I use the Unbound DNS resolver built in to pfSense. By default the resolver filters out any results that are private IP addresses. Normally this makes sense: no public domain should have a private address. But sometimes it does make sense. For example there are some useful services like sslip.io that will resolve to any IP address that you like. So 127.0.0.1.sslip.io resolves to to 127.0.0.1. This is can be useful for local development, especially when working with containers and reverse proxies and the like.

Even after using Emacs for 15 years there’s still so much I can learn. I probably should have already known this, but there’s a first time for everything.

It’s rare that Emacs hangs. Exceedingly rare. Which is probably why I didn’t know how to deal with it. Today Emacs started hanging when trying to open files over a remote TRAMP session (SSH).

The most important key of all that everyone who uses Emacs knows is C-g. This is the universal “quit” key and it has the power to interrupt any long running processes. What I didn’t know about is M-x toggle-debug-on-quit. I’ve used toggle-debug-on-error extensively when programming Elisp (I even have it bound to a key in Elisp buffers). toggle-debug-on-quit is similar except the debugger is invoked when you C-g.

This is a little trick I just applied and thought was cool enough to write down.

Let’s say you want to replace a name that is used throughout a project. Due to various conventions/restrictions in use the name might appear in several forms like: MY_COOL_NAME, my-cool-name, my_cool_name etc.

In Emacs you can invoke regexp replace across an entire project by invoking project-query-replace-regexp, by default bound to C-x p r. This will first prompt for the regexp to search for, then what to replace it with.

I’ve been using Emacs for almost 15 years now. Somewhat surprisingly, I hadn’t touched my config in three years! It’s been working that well. But now that Emacs 29 has been released I’ve decided to take a look at what’s new and there have been some big changes, particularly for Python.

On Linux, software should generally be installed with your system package manager (apt, yum, portage etc.) However, Calibre is a bit “special” in this respect. While well-loved, it’s known to be a bit difficult to package (to say the least) and most distro packages you’ll find are out of date. The official website recommends against using any distro packages and instead installing it directly from the site.

Unfortunately, the official instructions are problematic for a number of reasons. For a start, copying and pasting commands from the browser is considered dangerous. But that’s easy to fix, in bash do Ctrl-X Ctrl-E and your preferred text editor will be opened for you to type your command. This means you can inspect what is pasted before is run (save the file then exit the editor to run the command). Very important. Always do this when copy/pasting from the web.

In which I compare cooking food with building software

If you want to start Arduino programming you’ll notice a lot of the documentation and tutorials are centred around the Arduino IDE. Now, obviously, as an Emacs user you’ll be loath to install something like Arduino IDE, let alone actually use it. The good news is it’s super easy to get started with Arduino with any editor, including Emacs and even Vim if you so desire.

All the Arduino IDE is doing is calling a cross-compiler toolchain then using avrdude to communicate with the Arduino to upload software. The Arduino Uno and Nano both use the Atmel AVR platform so what you need is a toolchain that can target that platform. Now, you could install your own toolchain and call avrdude directly. If you know how to do that then I guess you can stop reading now. But if you don’t, or aren’t interested in learning how (it’s not very interesting), then read on.

I love going to the cinema, but I’ve always been disappointed that I can’t see older films and I can’t see them when it’s convenient for me. There have always been ways to watch films at home, but even today when large screens and high-definition formats are ubiquitous, it’s just not the same as the cinema experience. There’s something completely different about the big screen that a TV in a living room can’t replicate. For that reason I’ve wanted my own home cinema for as long as I can remember. The problem is I don’t want to spend a lot of money on it.

I’ve always thought I should write a blog, but I just never got around to setting it up. I know there are services you can simply sign up to and start writing, but that isn’t for me. I have two requirements for this thing:

1. I can write using tools of my choice,
2. I can host it anywhere.

My tool of choice for writing anything is emacs and, for natural language in particular, org-mode. This is a bit like markdown, but better. For version control and deployment I use git.