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Software problems (and rsync failed to set permissions)
I regret that I have little opportunity to work on free software outside my job these days. One of the reasons is that I have been struggling all the time with things that don’t work, a significant part of them being software problems. Software problems can be categorized into three groups: User stupidity problems Software […]
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Emacs workspaces
I use Emacs for everything that can be done with it reasonably. I often run in a single Emacs session Gnus, Org agendas, command line actions, IRC, several development projects, etc. The question is how to switch between all those activities efficiently. During the years, I tried several workspace, perspective or screen (whatever they are […]
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speechd-el 2.11 released
speechd-el 2.11 release introduces index marking feature, i.e. moving the cursor as the text of a buffer is read. This feature has been planned for more than 10 years but due to various circumstances, its implementation, although not that difficult, has been delayed. Now it is finally implemented although it may need further improvements in […]
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Back to Vanilla Music
I have found out that I was mistaken, Odyssey Android music player cannot always play the tracks in the right order. Additionally, it has sometimes problems (as many Android music players have) with non-ASCII characters in file tags. So I’m returning back to using Vanilla Music. I abandoned it when it was incapable to play […]
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Switching from Firefox to Brave
The new Firefox ESR release has hit my desktop this week. Debian stable is stable; except for Firefox. Firefox ESR releases last only for about one year. Debian release cycle is typically about two years so in order to keep up with security fixes, Debian stable has to switch to a new major Firefox version […]
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A usable music player for Android
It’s surprisingly difficult to find a music player that works. I have the following minimum requirements on a usable music player for Android: It is free software. It can play music. It can play album tracks in the correct order. It can search by artist and by album. It can recognize music library updates. There […]
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Free navigation software
There is quite a lot of free navigation software based on OpenStreetMap, but it’s somewhat difficult to find something that actually works for the given purpose. I feel like I need to document for myself what to use. And why not share the documentation? Hence this blog post. It’s easy on Android – there’s OsmAnd […]
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Using Polar M460 on GNU/Linux
In short: Use Garmin if you can afford it. The problem with Polar devices is that they are not only proprietary themselves but you can’t operate them without using additional proprietary software. If you don’t like the default Polar M460 sport profiles and screens (and no, you won’t like them), you must find someone with […]
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Capturing Web content from Firefox to Org
Emacs is a powerful tool but it’s better to use other means for Web browsing, such as Firefox. Now the question is how to transfer pieces of Web content from Firefox to Org mode. Org mode already provides means for communication with external applications. org-protocol.el is a general mechanism for importing information to Org mode […]
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Privacy Badger
Privacy Badger 1.0 has been released some time ago. If I could install a single Firefox extension only, it would be this one. It’s very easy to use, effective (AFAICT) and doesn’t cause problems; much better than the other privacy extensions I used (although they can still be useful for special purposes). I can recommended […]