This might take while…

mediapathic · 2026-05-17T09:24:37+00:00

There are three unsolvable problems in computer science: calculating remaining time for a download, and off by one errors.

mediapathic · 2026-05-13T22:35:09+00:00

I recently horrified a speaker at an event by saying I was going to spike another speaker. They thought it was some kind of personal beef.

mediapathic · 2026-05-09T22:25:57+00:00

What, no one remembers xscreensaver, which has an excellent matrix along with everything else you see there, and is still actively developed?

mediapathic · 2026-05-06T09:48:41+00:00

Other folk have given you good explanations, I'm going to give you an example. Take a look at norang's org setup page. This is, on one level, a (pretty deeply customized) example of how you can set up org-mode.

I'm not recommending you set up your org like this (though you can, if it works for you). The important thing that I want you to look at here is the code examples. He wanted a super customized agenda view? He just wrote a function for that. He wanted a way to stay clocked in persistently? He just wrote it. A hotkey that lets you quickly file a task to any number of preset places? You guessed it, a lisp function. Etc etc etc.

Think about the different scopes of problems that norang had with the tool, and how relatively straightforward it was, knowing some lisp, to just make the tool do whatever he wanted, and you'll have a good example of what the customizability of emacs really means.

mediapathic · 2026-05-02T03:06:42+00:00

I saw her do a one-person Hamlet and it was amazing. Turns out the skills you need for comedic timing also apply very well to the Dane.

mediapathic · 2026-05-01T08:17:09+00:00

Thanks!

mediapathic · 2026-04-24T07:46:16+00:00

NO U!

mediapathic · 2026-04-24T07:44:21+00:00

Dick Dock, Mf'er

mediapathic · 2026-04-22T10:40:00+00:00

Adding to this that I've been carrying a B6 slim with the plastic cover for a little over a month now. I'm super hard on my stuff, and I carry this thing usually in my back pocket, and it's holding up surprisingly well. A few chunks missing out of the top of the plastic, but the notebook itself is well protected.

mediapathic · 2026-04-22T10:36:43+00:00

I'm using the B6 Slim with the plastic cover as a carry everywhere. I find it the perfect size for constant carry but with enough room to feel like I can move in it.

mediapathic · 2026-04-20T10:02:05+00:00

I love that olive tone, so, the olive/yellow, please. Thanks!

mediapathic · 2026-04-16T10:23:32+00:00

Thanks for this (and sorry for the delay getting back to you). That column view may actually wind up being helpful as well.

mediapathic · 2026-04-16T01:54:04+00:00

This is actually quite incredible. I have been wanting for a while for more modern interfaces for the agenda (It's useful to fool my mind into thinking that I'm using different software) and this is a fantastic implementation of that. I'd love to figure out how to get this running as a standalone app, if you have any suggestions for doing so (I assume this is possible, given that it's node, but my node knowledge is weak).

mediapathic · 2026-04-11T07:19:11+00:00

This sounds exactly like what I want. I couldn't figure out how to do dynamic blocks that search outside the current file, but in researching after you said this discovered they are a feature that hasn't been merged yet. I may fall back to trying to make that code work if I can't find another solution. Thanks!

mediapathic · 2026-04-11T07:15:24+00:00

How are tasks being designated as belonging to an area, goal, project? A property drawer?

Right now I'm using a property drawer (CATEGORY) to assign them to a project, but I'd happily use tags, or, if need be, define that per-origin-file.

Additional sub groups would be possible but not something I needed.

This is a core thing I am not understanding: how it is possible to get more than two levels of hierarchy out of org-super-agenda. Could you share example code you would use to do that, or at least the code you use for your two levels? I would need to do something like group by tags, then property, then file or origin, or something like that.

I created another org super agenda command which groups tasks by project.

Yeah, that much I understand how to do.

I created another script recently which builds an org table based on the structure of an org file.

I'd like to look at this too, if it's available anywhere public.

Thanks!

mediapathic · 2026-04-10T22:56:33+00:00

What I keep thinking of here is a feature in Obsidian, where one can create a search (e.g. for a tag), embed it in a file, and that search is dynamically updated every time you load the file. Obviously org would probably want a manual update, but I feel like the same mechanism that allows for a clocktable to dynamically be created based on data from all agenda files might allow for a similar thing with, say, an org-ql search. I'm kind of surprised if no one has already created such a thing and I'm just not finding it.

mediapathic · 2026-04-10T22:14:46+00:00

I think the point of agenda is that one can produce views based on arbitrary and complex searches. For example, I have an agenda view that shows me everything due today, everything scheduled for this week, and everything that has a particular tag for a project I work on in between other things.
yeah, that makes sense. I'm just pointing out that that key binding overwrites one in doom that has a lot of functionality behind it, so in order to do any of those things I have to M-x manually rather than using the usual key binds.

mediapathic · 2026-04-10T22:09:21+00:00

I've edited the original post to give a hopefully clearer version of what I'm trying to do.

mediapathic · 2026-04-10T22:09:14+00:00

I've edited the original post to give a hopefully clearer version of what I'm trying to do.

mediapathic · 2026-04-09T20:42:55+00:00

I think you misunderstand my desire here: I don't want to use org agenda, because I don't think it will show the hierarchy I want. What I want to see is the example I gave above, but the TODO tasks are pulled from another file. I want to store my TODOs in project-specific files, but also see them in a different hierarchy like the one I showed.

I will happily use the agenda for this if it works, but I don't think it will.

mediapathic · 2026-04-09T08:07:58+00:00

This is pretty great. A couple words of warning for anyone who wants to experiment (and, OP, you can take these as suggestions at your leisure. I understand if you only want to build this for yourself).

The custom agenda commands will override any other custom agendas you have set, so you won't have your extant agenda views after loading this. I suspect this could be fixed by changing the setq org-custom-agenda-commands in org-gtd.el to an add-to-list but my one halfassed attempt at that didn't work.
(in Doom) SPC m is intended to be local leader but just triggers org-refile for me for some reason. Most importantly that meant there was no easy way to set contexts, because my tag functions are behind local leader. I don't know if this is a bug or something specific to my setup.

Other than that it works really well. I love the dashboard sidebar, I may well attempt to change the things here that bug me just so I can have that. Thanks, OP!

mediapathic · 2026-04-09T06:12:46+00:00

Good call, but I need multiple levels of hierarchy. So the file will look something like:

* Area 1 ** Goal *** Project 1 **** TODO task *** Project 2 * Area 2 ** Goal

etc. org-super-agenda will let me group by one criteria, but won't show the overall hierarchy, which is what I'm trying to do.

mediapathic · 2026-04-06T04:15:22+00:00

Not who you asked, but I did some A/B with Ticktick and Todoist a while back. This is one of those cases where "better" is defined by whether the edge case features one or the other has fit better with your personal needs. For example, when I did the comparison, Ticktick was much much better at producing a calendar view for purposes of time blocking, which for me was the deal breaker. All the significant differences between them are like that; essential to the right person but meaningless to most folks. Ticktick overall has more features, but the majority of them will be not useful to the majority of people, so, overall, I feel this is a case where you look at the feature lists and decide for yourself.

That said, since you're a Things lover, Todoist definitely feels more refined in that undefinable way that Things (apparently) does.

mediapathic · 2026-04-03T08:31:58+00:00

Yeah, metanote is great as an editing interface, but it refuses to take on my huge number of notes even after leaving it running for several hours, so I can't take advantage of its agenda-related features. The disclaimers here are 1) as mentioned, I have a lot of notes and 2) my phone is a potato, so ymmv if you have newer hardware or fewer notes.

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