So you want to write a utility script, and you want to write it in Common Lisp. I created a template Common Lisp script called start.lisp. It’s meant to be renamed and hacked up but it provides a starting point for a new Common Lisp script, with some utility libraries included. Here’s a “one-liner” that …
Author Archives: Thomas Fitzsimmons
Hosting Jitsi on ppc64le
I recently tried self-hosting Jitsi on Debian on the Talos II. I had to apply some small workarounds for ppc64le, so I thought I’d post them here. The cause of the first issue, no audio or video in a call, was reported in the Jitsi Videobridge log, /var/log/jitsi/jvb.log: […] Exception in thread “Smack-Single Threaded Executor …
Pocket Lisp Computer
I recently built three Lisp Badge computers with some help from my kids. I bought a hot air soldering station and learned TQFP soldering. The kids did some through-hole and SMT soldering and really enjoyed it! The hardware assembly and debugging process was really fun, other than worrying several times that I had put too …
Lisp on Talos II
I’ve been following the status of Lisp on ppc64le lately. I’m running ppc64le Debian sid. Just after I had set up my system, I did some experimentation with what Debian packages had to offer. ECL was the only Lisp that worked, so I started using it for various projects. (I’ve since learned on #sbcl that …
An excellent machine
I finished building my Talos II system, and I decided to post my thoughts on it here. This is an excellent machine, the best workstation I’ve ever used. It’s very fast — it compiles Emacs and the kernel in 2 minutes, and just spins up the fans a little bit while doing so (under normal …
Talos II available for pre-order
The Talos II is now available for pre-order. It is the more affordable, more power-efficient successor to the Talos I machine I wrote about in a previous post. This is a very affordable machine for how powerful it will be, and there are minimal mainboard + CPU + RAM bundles (e.g., this one), around which …
Talos Secure Workstation
This is a very important machine that really deserves to get built. Anyone who cares about Free Software should consider funding this project at some level, and spreading the word to their friends. If this project succeeds, it will bootstrap a market for new, owner-controlled performant desktop machines. If it fails, no such computers will …
Excorporate 0.7.0 released in GNU ELPA
I finished getting Excorporate and all its dependencies into GNU ELPA. Excorporate lets Emacs retrieve calendar items from an Exchange server. I had to rewrite the default UI to use Org Mode, because Calfw isn’t entirely copyright-assigned to the FSF yet. The Calfw UI is still there for reference, but as a text file so …
Crossgrading from Fedora 22 i686 to x86_64
I’ve always upgraded my Fedora laptop incrementally using the recommended tools (yum, preupgrade, fedup). For this reason, my initial decision to install i686 Fedora (back when 32-bit compatibility was important) has carried through, and I’ve always used i686 Fedora, even though the CPU supports x86_64. Recently I wanted to try out Mezzano in a virtual …
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EUDC Improvements
I use Emacs Unified Directory Client (EUDC) for completing email addresses from LDAP and BBDB databases. It’s nice to be able to complete names from LDAP when composing emails, obviously, but it’s also nice in Org mode to M-x eudc-expand-inline someone’s name into my notes. When I first configured the EUDC LDAP backend for my …