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<p>Raw link: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y14Hw6twxgc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y14Hw6twxgc</a></p>
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<p>My laptop broke a few weeks ago and I had no other personal computer.
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The Emacs community helped me with donations and I am back in action.</p>
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<p>In this video I provide an overview of what happened and what I am
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currently up to.</p>
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<p>Below is the text of my presentation, though note that I did not follow
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it too closely:</p>
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<pre><code class="language-org">#+TITLE: The Emacs community bought me a computer
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#+AUTHOR: Protesilaos Stavrou (https://protesilaos.com)
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#+DATE: 2021-08-29
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Hello everyone! My name is Protesilaos, also known as "Prot".
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As you can tell from the title of this video, this is a status update on
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my current condition: *the Emacs community bought me a new computer.* I
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both humbled and elated by the fact.
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What follows is a summary of events and an overview of my next steps.
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* The laptop's battery malfunctioned
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On August 5 my laptop's battery stopped receiving power. It was
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behaving erratically for a couple of days prior, as it would abruptly
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not send power to the computer, shutting down, and then make the special
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sound it does that it was recharging again. All this while being
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plugged to the wall and with capacity to spare.
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On the 5th it stopped recharging and the laptop has not worked since.
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At the time I posted a short announcement on my website: there is a
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dedicated section about "News", which is separate from my other
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writings. Here it is:
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#+begin_quote
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Laptop battery out; will be back ASAP
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2021-08-05
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My laptop’s battery is no longer recharging. I double-checked: it has
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probably malfunctioned. I need what remains of it to make some final
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backups. I’ll have no regular access to a computer afterwards. Need to
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check for replacements and if they are worth it. Will reply to your
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emails as soon as I can.
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https://protesilaos.com/news/2021-08-05-laptop-battery/
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#+end_quote
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My only access to a computer was at the one available in my local
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community. This is a mountainous region. Not many options.
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Anyhow, I was expecting to remain out of action for several weeks due to
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budget constraints. Though after eleven days since I posted the
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announcement, I noticed many emails from Paypal informing me that I had
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received donations. Checked my account and there were EUR 430! That
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was more than I had ever received before.
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I could not check all the emails at the time, because I am subscribed to
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several mailing lists and without Emacs+Notmuch it was too difficult to
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find what I needed. So I did not have a clear picture of what triggered
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those donations. Nothing like that had never happened before.
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On August 16 I posted another announcement informing people that I got
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donations and would be able to buy new equipment (by the way, writing a
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blog post on Gitlab is much worse than doing it inside of Emacs). I
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explained that it would probably be better to invest in a mini tower
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than pay for exorbitant shipping charges for a battery.
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* New desktop computer
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Shortly after I posted the second announcement, I contacted a friend who
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knows more about computer hardware than I do. I basically know nothing.
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He helped me piece together a mini tower. Some parts are new. Others
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are second-hand. I am very happy with the outcome, as this is more
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powerful than the laptop I had before (Emacs launches faster, I can load
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a heavy website with javascript, etc.).
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I also got this camera and a small microphone that I have here on my
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side. Hopefully the video and audio quality are better than before, but
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don't expect anything fancy.
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Anyhow, while I was waiting for the computer to be assembled, the
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donations kept flowing in, but I did not know about them at the time.
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When I eventually set up the new machine (on the night of August 26 and
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the morning after) and finally got back to my email, I started reading
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through the notifications from Paypal and the other emails I received.
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The sum had tripled at about EUR 1400! Many donations included a
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message. Almost all were related to Emacs. Some people were thanking
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me for my contributions in general. Others referred to my Modus themes.
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And others still mentioned the videos I do.
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I don't know whether I should post the names of the people who
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contributed, as this is private information and I have no permission to
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divulge it. Safe to say, there are many names on that list that I
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already know. We have exchanged emails before or collaborated on some
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Emacs-related project. Also, some of those names are very well known in
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the Emacs community.
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*I wish to thank everyone for their support.* I was not expecting it and
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it has definitely made a noticeable improvement in my daily life.
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I am still working through my backlog. You will get a reply in the
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coming days.
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* Note on recent code updates and latest philosophy post
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I have been busy setting things up. I already had hand-written notes of
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all sorts that I have already digitised and published. Bash scripts,
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Elisp snippets, and an 8k word publication on philosophical themes.
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Some highlights:
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+ I am back to using BSPWM (a tiling window manager). Those of you who
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may only know me from my Emacs stuff, I used to have my bespoke
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computing environment, which included BSPWM+Tmux+Vim+CLI. I still
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mostly using nothing but Emacs, though it is better to control the
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other windows with the keyboard.
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+ I now publish the derived =*.el= file of my dotemacs. This is for
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people who do not need to read through a massive document that
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contains more than 70k words.
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+ Those are available in my dotfiles' repo. My dotemacs is also posted
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in HTML on my website: https://protesilaos.com/emacs/dotemacs (includes
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link to the dotfiles).
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+ I am back to maintaining my Git projects. There has been an update to
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my Tempus themes, which are not Emacs-related. Templates for the
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Alacritty terminal emulator are now available, as well as a dedicated
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=tempus-themes-alacritty= repo.
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- The shell scripts for maintaining the numerous Tempus themes have
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also been updated.
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+ And now some philosophy. I started writing this before my laptop
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failed, but I think the topic relates to the help I received from the
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Emacs community. I will let you check the actual text on your own.
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It is written in a dialogue style, based on real experiences. The
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title is /Why you are not important/ and relates to egocentrism,
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escapism, and related concepts. Instead of my text, let me read you
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this, which many of you already know about.
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#+begin_quote
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Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
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(no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
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no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
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work is provided by an external library, Xapian. So if Notmuch provides
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no user interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's
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left here? Not much.
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https://notmuchmail.org/
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#+end_quote
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</code></pre>
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