Here is my current title bar. Emacs users call it a frame title: Emacs! ~/.emacs.d/configuration.org [Org] *DIRTY* The Emacs! helps me distinguish this application from others, plus conveys my appreciation for Emacs. The full filename is visible, falling back to buffer name when not backed by a file. The major mode is sandwiched between square brackets to remind myself of current buffer’s behaviors. *DIRTY* appears when any buffer is dirty and needs saving.
Caught myself browsing my offline Wikipedia today. I learned about pig animal behaviors, the genesis of PowerPC and Motorola’s role in it, the difference between Prairies and Savannas, that Acorns are produced by Oak trees, and that there are a bunch of minature pig breeds some which make for great pets. It’s pretty easy to set up your very own offline Wikipedia. First grab a your languauge Wikipedia’s ZIM archive from the Kiwix Library.
Got heat exhaustion / heat stroke a few times in 2025. One way to mitigate further heat damage is to keep track of early heat exhaustion symptoms. In my own personal experience, one reliable indicator is an elevated pulse. For awhile I measured my pulse manually and got really good at it. The problem was by the time I thought to check my pulse, heat exhaustion was already setting in. So I bought a smart watch, the least obtrusive one that I could find.
This is an Emacs carnival post for 2026. Sometimes it’s the little things that make a substantial cumulative impact on computing satisfaction. I’ve set up both my terminal emulator and graphical Emacs with added line spacing. Absolute bliss. It’s like a quiet, undisturbed pond at dusk. Less busy, less rough. Seeing is believing. On the left is with (setq-default line-spacing .15) as found in my configuration.org, the right is the default (nil).
ChatGPT is full of shit and that’s okay. I wish I had something profound to say, but it wasn’t a big deal. It did take nine drafts, a hardware failure with multiple SSD swaps, and five thousand words to work out how to say “🤷 no biggie”. When I began using ChatGPT I recognized it could become unavailable like any other internet service does. Outages happen, corporate priorities transmogrify, enshittification happens.
I am curious how LLM/AI has affected my cognition and behaviors. Many animals learn to adapt pretty quickly; humans are no different. I’m pretty sure there’s going to be some adaptations found in my own behavior. Here’s the pocket notebook for my experiment. Figure 1: AI Free 72 pocket notebook In this notebook I’ll write down every question I had for AI, every urge to reach for AI, and whatever else I noticed about myself during these 24 hours.
There was a significant mixup in communicating the boundaries for OCC 2026. I believed there were no rules, because it is what the event text said. It turns out there was an unwritten norm of no AI or LLM usage. Bummer! Moving on, I’ll be doing my own thing and not participating in OCC. Technology is not a purist activity to me. The lines blur. The way we interact with technology frequently melds into the next thing.