Sacha Chua

YayEmacs 10: Emacs coaching with Prot: Emacs workflows and streaming #emacs #YayEmacs

My post from 12 years ago https://sachachua.com/blog/2014/04/digging-limiting-factors-comes-interviewing-people-podcasts/ reminds me that doing those #Emacs config walkthroughs in Emacs Chats was a lot of fun and maybe I can start them again next school year. Who might be up for something like that?

I've been experimenting with more live-streaming lately, and I have one this Thursday with Prot. https://sachachua.com/topic/live/ While looking through my "On this day" posts, I was amused to see this one from 5 years ago about sharing more of my discretionary time, with streaming as one of the stages that I didn't have the focus time to consider back then. https://sachachua.com/blog/2021/04/thinking-about-how-to-squeeze-more-out-of-my-discretionary-time/ It's so nice to see the change over time. Dictation is more viable now, and mornings might work for streaming. Little by little!

In a little over one hour, I'm going to chat with Prot about #emacs. =) This time I'm going to try livestreaming it! https://www.youtube.com/live/djE_pVlgDHg https://yayemacs.com

[2026-04-16 Thu 10:30] (-0400) = Thu Apr 16 1030H EDT / 0930H CDT / 0830H MDT / 0730H PDT / 1430H UTC / 1630H CEST / 1730H EEST / 2000H IST / 2230H +08 / 2330H JST

Reading tecosaur's lovely 317-page Emacs config PDF at https://tecosaur.github.io/emacs-config/config.pdf gave me a case of literate config envy, so I spent the morning wrangling my #Emacs configuration into a slightly prettier PDF. It is 736 pages long and 12 MB in size. My table of contents takes up 15 pages. I still want to add lots of commentary, implement more LaTeX exports for my custom link types, and tweak the design some more, but at least it's there now. =) https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/index.pdf (although for some reason it doesn't like to load in Firefox...)

@pkal@social.sdfeu.org I started putting together a guide for newcomers-presets and I thought you might like it / have suggestions. =) What's in the Emacs newcomers-presets theme?

Also, would something like fido-vertical-mode be nice to turn on? Newbies from a non-programming background might not think of using TAB right away, and fido-vertical-mode might be a good way to reduce a little bit of friction and suggest things.

https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/hacker-mindset/

"This is another common pattern among people who have a hacker mindset. They have gotten their hands dirty playing around with the technical parts, insisting on understanding every aspect of the work."

... "What we’re talking about here isn’t like going to school—it emphatically is not that—suffering through all of the boring prerequisites before you get to do the exciting parts. What we’re talking about is actually doing the fun stuff, playing around with projects that excite you, trusting that you can learn enough to solve your problems. If you keep tinkering, doing one fun project after another, you will eventually see through the system."

2026-03-16 Emacs news #emacs #EmacsNews

2026-03-09 Emacs news #emacs #EmacsNews

In about 4 hours: May 7: Emacs Chat with Shae Erisson https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/05/may-7-emacs-chat-with-shae-erisson/ Thu May 7 1030H EDT / 0930H CDT / 0830H MDT / 0730H PDT / 1430H UTC / 1630H CEST / 1730H EEST / 2000H IST / 2230H +08 / 2330H JST

Slowing down and figuring out my anxiety #parenting #life #reflection