before they are due.

To fix this, I had to add this property to the top-level headings of the tickler file:

:PROPERTIES:
:TRIGGER: self todo!(TODO)
:END:

This overrides the global triggers configured by org-gtd for these org subtrees.

Note to followers of my site using RSS feeds - I've removed the microblog replies/likes etc kind of posts from the "All Posts" feed. I feel social interaction posts like that should not be part of the default feed of my website.

There is always the notes feed that includes all microblog posts including reactions / interactions.

A list of feeds available can be found here: https://srijan.ch/feed/

#IndieWeb #Feeds

I have been reading books mostly on Kindle for the last 10 years or so. Visited a nearby library today.

I didn't realize I was missing the experience of browsing shelves, stumbling upon unexpected gems, getting lost in the recommendations section, and choosing something physical to checkout.

Redoing these tests with indieConnector v2.1.0

Discovery Tests 1-22: PASS
Discovery Test 23: FAIL
Update Test 1: PASS
Update Test 2: FAIL
Delete Test 1: Not Tested
Receiver Tests 1-2: PASS

#IndieWeb #Webmention

Using sysrq on my laptop - documenting mostly for myself.

My laptop has started freezing sometimes, not sure why. Usually, I can just force power off using the power button and start it again, but it has happened twice that I had to recover the system by booting via a USB drive, chrooting, and recovering the damaged files using fsck or pacman magic.

The linux kernel has:

a ‘magical’ key combo you can hit which the kernel will respond to regardless of whatever else it is doing, unless it is completely locked up.

(More details on archwiki and kernel doc)

To enable, I did:

echo "kernel.sysrq = 244" | sudo tee /etc/sysctl.d/sysreq.conf
sudo sysctl --system

However, to trigger this on my laptop, I was not able to find the right key combination for SysRq. I was able to make it work using an external keyboard that has a PrintScreen binding on a layer, by using the following:

Press Alt and keep it pressed for the whole sequence: PrintScreen - R - E - I - S - U - B

Currently, PrintScreen on my external keyboard is bound to Caps lock long press + Up arrow.

Found Samuel's nice post on capturing data for org via email.

This is very close to what I was looking for to be able to do GTD capture on-the-go either from phone apps like Braintoss or from any email app.

One addition I would like to make is handling attachments in the email by downloading them and attaching to the org entry.
This would be useful for voice notes from Braintoss - it does transcription of the audio and adds it to the email body, but sometimes it doesn't work so well and I have to fall back to listening to the audio. It will also be useful for forwarded emails containing attachments.

#GTD #Emacs #OrgMode

@rogerlipscombe@hachyderm.io has a nice post on using git with multiple identities. His recommended way (using includeIf to include different config files for different parent folders) also makes sense to me the most.

My new #IndieWeb enabled website is now live!
You can follow my microblog posts or blog articles by entering @srijan.ch@srijan.ch in your Fediverse app search bar or reply and interact with any post using #Webmention or your Mastodon/Fediverse app.

Site Features:

• Indieauth
• Webmentions
• Federation with the fediverse (via Bridgy Fed)
• Structured author, posts, and feeds using microformats
• Microsub

New #Coffee #BlueTokai

This new packaging from BlueTokai looks nice. And the coffee tastes amazing. Chocolatey flavour with very little bitterness.

#Patterns

Test webmention + fed.brid.gy:

Two naked tags walk into a bar. The bartender exclaims, "Hey, you can't come in here without microformats, this is a classy joint!"

Added an RSS feed for notes

I've been working on an Indieweb-enabled site redesign using Kirby CMS + TailwindCSS.