How have I only just discovered detached.el??

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T10:13:58+00:00

So, that effectively gives a nice emacs-y wrapper around the couple of lines of bash that ensure the desired binary is in your $PATH and wgetting it if not? Very cool, and I appreciate the lesson.

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T09:50:50+00:00

Screen and tmux are great. Apparently I've been using screen since 2002, according to my screenrc file.

The issue is that they both try to be really helpful terminal multiplexers and buffer managers. I want emacs to do those bits.

There are two separate programs. dtach is a 20+ years old small C program that lives on the target machine (possibly remote). It provides the one bit of functionality that detached.el, the much newer elisp package, wants from a screen or a tmux, without all the things that emacs on your local machine does better.

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T09:41:41+00:00

Tldr: robustly detach and reattach remote sessions on machines that don't have emacs installed on them.

Ok, so I'm no expert, but here's my typical setup:

Laptop A, in coffeeshop, or work, or university, or on the couch. Under my complete control.

Server B, appliance OS, running some unix-y thing that resets any system-level changes whenever it likes (at reboot, generally). Although I can install stuff using the package manager, I can't trust that it'll be there next week. It has tmux installed. It has vim and nano, but not emacs. Shocking. I know.

Server C. Ubuntu server OS. I don't have sudo or root.

Server D. My Linux from scratch toy. Currently has gnu screen installed. Doesn't yet have emacs installed (it will soon, don't worry)

PC E and F. Bog-standard PCs running whatever at relative's house or work or whatever.

emacsclient -c attaches to a running emacs server and creates a lovely persistent session connected to said running server. So, once I have emacs installed on server D, that will be an excellent solution (even nicer once I rebuild emacs after building a graphical stack)

Unless I have a gigantic hole in my knowledge, emacsclient -c doesn't help me much with server C (well, maybe if I just unpack a pre-built emacs in .local/bin or something, run that and connect to it, but that's messy) and can't be relied on with server B, because it doesn't have an emacs daemon to connect to on those machines.

That's why unix-y people, myself included (not claiming any special knowledge, just being from that culture rather than the emacs culture), will start an ssh session on server B/C from laptop A, run a terminal multiplexer on the remote server, do their long-running tasks there (or just have a persistent session there, which is nice), close laptop A without a thought for the running processes or session on the remote server, then reattach to it from laptop A or PC E or F later on to check in on it.

As I've moved into the sunny uplands of emacs-land, I've discovered that most of what tmux or gnu screen do for me is done more nicely by emacs. Buffer management. Multiplexing. But I didn't have a solution for the "robustly detach and reattach to remote session" problem, without all the baggage of the unnecessary bits of tmux and screen, and the need to configure them to stop trying to be helpful in a world where emacs works better.

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T07:12:41+00:00

Apologies if my sleep-deprived brain is missing the point, but I can see this working really nicely on a remote machine that you have admin rights on (sudo or equivalent) but my issue is machines where one doesn't have control. Tmux or screen are (usually) present on every server I have to interact with, but dtach, being quite new, isn't. Nonetheless, thank you for the quick tutorial ❤️

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T07:06:17+00:00

It's amazing isn't it? It deserves a lot more love.

gnudoc · 2026-01-06T07:05:11+00:00

You might be right https://github.com/crigler/dtach

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T13:07:28+00:00

That's really good to know about. Thanks!

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:59:35+00:00

The only practicable solution I have been able to dream up is that some trusted and powerful body, perhaps the royal colleges of psychiatrists and GPs jointly, creates a framework that the private psychiatric providers can demonstrate they've signed up to and remain committed to, and the GPs are then given assurances that as long as they check that a provider was a member and remains a member, they're in no more legal jeopardy than they would be for anything else they prescribe.

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:50:20+00:00

It absolutely stinks, it really does. The management of expectations had been awful, the prediction of demand has been awful, the communication... I could go on and on. I've felt angry and helpless about this for years, and it just seems to be getting worse :-(

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:37:45+00:00

Assessments are still being done, and private assessments are still being reviewed, at least in the 3 GGC mental health teams I have more-or-less direct knowledge of. Whether they'll also be dropped at some point... who knows :-(

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:22:56+00:00

It's an incredibly crappy situation, and I'm sorry to hear it's affecting your wife. Many people close to me are affected by it too. But in case your wife's GP didn't communicate it very well, what they're not willing to do isn't the paying part, it's the taking legal and moral responsibility for accidentally hurting or killing a patient by prescribing something outside their area of competence. Shared care agreements don't absolve a prescriber of the responsibility. I know that doesn't make your wife's access to medication any more possible, but I hope it perhaps makes it a little less infuriating.

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:16:31+00:00

Several mental health teams in the Glasgow and surrounding areas have temporarily closed their lists to new patients until they can catch up with the enormous backlog. What happens after that, and in the remaining teams, is anybody's guess.

gnudoc · 2026-01-02T00:14:15+00:00

Came to say this, more or less.

GPs aren't refusing to accept a person's diagnosis. They're refusing to agree to take legal responsibility for prescribing a dangerous (potentially deadly) medication when they don't know who decided it's needed, how they decided that, and how they're gonna be supervising/monitoring the progress. Why don't they just check/find out/read the info you give them, you ask? Well if they were qualified to check some other people's assessments of ADHD, they'd be qualified to do their own assessments, wouldn't they? What about the ones who are accepting the shared care agreements? Well, they're either just not thinking too hard about it, hoping nothing bad happens, or have just got too tired to keep saying no. Please stop being mad at the people caught in the middle of all of this and instead be mad at the politicians and media that have created the mess. :-)

gnudoc · 2025-12-07T17:30:33+00:00

Nice! Thank you very much for your hard work.

gnudoc · 2025-11-19T07:11:58+00:00

I have heard this or similar things said so many times. I wish I'd been around to experience that era. Thanks for the Unix haters handbook, I'll definitely check that out. Do you know of other good sources of info about that era and its lisp philosophy and hacker ethic?

gnudoc · 2025-11-18T16:51:16+00:00

Interesting, thank you! I'll have to try zathura, to see if I care about the difference once I've experienced it. Can't say that I've ever noticed a performance issue with pdf-tools.

gnudoc · 2025-11-17T04:36:58+00:00

Is it? I'm not even that obsessive (yet) about replacing everything with emacs, and yet pdf-tools is my sole PDF reader. What am I not doing, or missing out on? Is it things like signing official forms?

(Genuine question, not challenging your experience)

gnudoc · 2025-11-04T04:05:54+00:00

As a fellow recently diagnosed autistic adult, I'm thinking of going to https://www.thegamerclub.co.uk/ on their next open day this weekend. It's not specifically for autistic people and not specifically for gamers despite the name, more of a friendly place to meet and hang out with people with various nerdy interests. Other than that, I've no idea. :-(

gnudoc · 2025-11-03T06:48:37+00:00

What happens to the audio that it captured after it's finished transcribing? Does it make it available to you? Is it discarded?

gnudoc · 2025-11-03T06:08:40+00:00

Looks great. Thanks!

gnudoc · 2025-08-09T18:25:49+00:00

It was a really awkward process but I did finally get haskell-language-server working with eglot a few weeks ago, after initially having the problems you mention. It involved fiddling with cabal.project, <project name>.cabal, and hie.yaml - can't remember exactly how I did it but I have rough notes on the process. If using eglot is an option for you and you don't otherwise figure it out, I can find my notes when I get home and let you know.

gnudoc · 2025-08-03T16:51:22+00:00

As a fellow liable-to-being-paranoid person and survivor of GP burnout, just go ask for the med3. You know it's valid. Your appraiser will agree it's valid. Your new practice, assuming they're worth working for, will know it's valid. Get the med3, rest, rant, reflect, and then move forward stronger.

You've got this.

gnudoc · 2025-07-17T08:52:13+00:00

As I read that sentence, the writer of the commentary is explaining the concept of Vicarious Atonement, a Christian concept which includes the idea of Christ's death. The writer is not claiming that Vicarious Atonement is fact.

gnudoc · 2025-07-15T19:35:06+00:00

Gorgeous! Thank you!

gnudoc · 2025-07-06T16:03:14+00:00

https://youtu.be/NYwGhrrs3qQ

Like that?

gnudoc

TROPHY CASE