Introduction

Hello everyone 🖖🏽

This blog is an old project that was born in 2016 and died because I didn’t want to adapt to this commercial website.

Since then, I had dreamed of this, writing in my beloved org-mode and publishing in a simple way, but imposter syndrome prevailed.

With that, I want to open the can of worms and start my old blog project created with Emacs, org-mode, and Hugo.

I must also say that my visual impairment somewhat conditions my path and that I absolutely reject mice. I have lost information so many times in my life by using proprietary applications that I am clear that living in the console and plain text is the most efficient for me.

Before getting into the subject, two important points.

Reasons for this entry

Upon discovering, thanks to Mastodon, this idea of Emacs Carnival and more specifically its proposal for this month hosted by gnewman, I felt it was important to contribute my experience, above all as a way of thanking the community.

This is the version written for this event, and you can see it in Spanish here.

Sorry for being so bold

Secondly, I would like to apologize for this apprentice’s boldness in talking about something he does not yet fully understand, and for doing so in English, a language in which I cannot write without help, but in which I have learned almost everything I know about Emacs. In this regard, I would like to say that this is and will remain a Spanish-language site, but I hope to be able to make it multilingual at some point.

How I came to Emacs

In the 1980s, I worked as a programmer on management projects and developed a great admiration for systems engineers and their work in the field of computers.

The 1990s took me away from that work, but not from that admiration, and I satisfied my curiosity by trying out Gnu/Linux distributions without any criteria or order, just to tinker with a computer.

In the 2000s, my professional obligations led me to enter the world of GTD and discover org-mode, and consequently Emacs, to organize my obligations.

When I faced retirement in 2016, I set myself two main goals, which were quite complex for a disorganized and scattered person like me.

The first, and most complex, which I am still working on, was to bring order to the chaos that had accumulated in my computers and household papers.

The second was to enjoy my love of computers, especially Gnu/Linux, something that my working life had greatly slowed down, and to learn as much as possible.

Tracking tasks and projects

This is something that was already ingrained in my DNA. My training in GTD, a legacy from my working life, showed me the way, although over the years I have simplified my process, which is now very similar to what David Wilson brilliantly describes in this wonderful post: Never Miss a Task Again: Tagging Org Mode TODOs by Context.

I am still studying and struggling to achieve efficient agenda views, but for now it is helping me to find my way.

Starting to write

Thanks to Obsidian, I quickly discovered that taking notes and writing was the most efficient way to think and clarify my ideas, and I started publishing a blog on WordPress, which is now defunct.

That experience was very important and helped me a lot to connect with the FOSS community and discover a lot of useful information that paved the way for a more general use of Emacs. That’s why this blog will collect improved versions of those posts, but I soon got lost in SEOs and other stories of an increasingly commercial web that robbed me of the pleasure of writing.

Emacs, denote, and Emacs Writing Studio

The topic of notes reached its peak due to my relationship with Guía Carmona, translator of the book The Zettelkasten Method: How to Take Notes Effectively to Boost Writing and Learning for Students, Academics, and Nonfiction Writers - Ahrens, Sönke: 9798685830333 - IberLibro.

The ideas in this book helped me bring some order to my notes. At that time, I discovered the package denote by Protesilaos Stavrou and, a little later, Emacs Writing Studio by Peter Prevos, authors who have restored my pleasure in writing and to whom I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude for their work and their willingness to teach and share, they definitely brought me to the Church of Emacs, said with all irony (I am one of those who believe that the great discovery of Free Software is giving users the possibility to choose).

Using these packages has helped me get closer to the Zettelkasten method, which I have not yet mastered, and although I still have a serious problem with organizing my notes, thanks to the file naming convention proposed by denote, I have improved a lot and my work is easier.

My current situation

The missing piece was to start publishing again, something I’ve always wanted to do with Hugo, org-mode, and Emacs, with this post being my first step on that path. That’s why publishing this post has been a great satisfaction and a real challenge.

However, I still lack skills in Emacs Lisp, in the use of Hugo, ox-hugo, pandoc, and in general in website management issues, which makes it difficult for me.

Conclusion

I have written these lines with olivettí-mode, which gives me important clarity and helps me enormously to concentrate, and I feel much more comfortable than in my typing classes in the late 1970s 😉.

There are aspects that still give me trouble and that I need to consolidate:

  • Template management in org-mode
  • Making the most of org-mode properties
  • Studying the org-transclusion package, which I think could be very useful
  • Organizing my own init.el

I’m sure there’s more, and the book Mastering Emacs and this community are helping me along the path that has opened up for me.

To conclude, I will simply say that I work to make writing in Emacs my way of sharing what I learn and giving back to the community something that I would not have discovered if others had not shared it.

May all this serve, at least, to express my gratitude to the Emacs community for everything it teaches.

See you soon.

PS: Another thing I have to learn to do with Emacs 😉 !. Sorry for the English, but without the help of Deepl, I wouldn’t have been able to do it 😞.