Emacs on Macos for Linux Peeps

Looking at the Emacs bug tracker, there’s a bunch of Apple-specific Emacs bugs, and I thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the more trivial bugs. So I wondered what you’d have to do to build Emacs under Macos, and… I found a bunch of people talking about how easy it is, but nobody actually, like, says how to do it. I mean, for somebody who’s barely switched their Apple laptops on.

So since I know naaathing, I’m the ideal person to write this how-to, since people who know everything don’t know what you don’t know.

1a) Install Xcode. This is found in “App Store”, and then search for “Xcode”. Click on the cloud symbol to get it to download. (Just figuring out that took me at least three hours.) It’ll turn into a circle with a square in the middle. That means it’s downloading. It’ll take a while.

1b) Alternatively, just say “gcc” in a terminal. You’ll get a popup asking whether to install command line stuff. Answer yes.

The rest you can do via ssh from your normal Linux machine.

2) Install Homebrew in this insane way:

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install.sh)"

It’s a variation on the time-honoured “curl | sh” method. It’ll prompt you for your password, but don’t worry — it’s probably safe.

3) Install the Emacs dependencies and build Emacs. Just cut’n’paste the rest into your ssh session:

brew analytics off
mkdir src
cd src
git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
cd emacs
brew install pkg-config automake texinfo jpeg giflib\
  libtiff jansson libpng librsvg gnutls
make -j4
./src/emacs

Tada!

See? It really is that easy, and you almost don’t have to work on the Apple laptop itself. (Although you do if you’re futzing around with display stuff, I guess.)

Go forth and hack.

Comics Daze

The other week I spent all day doing absolutely nothing but read comics (and eat takeout pizza) and writing a couple words about each book, and today I’ve got an open schedule again, so here goes.

06:23: Uncle Scrooge: The Twenty-four Carat Moon by Carl Barks (Fantagraphics)

It’s been too long since I’ve read one of these. This volume has stories from 58-61, so it’s pretty prime Barks. One notable thing about many of the stories here are how centred they are on literally incredible inventions — bordering on magic. I mean, Barks loves his gadgets, but in a couple of the stories, they seem kinda… beyond… where he’d normally take those gags (including the title story).

And it seems like Rich Tommaso has stopped doing the colouring? That’s a shame — he’s the best Barks colourist I’ve seen. Not that these are awful or anything, but Tomasso had a way of making everything look just perfectly … right.

Oh oh oh! This story is etched into my brain from my childhood, and I think one of the reasons was this panel: It’s one of the few (perhaps the only?) places where Barks makes an explicit reference to an earlier story. Barks’ stories happen in a universe where everything is reset at the end of each story, really, so this sorta blew my little child mind.

The backmatter is pretty dire, as usual: Plot recaps (WHY!) and endless exhortations about what a genius Barks is. The latter is true, of course, but insisting on it on the backmatter just feels like a hard sell.

08:00: Assasin Child by Tetsunori Tawaraya (Hollow Press)

I saw Domino Comics talking about these books from Hollow Press, which turns out to be an Italian publisher publishing stuff mostly in English. So I ordered a bunch of books from them.

This is a pretty wild and gorgeous thing — it’s an oversized magazine with silver printing on black paper. Fantastic! The story is fun in a stonerish way.

08:12: The Weight #2-7 by Melissa Mendes

So this series is based on a document Mendes’ grandfather wrote about his childhood? Cool. I love the artwork, but compared to the excerpts we get from the document:

… the comic doesn’t seem quite… real. It’s very movie-like, and not in a good way.

It’s quite moving, though.

08:42: Extract by Walker Tate

*gasp*

This is absolutely fabulous! Stunning!

Echoes of Mark Newgarden?

Now I have to buy everything Walter Tate has made, but a quick googling seems to say that there’s not a lot? Only a story in Now #4? Boo!

08:49: Ginseng Roots #4 by Craig Thompson (Uncivilized)

I’ve always liked Thompson’s artwork, but I… OK, I hate Blankets and Habibi. Fortunately, Ginseng Roots isn’t anything like that. Sure, we get a bit about religious damage, but here it’s funny.

But the most interesting bits are the bits that aren’t directly about Thompson himself, really. This series is turning out to be, like, an actually good thing: The artwork is better than before (the duo colour thing is perfect for his artwork), and the non-structure of it all is just fascinating.

09:10: Mirror Mirror 3 by Paige Mehrer, Sophie Page and Haejin Park (2d cloud)

*gasp* A book from 2d cloud! Those are becoming rare events indeed, which is sad. 2d cloud was the most important comics publisher in the previous decade.

So this is their anthology title, and it’s all from a collective called Plum.

It’s wonderful!

I hope 2d cloud make a comeback, because there’s nobody with as good an eye for interesting comics.

09:24: Tears of the Leather-Bound Saints by Casanova Frankenstein (Fantagraphics/F.U.)

Wow! It took me a few pages to get into the storytelling rhythms here, but once it clicked it was like whoa.

Fantastic book.

And the choice to reproduce the non-reproducing blue line is interesting.

09:55: Mitchum by Blutch (New York Review Comics)

I’m so over comics biographies that I almost didn’t buy this. But it’s published by New York Review Comics, so I got it anyway.

And it’s not a biography! Whoho! What it is is a collection of slightly abstruse shorter pieces, and they’re mostly fabulous. I mean, the artwork is consistently amazeballs, but a couple of the stories were a bit “eh”. But still: Mostly incredibly good.

10:45: No Romance in Hell by Hyena Hell (Silver Sprocket)

Very funny.

10:53: Space Acedemy 123 by Mickey Zacchilli (Komaya)

Picking this up, I didn’t really have much confidence in it…

… but it’s really funny, and the storytelling chops are amazing: Every page brings develops the plot, but there’s still room for a joke or two. I’m not very confident that the narrative is actually going anywhere, but it’s great being along for the ride. Also: I love how distinct the characters are (not just graphically, but as personalities).

11:52: Badlands by Liz Suburbia (Silver Sprocket)

Fun.

11:53: Sports is Hell by Ben Passmore (Komaya)

Very odd. Whatever you’re expecting this book to be: It’s not that.

12:19: The Summer of Her Life by Thomas von Steinaecker and Barbara Yelin (Self Made Hero)

Tries really hard.

12:35: Dancing After TEN by Vivian Chong and Georgina Webber (Fantagraphics)

Harrowing story. Choppy storytelling.

13:23: Mickey Mouse: The Ice Sword Saga book 2 by Massimo de Vita (Fantagraphics)

I’ve been sampling these Italian Disney comics Fantagraphics are publishing, and… well… they’re OK. This one took an extraordinary number of pages to get started (20 pages to explain the concept), but once the exposition finally let up, there’s some OK gags. And the meta stuff in the second part is pretty unique for Mickey Mouse.

14:23: Teratoid Heights by Mat Brinkman (Hollow Press)

Relentless.

14:46: I, René Tardi, Prisoner of War in Stalag IIB: My Return Home by Tardi (Fantagraphics)

This volume starts where the previous volume left off, with no introduction or anything, so it took me a couple of minutes to remember that that boy was the author as a child, carrying on an imaginary conversation with his father.

The entire volume is just René Tardi on a march back from the Stalag in the last weeks before Germany capitulated, and … it’s pretty monotonous, and not as interesting as the first volume. Instead we get really extensive infodumps from Tardi (as the child) about what was going on in the war.

I found this rather tiresome for the first fifty pages or so, but then I was sort of pummelled into submission and found myself interested.

The artwork is wonderful as always.

16:59: A Period of Madness by Luc Leplae

An absolutely fascinating book.

17:52: The Rough Pearl by Kevin Mutch (Fantagraphics)

Oh deer. This reads like an indie movie where everybody’s bitching at each other relentlessly. I got a sympathy headache from just imagining them shouting all the time. It’s like the author has read that “How to write a damn good book” book, that explains how all scenes have to have at least two conflicts going all the time, and adhered to that religiously. The relentlessly ugly Photoshop-assisted artwork doesn’t help, either, nor does that 90’s “I just read Like A Velvet Glove” plot, replete with all the trimmings, including a strip joint. It was a struggle to get through this.

19:00: What I Hate From A to Z by Roz Chast (Bloomsbury)

It’s amusing…

19:16: The End

I think it’s time for me to go to bed. (Yes, my sleeping patterns are all fucked up at the moment.)

That’s… 13 hours of continuous comics reading? My head is aswarm with imagery, and I feel kinda punch drunk. Reading comics in this stupid way is fun!

User-Contributed Subtitles on Youtube

Gah. Remember just the other week? When I was nattering on about how nice it is that people can add subtitles on Youtube? This allows people to, like, watch stuff in other languages, like this Spanish translation of this Swedish-language Bergman obscurity that some kind soul just contributed?

Well, since Youtube is Google, I should have been prepared to be disappointed, and today I got this email:

“Community contributions” is Google speak for “user-contributed subtitles”.

I find it completely risible that they’re using the apparent fact that only 0.001% channels use this feature as a reason to discontinue the service: But of course! Who needs to have subtitles on PewDiePie or Jake Paul or whatever? But where it’s useful, it’s very useful, like when Spanish people want to watch a Bergman movie from 1950.

And… it’s not a feature that you have to enable on your channel, so if you’re getting spam and abuse via subtitles (!), then you can just switch it off? Right?

*sigh*

Man. Well, Google can do what they want to do; it’s their web site. But, like…

*sigh*

There’s a change.org petition to make Google change their minds.

BC&B: La Volaille au Vinaigre de Vin Bistro d’à Côté w/ Financiers aux Noisettes

The dead animal dishes I’ve enjoyed most from this Bistro Cooking book (by Patricia Wells) have definitely been the dead chicken dishes. The dead cow dishes have all (I think? how long has this blog series gone on now? a decade or two?) been disappointing: Very heavy and somewhat offputting.

So this week I’m doing the next chicken dish instead of, well, anything else, because I want to have something good! For a change!

“La Volaille au…” Oh, I don’t know French! Whatever does that mean!


Oh, it’s chicken in… VINEGAR!?!? I HATE VINEGAR!!1! WAUGH!!!

*pout*

But I blogging concept is a blogging concept, and this is the next recipe in the book, so I have to cook it.

Otherwise I’d be arrested by the Conceptual Blogging Police.

ORDNUNG MUß SEIN!

So here are the ingredients… it’s not a lot of ingredients, which makes me even more despondent.

But at least I have some tomatoes to debone… and that’s all the prep there is, really.

So I pop the chicken bits into the pan (with some olive oil and butter).

By the way, the recipe says “medium high heat”, and that’s what I’m doing, but I wonder whether anybody has ever tried to make cooking directions more precise, like with baking. It’s all “bake at 180C” and stuff, but… with meats they could have done like “cook at 1.4kW” or something? Has that ever been a thing? Did somebody ever try to make that happen?

Because that’d make sense instead of just the plates going from like 0 to 10 (like mine does (well, they go to 11)), and instead there’d be something that says what the actual wattage is?

ANYWAY!

So after browsing the chicken bits (I just got thighs this time instead of an entire chicken because I loathe breasts (oops)), the cooking fat is removed, and I add a quarter litre (!) of red wine vinegar!

NOOOO! This is gonna suck.

So after reducing the vinegar for ten minutes (and turning the chicken bits to cover it all with the (eww!) vinegar), it’s time for the simmering bit, so I add chicken stock.

Speaking of which, this is “organic” chicken stock, or as it’s called in Norway, “ecological” chicken stock. (The Germans call it “biological” chicken stock.) Not because I think normal chickens will kill me, but because “organic” for animal stuff means “kinder to animals”. Or, “we’ll torture the animals a bit less before we kill them”. I’m all for that.

But it can be chancy… well, for non-animal stuff. For animal stuff, organic is fine. But if you’re buying organic candy, for instance, that usually means awful candy. Because the people who care about AWFEL POISENS IN FUD (i.e., people who grow organic chocolate) are surprisingly often statistically congruent with people who don’t care what something tastes like.

So the rule for flavour is: Organic animals; non-biological plants.

I mean, unless you care people growing the plants dying from pesticides.

So then we simmer for twenty minutes.

So then we (i.e., I) remove the chicken bits and add butter to the sauce… and I added some more salt and pepper.

Oh look! Organic parsley… from Ethiopia.

A piece of chicken on the plate, and I serve it just with some boiled potatoes because the potatoes this time of year are just incredible.

So… what’s this going to taste like?

BY EMACS!

Wha

What

This is just incredible. The depth of flavour is indescribable. But I’ll try: It does taste like there’s vinegar in here, but it’s not a dominant flavour at all, somehow. The sauce just has such a complex, exciting flavour. And the chicken! It’s so moist! But so tender! It falls off the bone, but fantastically juicy. And with the sauce, the tomatoes and the parsley it’s mind-blowingly good.

I know I shouldn’t say this about something I cooked myself, but this is the best chicken dish I’ve ever had. But I’ve slagged off so many dishes in the Bistro Cooking book that I feel I can!

I ate and ate until I died, and I’m now literally dead.

So now it’s time for today’s book…

It’s another slim book by Geoff Dyer, who I covered earlier in this blog series, too. Broadsword Calling Danny Boy, a book about a movie about a journey to an impregnable castle. So in preparation, I watched the movie:

It’s… it’s OK. There’s some really fun scenes in there.

But let’s read the first three pages of this book together:

So it’s in Dyer’s usual effortlessly erudite style, and it really is about the movie — moreso than his Zona book, I’m guessing?

The book is full of informative footnotes.

Zing!

But now there has to be a dessert.

And I’m doing a financier, which is apparently a … little cake? Or something? I’ve heard of the concept before, but I haven’t made it. I googled a bit, and it’s usually made with almond flour, but this one has hazelnut instead.

So it’s just these five ingredients.

I run the hazelnuts through the FUD machine; first through a grinding thing and then a choppy thing…

… and then through a sieve. And I get 90g of fine-grained hazelnut! (Let’s not mention the bits to the right that were too coarse and I threw away. TOO LATE.)

Then add the other two dry ingredients (sugar and wheat flour)…

And then it’s egg separatin’ time! Six of them, and since I had some spares in case I messed up any of them, I didn’t mess up any of them.

Well, you can never have too many eggses…

And then the egg whites just go into the dry ingredients? I would have guessed you were supposed to fluff em up, but I guess not?

Eww. That doesn’t look very tasty. I mean, it’s just egg whites with nuts, flour and sugar in it. It doesn’t taste very tasty either.

So then I melt a whole lot of butter, and chill it…

And pour it into the batter. Surely the batter can’t incorporate that much butter? It’s pretty wet already?

But… but… it does.

And now the batter suddenly has a wonderful flavour! The magic of butter.

OK, sure, financiers are supposed to be baked in square moulds (so that they look like gold bars), but I don’t have those, and the recipe says it’s fine to use muffin moulds.

IT”S FINE IT SAYS!

So into the oven…

And then bake for seven minutes, and then turn down the heat a bit…

I didn’t think they were gonna expand at all, really, since the egg whites weren’t fluffed up, but they did.

OK, then seven minutes at a slightly lower temperature…

A very pleasant scent is starting to emanate from these er cakes: It’s like… yeah, it’s like browned butter, but in a subtle way. It’s like the best bits of butter and … *sniff* wheat. Most pleasant.

And then seven minutes with the oven off (but in the oven). And then chillin’.

Hm!

Wow! That’s really tasty. It’s full of hazelnutty goodness, and juicy and nice…

… but also fluffy! Wonderful. A kinda springy mouth feel, but with crispy outsides.

This is a good recipe. And very simple, too.

Yum yum nom nom I’ve eaten four of these just while typing.

I guess it reminds me slightly of Nutella? But without the chocolate? I guess that natural, but it’s not just the hazelnut — it’s all the butter. I mean, by weight, these little cakes are like 30% butter.

Back to the book… It’s a fun read. If you were to ask me “what would be the most horrible thing in the world”, then after saying something about “hunger” and “poverty” I’d totally go “No! Forget that crap! It’s reading somebody recap a movie! THE HORROR!”

And recap the movie Dyer does. We get all the plot twists and everything. But somehow it’s not horrible.

Because he makes fun of the movie — in every single scene, there’s something to smirk at. In lesser hands, this would be really annoying, too, but Dyer is endlessly inventive and … just, well, interesting.

The book recommends eating the little cakes with ice cream or whipped cream, and I tried both. They don’t really go that well with rum and raisin ice cream, but were wonderful with whipped cream.

Aha! Dyer explains how this book came to be: The publisher wanted a followup to Zona. (I’m reading between the pixels.)

Yeah, I had a friend in high school who was a MacLean fan, and I just didn’t get it: The writing is just unimaginably bad, even if the plots are sometimes entertaining…

This blog post is part of the Bistro
Cooking & Books series.