One Touch Maintainin’

Emacs gets a lot of very nice, but quite simple patches that take quite a lot of keystrokes to process.  It’s hard on the fingers, and you always forget various bits.

So I wondered how simple it could be, and hacked up this workflow tonight.

You start in the debbugs-gnu buffer, as always, narrowed down to the patches with `C-u / patch’ and perhaps an `x’.

patch0

Select a likely message with `RET’.

patch1

Then the fun begins with the new `M-m’ command.  It determines whether the patch is in the MIME attachments or just included in the message, applies it, and displays the diffs and possibly any rejected hunks.  It also does a `compile’ in the lisp directory so that we see that things are OK.

patch2

Everthing is hunky dory, so we just hit `M-m’ again to go to the changed file.

patch3

Here we can imagine that we do some clean-up, but this patch is perfect, so we just hit `M-m’ again.  This pops us into the ChangeLog with the correct user name, and the bug number appended.  If the user has never had any non-“tiny change” code in Emacs before, “(tiny change)” is appended automatically.

patch4

But there’s one non-tiny change from this user before, so no (tiny change), and we just type in an entry.

patch5

Then `M-m’.  This pops us to the top-level checkin buffer, filled out with the right data.

patch6

And then just type in a summary and `C-c C-c’, and you’re done.

Ok, it’s not a one click solution, but it’s better than…  doing all this by hand.

Or using a web browser.

The Best Albums of 2014

It’s that time of year, and Emacs has decreed (based on how many times I played each album) what the best ones are. I’ve played a lot of old, old music this year, so the recent purchases haven’t gotten that much play…

But these are the 15 bestest albums released in 2014.

Neneh CherryBlank Project
Laetitia SadierSomething Shines
Meat Beat ManifestoAnswers Come In Dreams
Róisin MurphyMi Senti
VariousElectroconvulsive Therapy Vol One
Xiu XiuAngel Guts: The Red Classroom
Arthur’s LandingMiracle 2
CleftBosh!
David GrubbsBorough of Broken Umbrellas
HerbertOne Two Three
Purity SupremeAlways Already
The NotwistClose to the Glass
VariousMusic from the Mountain Provinces
Thee Oh SeesSingles Vol. 1+2
Aphex TwinSyro

And these are the 15 bestest albums that I bought in 2014, never mind what year they were released:

MachinedrumVapor City
VariousFour Songs by Arthur Russell
ColourboxColourbox [MAD315]
irr.app.(ext.)Neognathae Portentosus
Neil Young & Crazy HorseRust Never Sleeps
Neneh CherryBlank Project
The Birthday PartyThe Friend Catcher EP
VariousThe Clock Machine Turns You On: Volume 2: Tick (1)
Jonas Kullhammar QuarterLåt det vara
Laetitia SadierSomething Shines
Meat Beat ManifestoAnswers Come In Dreams
Next LifeArtificial Divinity
NisennenmondaiN
René Halkett, David JayNothing, Armour
ShearwaterFellow Travelers

My New Home Decorating Blog

I’ve got a lot of thingamabobs that need charging now and then. But rooting out the adapters and finding a vacant wall socket is boring, so I thought I’d make a permanent charging station.

Finding a power strip that you can plug in all those wall warts is a bit of a challenge, because the adapters are often so big that you can’t place two next to each other.

But then I found this wonder:

DSC00992

In addition to having 12 plugs, three each on each side, it also has a convenient on/off button, so that I can switch all the adapters completely off, so they don’t even leech a single mW while not in use.

And it fits nicely into one of these Ikea book cases (with a door to hide the ugly).

DSC00997

That was today’s home decorating tip.