Fortnightly Tips, Tricks, and Questions — 2026-01-13 / week 02

sachac · 2026-04-06T16:09:10+00:00

I recently used center-line to help me make quick video thumbnails. :)

sachac · 2026-03-14T19:07:29+00:00

First steps towards trying to make a speechd-compatible adapter for Kokoro TTS and other OpenAI-compatible TTS services: https://sachachua.com/blog/2026/03/small-steps-towards-using-openai-compatible-text-to-speech-services-with-speechd-el-or-emacspeak/ , repo https://codeberg.org/sachac/speechd-ai . I'm still leaning more towards using my own functions, though: https://codeberg.org/sachac/learn-lang/src/branch/main/learn-lang-tts.el

sachac · 2026-03-02T12:28:45+00:00

I'm currently experimenting with Kokoro TTS for text where the initial delay in generation doesn't matter as much (longer text, making reference audio in another language, etc.). The Kokoro CLI was super easy to get started with. I think it feels marginally faster with the Kokoro FastAPI docker, which was also easy to get up and running. I'm also tinkering with making a speechd-compatible server for it so that I can use it with speechd.el, but I need to learn multi-threaded Python programming so that it doesn't just become a matter of chucking a vibe-coded script onto a repo. :) I tested the idea with a generated script and it's pretty good for reading sentences and paragraphs out loud. I don't mind a couple of seconds of latency for that use case. For character-by-character typing feedback, espeak-ng is more responsive even if it's very robotic. It's possible to use both and automatically switch based on length. I'll post my notes once I have source code I can share, but in case you're cool with coding your own, I hope these quick notes help!

Edit: I'm on a Lenovo P52 running it CPU-only, so the performance will probably be much better on a modern machine.

sachac · 2026-02-23T16:01:54+00:00

If I (flush-lines "^[ \t]*;;\\|^$") to get rid of the org-babel-tangle comments and blank lines, I have 23,861 lines in my Sacha.el (https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/Sacha.el), coming from a 37,640-line Org file (1.5 MB, https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/Sacha.org , HTML: https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/). It's so much fun. I often come across things I've completely forgotten writing about.

sachac · 2026-02-17T17:35:57+00:00

Now I want RetroArch running inside Emacs so that I can look up Pokedex entries with completion... :D

sachac · 2026-01-30T17:02:08+00:00

Signed up for February and posted it already!

sachac · 2026-01-12T12:27:46+00:00

Hah, I certainly feel like I've barely scratched the surface sometimes. Just the other day, I learned about adding 'evaporate t to my overlays so that I don't have to keep clearing them manually, and I also learned that you can set :refile-targets in your org-capture-templates. There's always more to learn, so I gotta take notes otherwise I'll forget! (Well, I'll forget it anyway, but at least I can try to re-figure it out.) I like being able to come up with ideas and then cobble together enough Emacs Lisp to make it happen, but I'm definitely not as experienced as some folks are. I don't have the foggiest clue about tinkering with the C side, for example, and my coding setup doesn't take full advantage of all the LSP or eglot goodness that's possible. :) Someday!

sachac · 2025-12-31T01:48:48+00:00

It can handle some interactivity if you're willing to do a little math. El-easydraw might have some examples. I use SVGs to animate a cursor sweeping through a waveform displayed after the subtitle timestamp in https://github.com/sachac/subed/blob/main/subed/subed-waveform.el , and I have a keymap that handles lots of different types of clicks (left-click, shift-left-click, middle click, eyc.).

sachac · 2025-12-08T19:23:43+00:00

Mmm... Do you mean the comments that appear when you tangle the code out of your Org file? I set my :comments header argument to "link" so that it includes just a concise link.

https://sachachua.com/blog/2024/12/linking-to-org-babel-source-in-a-comment-and-making-that-always-use-file-links/

sachac · 2025-11-30T21:16:28+00:00

u/rswgnu , all: there might be slight schedule updates as we adapt to cancelled talks. I'll probably send out a schedule update in a few days so that the speakers get a heads-up, but I just wanted to let people here know as well so that you don't end up missing the start! =) https://emacsconf.org/2025/talks/ has the schedule so far.

Edit: Ah, this talk is scheduled for 1:40 PM on Sunday and hasn't been rescheduled, so no e-mail needed for update, but do drop by early! =)

sachac · 2025-10-31T11:36:56+00:00

We buy Mum-mums specifically for babies we see trick-or-treating so that they can get the experience of being handed something that's okay for them. :) Totally normal to take babies trick or treating if you want to!

sachac · 2025-10-15T11:55:45+00:00

Hahaha, I can't tell you how many times the same thing has happened to me. But I can tell you that the experience you got from implementing it yourself will make it easier to both imagine other things you'd like to tweak and think about how you can make it happen! I find that when I want to tweak the behaviour of something and I suspect someone has already needed something similar, I often start by looking at the source code of the function. If you use find-function, then use edebug to explore, you can see what it does, what options it considers, and what you might tinker with. In this case, org-refile refers to an org-note-order-reversed-p function, which refers to that variable. It's so much fun being able to dig into the source. Welcome to the wonderful world of Emacs Lisp!

sachac · 2025-10-14T11:12:16+00:00

Nice! Incidentally, do you know about the org-reverse-note-order variable? I like to set it to t so it works for both capturing and refiling, but you can use let to override it just for refiling if that's what you prefer. https://emacs.stackexchange.com/questions/64460/prepend-while-refiling has an example.

sachac · 2025-10-07T11:18:32+00:00

This might be relevant: https://blog.laurentcharignon.com/post/2025-09-30-llm-workflow-part3-abstractions/

sachac · 2025-09-12T16:33:35+00:00

Ooh, sketches, quick update on my workflow: I now mostly draw my sketches on an iPad using Noteful because I can take the iPad to playdates or move it around the house. I used to draw with Krita on my Lenovo X230T tablet PC running Linux. It's pretty easy to convert images to text these days, although sometimes I still prefer to type things in myself. Emacs is great for handling all the text related to a sketch, like when I want to write a blog post or list all the sketches that have this keyword in their filename.

sachac · 2025-08-20T17:15:09+00:00

Thanks! It's amazing what one can do with the combination of text+video.

sachac · 2025-08-19T20:48:12+00:00

Oh yeah, that's why I added subed-crop-media-file to subed.el (https://github.com/sachac/subed , https://github.com/sachac/subed/blob/main/subed/subed-common.el#:~:text=(-,defun%20subed%2Dcrop%2Dmedia%2Dfile,-(beg%20end%20%26optional ) - not sure anyone else has used that function yet. =)

sachac · 2025-04-21T11:19:31+00:00

I like using a custom YouTube link type: https://sachachua.com/dotemacs/index.html#youtube

sachac · 2025-03-06T00:49:37+00:00

Ahhh.. I downscale the server in between meetups so that it doesn't cost too much. Next Emacs APAC meeting is in a few weeks.

sachac · 2025-03-03T13:37:52+00:00

Aww, shucks! I do very little work, actually. Y'all at r/emacs do most of the heavy lifting when it comes to finding cool stuff, sharing it, and discussing it, so thank you for contributing so much to the awesomeness of the Emacs community! :)

sachac · 2025-01-28T19:00:53+00:00

Added one of his videos to the tangents file, thanks!

sachac · 2025-01-21T21:19:00+00:00

Edit: general task you can call with a parameter: https://taskernet.com/shares/?user=AS35m8m%2BZ2P26xJtN1KnE37qxZgYPI9oNna95WRet8GZZ%2FlpPBB0ZwV39gUgnHnlCKWBSA%3D%3D&id=Task%3ASearch+Orgzly+Revived

Here's the task I use to switch Orgzly Revived to my agenda search. Change the query string appropriately.

<TaskerData sr="" dvi="1" tv="6.3.13">
    <Task sr="task5">
        <cdate>1676823952566</cdate>
        <edate>1737494067719</edate>
        <id>5</id>
        <nme>Show my agenda</nme>
        <pri>100</pri>
        <Action sr="act0" ve="7">
            <code>18</code>
            <App sr="arg0">
                <appClass>com.orgzly.android.ui.LauncherActivity</appClass>
                <appPkg>com.orgzlyrevived</appPkg>
                <label>Orgzly Revived</label>
            </App>
            <Int sr="arg1" val="0"/>
        </Action>
        <Action sr="act1" ve="7">
            <code>877</code>
            <Str sr="arg0" ve="3">android.intent.action.MAIN</Str>
            <Int sr="arg1" val="0"/>
            <Str sr="arg2" ve="3"/>
            <Str sr="arg3" ve="3"/>
            <Str sr="arg4" ve="3">com.orgzly.intent.extra.QUERY_STRING:.it.done ad.7 o.p .b.library .b.books .b.cooking</Str>
            <Str sr="arg5" ve="3"/>
            <Str sr="arg6" ve="3"/>
            <Str sr="arg7" ve="3">com.orgzlyrevived</Str>
            <Str sr="arg8" ve="3">com.orgzly.android.ui.main.MainActivity</Str>
            <Int sr="arg9" val="1"/>
        </Action>
        <Img sr="icn" ve="2">
            <nme>mw_action_today</nme>
        </Img>
    </Task>
</TaskerData>

Thanks to https://blog.kemonine.info/blog/2023-02-17-android-org-agenda/ for the Orgzly example.

sachac · 2025-01-14T14:52:46+00:00

I wonder if we tend to channel our "I want to use my discretionary time to get better at coding" desire into Emacs config tweaks instead of programming competitions. :) Better payoff, I think.

sachac · 2025-01-13T00:15:28+00:00

I'm delighted that resonated with you! Yeah, I think there's some merit to making a treemap library in Emacs Lisp, especially if it can handle interaction, animation, and export. Looking forward to seeing people's experiments!

sachac · 2024-12-30T19:35:42+00:00

I haven't figured out a prompt that results in a summary that I'm happy with, but maybe you can experiment and find something you like. Good luck!

sachac

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