Life on Emacs
Friday, January 14th, 2011I have been an Emacs user off and on nearly as long as I have had a
computer, and yet I am constantly finding new things I can do from
within Emacs.
For instance, I have used Tramp to edit remote files. But our
current infrastructure setup makes use of a bastion host to separate
our production environment from the rest of the world. I thought that
meant I would not be able to access those hosts from Tramp, but I was
wrong. Tramp supports a half dozen proxy methods including an ssh
bastion host. Learn how to set this up in the Tramp manual:
Tramp Proxy.
Emacs doesn’t stop there, you can chat on IRC, create blog posts
(and publish them), send and receive email, organize your life.
That is just the start, I love being able do nearly every computer
related task with a single interface that is nearly identical on every
platform I use. At this point I don’t think I could live without my
Emacs keybindings.
Adding to the fun I have started using Emacs to help me manage my
productivity. You might have heard of the Pomodoro technique.
I have setup a mode-line timer that counts off my Pomodoro time. I
manage all my tasks in org-mode. I know that any messages I receive
while focusing are being faithfully recorded by Emacs, and are only a
keystroke away. Having everything integrated makes it easy for me to
switch between focus time and relax time.
I know this post was a bit of a rambling mess, but sometimes Emacs
just makes me so happy I can’t help myself.
