Jugulans is a text mode mind map application.

It lets the user build a mind map using just the keyboard, and save it in org-mode format.

                                              /- new child
                                              |
                 /- creating nodes -----------|- new sbiling
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- new parent
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- moving nodes -------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
jugulans   ------|
                 |                            /- delete a node
                 |- deleting nodes -----------|
                 |                            \- delete s subtree
                 |
                 |
                 |
                 |                            /- up
                 |                            |
                 |                            |- down
                 |- navigation ---------------|
                 |                            |- left
                 |                            |
                 |                            \- right
                 |
                 |
                 \- Hide and show subtree ---- and more

Minimalistic

jugulans has a minimalist design.

• TUI: Jugulans is a text mode application.
• Single-key key bindings: no mouse, just the keyboard.
• Limited feature set

For people accustomed to HJKL-keybindings, the user interface is intuitive.

Designed to disturb your flow as less as possible.

Mind maps are, in my opinion, a tool to support your thinking, and not so much a tool for communication. They should hinder you a less as possible. A minimalistic approach is therefor the best, with only a small set of features, and using just single-key commands.

Saves in org-mode format

jugulans saves the mind map in org-mode format.

This way you can use the application to develop the outline for f.e., an article or essay.

Features

• Create nodes: create a child node, create a sibling node, create a new parent node.
• Move nodes: move nodes up and down in the list of siblings, move a node left or right to promote or demote a node.
• Freely move nodes: mark a node, navigate through the mind map and move the marked node (including its childnodes) to the desired location.
• Delete nodes: delete a single node, or delete a complete subtree
• Hide or show: a single key press toggles between collapse/uncollapse, to hide or show the subtree.
• Rename: rename a node; to rename the mind map simply rename the root-node.
• Create or open existing: create a new mind map, or open an earlier saved mind map.

Fun to develop

jugulans is developed by a human, coded using GNU Emacs on a laptop running FreeBSD without any use of AI.

Building jugulans was my first project in Chicken Scheme. I learned a lot and had a lot of fun.

Ready to run executable

Chicken Scheme supports compiling to stand alone executables, which can be run on systems without Chicken Scheme.

The stand alone executables can be downloaded from the release page on Codeberg.org

Have fun mind mapping!

This month I read some though provoking books, a nice science fiction book, and had a lot of fun reading several essays and short stories.

The authors of both the books "A Darwinian Survival Guide" and "To Have or to Be?" work from the viewpoint that human life as we know it is seriously threatened, and advocate a societal change as the only solution. They understand that this change can only be brought bottom up, from the grassroots level.

Sometimes the mind works in mysterious ways. My mind associated a piece I read on the internet with the wonderful essay "Street Haunting" by Virginia Woolf, about buying a pencil. I don't know what triggered this association. Anyway,I re-read this essay again, came into the mood, and started reading more essays.

Non-fiction books

A Darwinian Survival Guide, Hope for the Twenty-First Century by Daniel R. Brooks and Salvatore J. Agosta (2024)

• 360 pages
• 5 stars

Climate change is altering human surroundings forever. It threatens the survival of technological humans. The biosphere will not collapse, but society will.

This book looks at options to regain a certain level of technological achievements as quickly as possible after the collapse, with lessons learned from studying evolutionary principles.

To Have or to Be? by Erich Fromm (1976)

• 216 pages
• 5 stars

In this book the author introduces the terms "having mode" and "being mode' and shows that Western society is mostly based on "having mode", resulting in egotism, selfishness, and greed.

A society based on having mode generates leaders who value personal success more highly than social responsibility. It is no longer shocking when political leaders and business executives make decisions that seem to be to their personal advantage, but at the same time are harmful and dangerous to the community.

The author recognizes threats to the survival of human life as we know it, because of the arms race of nuciear and biological weapans and the need of endless growth.

Being aware of these threats and the fact that living in being mode is the way towards personal happyness, the author proposes societal changes.

This book contains a ton of statements worth quoting. I can't show them all, so I picked one:

Each political party exploits the voters by persuading them that it represents the true values of humanism. Yet behind all political parties are only two camps: those who care and those who don't care.

Fiction

The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957)

• 220 pages
• 4 stars

In a typical small English village the quiet piece is disturbed by an extraordinary event. Nice story, a little less exciting than I remember the well-known book from this author, "The Day of the Triffids". Good read non the less.

Essays

"Street Haunting: a London Adventure" by Virginia Woolf (1927)

• 8 pages
• 5 stars

Virginia Woolf has written a number of lovely essays. Street Haunting is my favorite, and the one I keep coming back to.

In this essay, Virginia uses the need to buy a pencil to let us experience the world through as she did.

I re-read it again this month, and enjoyed it as much as ever. This really is a comfort read to me.

You can find it on Project Gutenberg Australia

"The Fourth State of Matter" by Jo Ann Beard (1996)

• 13 pages
• 5 stars

This essay is what is called "creative non-fiction". Which means that it is non-fiction disguised as a fictional story. Don't worry about it, just read it.

Is is sad and heartbreaking, and a very well done masterpiece.

It is published by the New Yorker. Open with a Javacript-free browser to read it without an account.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1996/06/24/the-fourth-state-of-matter

"Total Eclipse" by Annie Dillard (1982)

• 8 pages
• 5 stars

In 1979 Annie and her husband drove five hours to see the total eclipse of the sun. It was an overwhelming experience, bringing up primal emotions.

A great essay.

This essay is published in the book "Teaching a Stone to Talk", a bundle of essays by Annie Dillard

You can find the essay here:

https://faculty.etsu.edu/odonnell/readings/dillard_eclipse.pdf

On Self-Respect by Joan Didion (1961)

• 3 pages
• 5 stars

This essay from Joan Didion is best read slowly. Like most of Didion's essays it is an excellent read with a wonderful depth.

https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961

Short stories

The Feeling Of Power by Isaac Asimov (1958)

• 6 pages
• 4 stars

Short story about the dependency on computers.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

A century of brilliant books

The blog "Stuck in a Book" made a list of book recommendations. The list contains a book for every year of the 20th century.

There are many book lists, of course. This one is on an indepent blog, is an awesome piece of work, with many surprising entries that are are new to me. Also there are only a few books in the list that I have already read.

https://www.stuckinabook.com/a-century-of-brilliant-books/

The Last People Who Know How It Works

You only ever know the things you can lose to.

Wonderful blogpost by Cyrus Lopez about the dying acquaintance with tech. We are the last people who knew a machine the only way a machine was ever really known: by having it be difficult. And we are also the last people who will know that anything is gone.

https://unix.foo/posts/last-people-who-know-how-it-works/

Juneau Something? Emacs Teaches You How to Fish!

The June 2025 edition of the Emacs Carnaval had many wonderful entries! I picked this one to mention here.

In his entry, Charlie Holland shows the autodiscovery powers of Emacs. Most Emacs users will know at least a part of the commands Charlie showcases here, but there are always more to learn.

https://www.chiply.dev/post-june-emacs-carnival

I bought a Sony Walkman

82MHz wrote a lovely essay about buying a Sony Walkman.

And also a tape!

https://82mhz.net/posts/2026/07/i-bought-a-sony-walkman/

The Cloud-City Logistics Hub: Why Our Future Starts on Venus, Not Mars

Strangely enough, Venus is easier to mine than Mars.

This post goes into why Venus is a good candidate, and how mining could affect the economy. And of course about the international tensions that comes with that.

It reads like a good news post, and maybe it is. I only wonder if this will keep the "unlimited growth" doctrine alive, something that we should get rid of as soon as possible, IMHO.

https://archives.virebent.art/en/the-cloud-city-logistics-hub-why-our-future-starts-on-venus-not-mars/

Hate "The Algorithm?" RSS Is One of the Tools You’ve Been Looking For

Great essay by Thorin Klosowski published by the EFF.

“The algorithm” is shorthand for the ways the tech giants control what we see and when we see it.

In the age of enshittification, there is a push to reclaim our feeds and networks.

The good news is that RSS can help you take back control.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/hate-algorithm-rss-one-tools-youve-been-looking

Open Bookcases

An short essay by Robert Benchley written in 1920.

This essay shows the first signs of enshittification of the market of bookcases.

Read it here:

https://hex.ooo/library/open_bookcases.html

The Zilog Z80 has turned 50

The Z80 was a major player in its hayday.

I have worked on a Nixdorf Quattro powered by Z80's, using a terminal that was also powered by Z80's, owned a ZX81 on which I learned programming in assembler, and probably have used systems not knowing they were powered by the Z80.

https://goliath32.com/blog/z80.html

Fix Your Analog Life First

An essay by Katherine Martinko about a more balanced relationship with our devices.

It is import to reduce screen time and get off one’s phone — but first think about what is supposed to replace it.

We need more practice and less consumption in our lives. But reducing consumption does not automatically lead to practice; it must be actively sought, and that requires conscious choice, persistence, and stubborn adherence to routine.

Unfortunately, not a smol-web post, but a substack publication, but worth reading.

https://katherinemartinko.substack.com/p/fix-your-analog-life-first

Switch from Guile Scheme to Chicken Scheme

Lately have been dabbling in Guile Scheme. Guile Scheme is very fast and since is it the main development environment for Guix, its popularity is rising.

I tried Chicken Scheme because it can create a stand-alone executable. This means that once compiled, it can run on systems where Chicken Scheme is not installed. Maybe this can be done too with Guile Scheme, but I haven't discovered a way to do that.

Chicken Scheme compiles your code into an executable, no need to jump though hoops to do that.

Chicken Scheme is fun

Although my experience with Chicken Scheme is limited and I have been working with it for only a few weeks now, I have come to like it very much.

Chicken Scheme is Scheme, and Scheme, like Lisp, is a wonderful language to work in.

Because Chicken compiles to an executable, even during prototyping you immediately try out things on the command line.

It is easy to create small personal applications. Whatever you build, you can run it on all your machines. I have a mixed environment, mostly FreeBSD and some Linux virtual machines. So for the Linux VM's I have installed Chicken on one of them, and recompile the application there, and it can be deployed on the other Linux VM's by just scp-ing it.

csm makes it very easy to split up your project into multiple files. No hassle, just make each file a module and import the module in the other files where needed.

Once you have build a nice application, it is easy to distribute, just share the stand alone executable.

Not fast

When I did some work with Guile Scheme, I was impressed by how fast it is. Guile Scheme as far as I know uses threading.

Compared to Guile, I think Chicken Scheme is not that fast, but I haven't done any benchmarks and because I am not a Scheme expert or a programming expert, this is just an opinion and you should take this with a grain of salt.

This month I decided to not finish a book after reading the first 100 pages, so I just finished a single book.

The warm weather and outdoor activities resulted in less screen time, but still ran into some fine web pages!

Fiction

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson (2002)

• 116 pages
• 4 stars

A novella telling the story of the lonely life of Robert Grainer, who was born at the end of the nineteenth century.

Good but sad story, short, fine writing.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

Contentful and the limits of "Buy European"

Contentful is a German company, Contentful GmbH, registered in Berlin.

For over a decade it has been a flagship European software company. If the acquisition closes, it becomes part of Salesforce, an US corporation, subject to US law.

This exposes a hard truth: even when a vendor is European today, there is no guarantee it will still be European tomorrow.

Only open source software can garantue digital sovereignty!

http://dri.es/contentful-and-the-limits-of-buy-european

ASCII Art Tutorial

Some people can work magic with ASCII Art!

A wonderful tutorial, and very recommended, even if you won't ever create ASCII art.

https://arielmartinperez.com/pages/2026asciiarttutorial.html

The Last Quiet Thing

The things we use in our daily lives have quietly changed. After the purchase, they constantly require your attention. The meaning of owning has changed.

We started living in an acosystem of objects that never stop asking.

A great piece that opens a new perspective. A must-read!

https://www.terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Guile, while running a program, can listen to a port for a REPL client, like a Swank server on SBCL.

Here's how to connect from Geiser to a running Guile script.

Start the Guile shell-script

This is how to start a Guile script:

#!/usr/local/bin/guile3 \
-e main --listen -s
!#
(use-modules (...))
...

Note the the first line starts with #! and third starts with !#.

The first line contains the name of the Guile executable and the path to it. This example is from FreeBSD.

Guile listens default to port 37146.

Connect Geiser to the port

In Emacs, run:

M-x geiser-connect

This will prompt of a host, with localhost as default, and a port with 37146 as default.

This gives a REPL in the running Guile script.

Have fun!

The Enhanced Motif Window Manager (EMWM) is a fork of the Motif Window Manager with fixes and enhancements. This brings the wonderful look of Motif to the X11 desktop.

Virtual workspaces

EMWM version 2.0 offers virtual workspaces. The FreeBSD packages contain EMWM version 1.3. To get virtual workspaces it is better not to install the FreeBSD package, and to compile EMWM from source from (fastestcode.org]https://fastestcode.org/emwm.html).

Compilation of EMWM on FreeBSD is quick and easy. Just download the tarball, and run make.

Stow

I prefer to install self compiled software with GNU stow.

In the Makefile.FreeBSD change the PREFIX to /usr/local/stow/emwm, and create this directory and including the sub-directory bin:

mkdir -p /usr/local/stow/emwm/bin

Then run make and make install.

Do this for both emwm-src-2.0.tar.xz and emwm-utils-src-2.0.tar.xz.

Next, go to /usr/local/stow and issue the command:

stow emwm

(If you want to, you could make a different sub-directory for each tarball, like /usr/local/stow/emwm and /usr/local/stow/emwm-utils.)

Edit .xinitrc

Comment out any window managers in the ~/.xinitrc file (or ~/.xsession file) and add the following line as last line:

exec xmsession

Now, when you run startx from the command line. EMWM will start, with xmtoolbox, a nice utility-toolbox in the upper left hand corner.

Multiple workspaces

EMWM defaults to four workspaces. If you want a different number, add a line to your ~/.Xresources:

Emwm*workspaceCount: 6

The mxtoolbox window will show a button for each workspace.

mxtoolbox configuration

To configure the mxtoolbox:

Copy the file toolboxrc from the emwm-utils-src-tarball to ~/.toolboxrc and edit this file.

Non-fiction

The End of Everything by Katie Mack (2020)

• 226 pages
• 5 stars

We know that the universe started with the Big Bang, and that it currently is expanding. But will this go on forever, or is the universe destined to end, and if so, will there be a new Big Bang?

The writer, a theoretical cosmologist, gives an easy to read overview of the current scientific understanding on the future of the universe.

During this tour we encounter subjects like dark matter and dark energy, the Cosmic Microwave Background, measuring the expansion rate, get an explanation about the equilibrium of forces that keep the stars together, the Highs field, and much more. We learn about the different models for the end, like the Big Cruch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, and the Vacuum Decay.

Interesting read, never boring, highly recommended!

Fiction

• The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

• 352 pages

• 5 stars

This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago.

During this re-read I discovered that my memory of it is distorted by the movie directed by Peter Jackson, which I have seen a few times.

It was good to re-read the book again.

Short story

The Last Martian by Raymond Van Houten (1942)

• 24 pages
• 4 stars

A short science fiction story about an unexpected visitor arriving at an outpost. Nice read.

Gutenberg book 62097

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

A Splash of Courage

A lovely blog post from Brian the Goldfish, the Third.

It is a quick read, just above 300 words. Enjoy it!

https://brianthegoldfish.blog/a-splash-of-courage/

3 ways to think and talk like a philosopher

A "Big Think" publication written by by Jonny Thomson.

Jonny shows in this essay three ways to think like a philosopher.

https://bigthink.com/mini-philosophy/3-ways-to-think-and-talk-like-a-philosopher/

The Real Story Behind "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

Ted Gioia talks in this essay about the history of the wonderful book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" written by Robert Pirsig. The book was first published in 1974, but carries the atmosphere from the sixties.

"Zen and the art ..." is one of my favorite books, and Ted's essay brings it into a new perspective.

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-real-story-behind-zen-and-the

The old world of tech is dying and the new cannot be born

Baldur Bjarnason explains in this essay how the globalized tech industry can only exist because of the protectionism and policy uniformity imposed by the US on its techopolistic hegemony.

Because of Trump, the US no longer has the power or influence it once did, with major implications for the US-controlled globalized market.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2026/the-old-world-of-tech-is-dying/

Beneath the Linux surface: the UNIX legacy, a lively ecology

A brilliant essay published on the Unix Social Club.

An inventory that shows that a Linux system bundles a lot of free software, that developed on and originally for different operating systems.

FOSS is a ecosystem that keeps on thriving, innovating and evolving, but only because of the people maintaining and developing it.

Informative, and also fun to read!

https://club.unix.rocks/commentary/under-linux/

Gnutella Explanation - A Protocol Outliving the World That Created It

A nicely written essay on Gnutella, the once very popular file sharing protocol.

This is a thorough piece of work, easy and fun to read.

Interesting quote:

Managing disk space, directories, backups, and downloaded files was still a palatable and acceptable activity for even casual computer users of the era.

https://rickcarlino.com/notes/p2p/gnutella-explanation.html

How to run awkiawki using slogcgi and NGNINX

Awkiawki is a wiki written in awk.

slowcgi is a server which implements the FastCGI Protocol to execute CGI scripts. slowcgi is a simple server that translates FastCGI requests to the CGI protocol. It executes the requested CGI script and translates its output back to the FastCGI protocol.

slowcgi is on FreeBSD available as package.

I run this from /home/www.

Configuring slowcgi

Add the following lines to /etc/rc.conf:

slowcgi_enable="YES"
slowcgi_flags="-p /home/www -s /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock"

Start slowcgi. It will open a socket in /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock.

Chroot

Slowcgi lets the scripts run in a chroot directory. Make sure the needed executables (like mawk for awkiawki) are in a path within the chroot directory, and that all the needed libraries are there too.

Configuring NGINX to use slowcgi

server {
   listen 80;
   server_name wiki.example.com;

   root "/home/www/";

   location /cgi-bin/ {
      index index.cgi;
      fastcgi_pass unix:/home/www/run/slowcgi.sock;
      fastcgi_index index.cgi;
      include fastcgi_params;
      fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD  $request_method;
      fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.cgi)(/.+)$;
      fastcgi_param PATH_INFO       $fastcgi_path_info;
      fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME "/cgi-bin/wiki/index.cgi";
      proxy_set_header Host $host;
   }
}

We set a fastcgi_pass to the socket.

The fastcgi_split_path_info fetches the path_info from the request URL.

Debugging

It helps to manually start slowcgi with the -v flag:

slowcgi -d -v -p /home/www/ -s /home/www/run/slowcgi.sock

When everything is fine, start slowcgi normally.

Non-fiction

Vintage Didion by Joan Didion (2004)

• 200 pages
• 3 stars

A collection of previously published essays focussed on US politics. The essays date from different periods. There are also three chapters from her book "Miami" in it.

Usually I like to read Didion, but several parts of this collection were boring.

Short-stories

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov (1956)

• 9 pages
• 5 stars

A short story with a somewhat predictable end. Good read though.

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

We Built It With Slide Rules. Then We Forgot How.

Our world is under threat of complexity. To understand a system it must fit into our heads. When we delegate the complexity before understanding we loose something fundamental.

Start asking basic questions and make sure you can answer them.

https://unmitigatedrisk.com/?p=1227

What It's Like To Be A Worm

Does an insect possesses consciousness? Is an earth worm sentient? When it comes to non-human animals, views about which creatures are sentient diverge.

An remarkable survey of current scientific research.

https://www.asimov.press/p/sentience

Social Media is the Opposite of Social Life

Social media was meant to facilitate social life, but social media doesn’t really allow you to interact with people.

https://www.raptitude.com/2026/04/social-media-is-the-opposite-of-social-life/

The six second hug

We have fallen prey to the curse of instrumentalisation.

What makes life worth living? We have to go back to the basic question of why anything has value.

https://aeon.co/essays/instrumentalisation-is-making-everything-a-means-to-an-end

The IndieWeb is Wonderfully Dionysian

A writing in praise of the human web. We need more personal websites and blogs.

https://brennan.day/the-indieweb-is-wonderfully-dionysian/

All Aggregators Are Equal but Some Aggregators Are More Equal Than Others

Bubbles is a new, brilliant, blog aggregator.

Bubbles combines the power of RSS feeds with the power of voting. Of course there is lobste.rs, but that has a focus on technical publications.

Non-tech blogs

Hacker News and Lobste.rs have community voting figured out, but non-tech content gets drowned by the tech majority.

Bubbles aims to (also) promote non-tech content.

RSS and voting

Bubbles monitors thousands of independent, personal blogs via RSS. Every post starts equal. Peoples votes decide what rises.

Everybody can vote, but you need some Fediverse account for that.

As a result, truly interesting posts bubble up.

Categories

Bubbles offers about a dozen of categories to choose from.

Select the categories of your interest to get a more focused list of smol web publications.

Explore the smol web

There are tons of great independently made personal websites out there. Blogs, digital gardens, and what not.

The enshitification of the search engines makes these website undiscoverable. There is no money in it, so they will only show you AI-slop and other SEO-infested garbage.

Ignore their search results, take back the web, and start exploring the smol web!

Reach out

I discovered Bubbles through the LinkDump on 82Mhz.net.

When you have a website, consider doing something similar. Set up a Blogroll, create a links page, or be creative and create something new.

Whatever you do to let other smol websites be discovered helps! Only together we can keep the smol web alive.

Use an RSS feed reader

Don’t let a billionaire’s algorithm control what you read. No matter how you explore the smol web, when you have discovered an interesting blog, personal website or other kind of smol web instance, add it to your RSS feed reader!

Show your appreciation

Whenever you read a piece on a smol web website, give the creator some feed-back. Just a simple email showing your appreciation can make a big difference!

Recoll is a full text search application. Recoll is based on the very capable Xapian search engine library.

The FreeBSD package comes with a ton of dependencies, which is great for use on your desktop, but can be a bit of overkill for non-graphical systems.

Minimal install

The idea is to install with as minimal dependencies as possible and start working with that. Later we can always add more.

Install dependencies

Although we install Recoll from source, we install the dependencies as FreeBSD package.

To make it easy to copy the install to other systems, we make use of GNU stow, so we install that too.

pkg install libX11 libxslt pkgconf stow xapian-core

Prepare installation directory

mkdir -p /usr/local/stow/recoll

Download source files

Version 1.37.5 is unfortunately the last version with autotools build, so we fetch that:

fetch https://www.recoll.org/recoll-1.37.5.tar.gz

Configure and build

./configure \
    --enable-idxthreads \
    --disable-qtgui \
    --enable-recollq \
    --disable-python-module \
    --without-aspell \
    --disable-python-aspell \
    --disable-python-chm  \
    --prefix=/usr/local/stow/recoll

make
make install

Install

cd /usr/local/stow
stow recoll

Configuration files

To test our install, we create a simple configuration file ~/.recoll/recoll.conf:

followLinks = 1

topdirs = /usr/local/share/man \
  /usr/local/share/info

This configuration file aims to index the system documentation files.

For this, we also need a mimemap file ~/.recoll/mimemap:

.0p = text/x-man
.1 = text/x-man
.3 = text/x-man
.7 = text/x-man
.8 = text/x-man

This is for the standard man pages, if you have more directories under /usr/local/share/man/ add those extensions too.

Install helper applications

In order to make sense of the files, Xapian needs some helper programs.

Our system documentation consists of man pages and info files, so we need the helper applications for those two:

pkg install groff texinfo

For some reason, we need to make the indexer understand that "python3" is in fact pyhton3.11.

We can create an alias (depending on your shell), or otherwise create a symlink:

ln -s /usr/local/bin/python3.11 /usr/local/bin/python3

Create index

Next, create or update the index:

recollindex

Start searching

After our man pages are indexed, we can search for text:

recollq -q 'expansion'

recollq -A 'expansion escape sequences textdomain'

Of course, we don't get the nicely formatted output as with the graphical Recoll desktop application.

Kudos

Thanks to Sergey Matveev for help with the configuration!

Below are the two books I finished reading this month.

Fiction

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien (1954)

• 423 pages
• 5 stars

This is a re-read, I have read the book several times, first time in the early seventies, the last time at least a decade ago.

I also have seen the movie directed by Peter Jackson several times.

During reading the book I discovered that my memory of it is tainted by watching the movie. I wasn't aware of much deviation of it, but the movie does indeed differ. The movie is more spectacular.

It was good to re-read the book again, and have planned to also re-read the other two books from the trilogy this year.

Short stories

Short Fiction by Andre Norton (1953)

• 61 pages
• 4 stars

This bundles contains 3 short stories:

• People of the Crater" (1947)
• The Gifts of Asti (1948)
• All Cats Are Gray" (1953)

The stories are somewhere between science fiction and fantasy, and a nice read.

I read the Standard Ebooks version

Interesting internet reads

Some noteworthy internet reads:

Nobody gets promoted for simplicity

It is easier to get appreciation for creating a complex solution than for creating a simple solution. This causes a lot of problems.

https://terriblesoftware.org/2026/03/03/nobody-gets-promoted-for-simplicity/

The View From RSS

What the web looks like when you subscribe to 2,000 RSS feeds.

https://www.carolinecrampton.com/the-view-from-rss/

Consciousness without counterpart: Identity beyond representation

An interesting essay about thoughts, consciousness and identity.

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/consciousness-without-counterpart-identity-beyond-representation/reading/

"This Is Not The Computer For You"

Another example of how restrictions promote creativity and ingenuity.

https://samhenri.gold/blog/20260312-this-is-not-the-computer-for-you/

See The Computers That Powered The Voyager Space Program

Not so much something to read, but something to watch: a wonderful video tour of the NASA JPL building 230, that was made in the '80s.

https://hackaday.com/2026/03/30/see-the-computers-that-powered-the-voyager-space-program/

Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions

Philip Kaludercic has started the Emacs carnival on the subject Mistakes and Misconceptions. Here's my contribution.

Vim to Emacs

In 2021 I switched to Emacs after using Vim for more than 20 years.

I was thinking about learning Lisp and Forth, and somehow I had the notion that programming in these languages is better supported in Emacs. Also, I had discovered that extensions like rec-mode and ledger-mode offer much more than the Vim plugins for the GNU recutils and ledger-cli.

And than there is the lure of org-mode.

In the past I had tried Viper-mode a few times, but never was happy with it. So I toke the plunge and started trying to learn using Emacs with the default keybindings.

Misconception: Vanilla keys are impossible to learn

For many years, the O'Reilly book "Learning GNU Emacs" from 1996 sat on my bookshelves, and each time I opened it up, I was completely overwhelmed by the Emacs keybindings.

My misconceptions:

• I had the impression that typing the keychords would result in your fingers getting tangled.
• There are so many keybindings, and unlike Vi, they are all combinations of several keys, so I assumed I'd never master them.

The man-page of mg, the micro-emacs that comes with the OpenBSD installer, has a nice compact list of the keybindings. Guessing the priority, I sorted this list by what I expected to be their relative importance, and dedicated a full weekend practicing the first few keybindings. In the week following this weekend, I transferred my task list that was in Taskwarrior to org-mode, and started using Emacs during my day-time job, gradually learning more keybindings.

In hindsight, my ideas were wrong. In the beginning the keychords are weird, but I have never had my fingers in a knot :) And giving it some effort and time, the muscle memory rapidly adopts the keychords.

My ~/.xinitrc maps the CapsLock key as Control key, and I have never experienced the so-called Emacs-pinky.

Misconception: Dired can be ignored

I prefer working on the command line and on Linux and BSD have never used a file manager. With one exception: in the nineties I used Midnight Commander to upload complete directory-trees over FTP.

Just like Midnight Commander, Dired, the Emacs file manager, can be used with the keyboard, no need to use the mouse.

In the beginning I didn't look into Dired. Only after using Emacs for some time, I discovered that Dired is very useful and now I am gradually incorporating it in my workflow.

I still have to dive deeper in it. Of course it can be used just like any file manager, like renaming files and moving files from one directory to another. The real power of Dired is, based on my limited knowledge and experience, in the integration with the rest of Emacs.

Misconception: Underestimating the impact of using Emacs

Moving from Vim to Emacs, I had the notion of replacing one editor with another. I couldn't be more wrong.

Stealthy--like a ninja in the night--Emacs creeps into your life and gradually takes over everything. The integration of so many functionality make Emacs a wonderful desktop environment.

The advantages of this is that it makes everything much easier, everything has the same user interface, and it all works the same on any platform. From window manager to IDE, Emacs can do it all.

This is a small anthology of my use of Emacs:

• Email: Emacs Gnus
• Usenet reader: Gnus
• RSS feed reader: Elfeed (next to following feeds with the brilliant Gwene.org RSS to NNTP gateway)
• IRC: Emacs rcirc IRC-client
• Reading webpages: Emacs eww
• Reading Gopher and Gemini pages: Elpher
• Note taking system: Denote
• Common Lisp REPL: SLIME: The Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs
• Scheme REPL: Geiser
• PDF viewer: Emacs works fine as a PDF-viewer, and bookmark pages with the standard Emacs bookmarking functionality
• Shell: Most of the time the build-in shell Eshell is fine for me.

This is not a complete list. F.e, I write magazine articles in org-mode, and when ready, using the org-mode export functionality, export the article to ODT-format. And before my retirement, I wrote reports and policies in org-mode and exported these to LaTeX.

0rg-mode supports simple calculations in tables. The calculations to fill out my three-monthly VAT tax return from are in org-mode, automatically extracting the numbers from the ledger-journal using ledger-cli. My yearly financial statements are also compiled in a few org-mode tables.

I have used the Emacs X Window Manager but after a while went back to the old faithful ratpoison window manager. I think this is faster than EXWM, but have never done any real measuring.

Misconception: Emacs Lisp is not a general language

While learning Emacs and starting to use Emacs Lisp (also called Elisp) I discovered that Emacs Lisp is a very capable language.

The many different packages that are available for Emacs proof this.

I have build a static website generator in Elisp, and an application to generate my invoices and the ledger entries, and much more.

My mistake

In the post "Emacs Carnival Mistakes and Misconceptions", Philip asks us to mention our mistakes. Of course I have made many, f.e., in the beginning is setting up your configuration not easy.

My biggest mistake however, is not making the switch much sooner.

Emacs is a powerful environment

The development of Emacs began in 1984. Using Lisp for its development was a brilliant choice. Emacs Lisp is very capable and has a low threshold. This empowers its many different users.

Emacs has evolved over more than 40 years by endless user contributions. Because these are daily users solving real problems, the result is a very powerful and versatile environment that can be used for a plethora of tasks. Nothing comes even close to it.

Here is a small post about deploying a Matrix server in the homelab.

The goal is a Matrix server running on a FreeBSD jail that can be used from the web browser on your desktop.

It is a quick-and-dirty configuration, to get you started.

This setup is for testing purposes. The server will not be exposed to the internet and it will not federate with the Matrix network.

The setup contains three parts:

• the Conduit Matrix server
• the Cinny web Matrix client
• NGINX as reverse proxy

Domain names

First, create in your local DNS server two subdomain names, one for Conduit and one for Cinny, f.e., matrix.example.com and cinny.example.com, both pointing to the ip-address of the jail.

Certificates

Create certificates for the two domains.

If you haven't setup a local CA, do that first, for example using mkcert.

Place the certificate files in /etc/ssl/certs/ in the jail.

Conduit

Conduit advertises itself as a simple, fast and reliable matrix server.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

Copy the file /usr/local/etc/conduit.toml.sample to /usr/local/etc/conduit.toml and edit this file:

Servername

This is the subdomain of your Conduitserver.

servername = "matrix.example.com"

Registration token

New users can register with this token.

registration_token = "very-secret"

Allow federation

We won't expose our server to the internet. Federation will not be required and we will not allow it.

allow_federation = false

Cinny

Cinny is yet another Matrix client. It runs as a web application. You access it with your web browser.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

The package manager installs Cinny in /usr/local/www/cinny.

In this directory, copy the file config.json.example to config.json and edit it:

homeserverList

Delete all entries in the homeserverList and insert the subdomain of your Conduit server.

"homeserverList": [
  "matrix.example.com"
],

featuredCommunities

Probably you can delete a lot here. I only cleaned the list "servers":

"servers": ["matrix.example.com"]

NGINX

NGINX is a very great web server.

It is available as a FreeBSD package.

Here we use it as a reverse proxy.

In the file /usr/local/etc/nginx/nginx.conf add two blocks for the virtual servers:

server {
    listen *:443 ssl;
    server_name matrix.example.com;
    client_max_body_size 1G;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/matrix.example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/certs/matrix.example.com.key;
    location / {
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:6167;
    }
}

server {
    listen *:443 ssl;
    server_name cinny.example.com;
    client_max_body_size 1G;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/cindy.example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/certs/cindy.example.com.key;
    location / {
       root /usr/local/www/cinny;
       index index.html;
    }
}

Allow the daemons to run

In /etc/rc.conf add two lines to allow the daemons to run.

conduit_enable="YES"
nginx_enable="YES"

Start or restart the Conduit and the NGINX daemons.

Create a few accounts

Open cinny.example.com in your web browser.

Register as new account. Choose your server (matrix.example.com), and provide a user name and a password. Insert the registration token from the Conduit configuration (above this is mentioned as "very-secret") in the field below the two password fields.

Repeat, to get a few accounts to play with.

Have fun playing with Matrix in you homelab!

Below are the two books that I finished this month. I started a third one, but didn't like and decided not to finish it.

Non-fiction

The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Weiner (1994)

• 332 pages
• 5 stars

A book about scientific research aimed at better understanding natural selection, sexual selection, and evolution.

Much of the book is about two biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, doing a decades long research of finches on a small vulcanic island in the Galapagos. Also some other evolutionairy biological research is discussed. The book explains how natural selection and evolution can indeed be seen in action, contrairy the old idea that evolution moves too slow to witness.

I learned from it that in nature there is always competition and that in hard times, like when food is extra scarce, the selection pressure increases and evolution accelerates.

A very interesting book, easy to read and understand.

Fiction

A Maze of Death by Philip K. Dick (1970)

• 216 pages
• 5 stars

Science fiction story of a very small group of people colonizing the planet Delmak-O. They arrived in so-called "nosers", which are one-way space ships. The story develops when bad things starting to happen. This is, as often with works from this writer, a rather short book.

It is a good story. with enough tension and surprises to keep you engaged. Recommended!

Texinfo

Texinfo is a brilliant hypertext system that predates HTML. You access it with info, which is a text mode application. The content consists of a number of nodes. Each node is an information element. You access the nodes through menus, hyperlinks, and indices. Also you can "walk" through a info file with keys like [ and ]. See info info.

Leveraging the power of TeX, Texinfo files can be used to produce gorgeous looking PDF files, like the GNU books. Compared to generating PDF files from LaTeX, generating PDF files from Texinfo is incredible fast.

po4a

The po4a (PO for anything) eases documentation translations and their maintenance.

This is what this website says:

It extracts the translatable material from the original document, and places it into a PO file that is adapted to the translation process. Once this PO file is updated by the translator, po4a re-injects the translation into the structure of the original document to generate a translated document.

po4a supports several documentation formats, including Texinfo.

Workflow

In general, the workflow is something like this:

• Create a PO-file from the orginal Texinfo file.
• Add the translations to the PO-file.
• Generate a translated Texinfo file.
• Use the translated Texinfo file like any other Texinfo file, e.g., create an Info file and a PDF with it.

When the original Texinfo file changes:

• Update the PO-file.
• Add or change translations where needed.
• Generate a new translated Texinfo file.

Store the original Texinfo file

In order for the update of the PO-file to work, you'll need both the original Texinfo file as well as the new version of the Texinfo file. It is therefor important to keep a copy of the original Texinfo file.

In the examples below, two versions of the Texinfo file are mentioned:

• testinfo-v1.texi: this represents the original file to be translated.
• testinfo-v2.texi: this represents a new version of the file to be translated.

Create a PO-file

To create the PO-file from the original Texinfo file, using the following command.

po4a-updatepo \
--format texinfo \
--master testinfo-v1.texi \
--po testinfo.po

Replace testinfo-v1.texi with the name of the original Texinfo file.

Replace testinfo.po with the desired name of the PO-file.

Translating the PO-file

The PO-file contains a lot of strings and paragraphs to be translated.

Translating strings

The entry for a string in the PO-file is something like this:

#. type: menuentry
#: testinfo-v2.texi:30
msgid "Fundamental stuff"
msgstr ""

The first line containing the type differs for the roles of the string in the Texinfo document.

• The line starting with msgid is a line to be translated.
• The line starting with msgstr is where the translation must be paced.

Translating paragraphs

The entry for a paragraph looks something likes this:

#. type: Plain text
#: testinfo.texi:24
msgid ""
"In this chapter I define the concepts that will be used throughout the rest "
"of the document.  Moreover, measures of efficiencies as well as bounds of "
"complexity will be introduced."
msgstr ""

The translation of the paragraph must be placed right below the line starting with msgstr:

#. type: Plain text
#: testinfo.texi:24
msgid ""
"In this chapter I define the concepts that will be used throughout the rest "
"of the document.  Moreover, measures of efficiencies as well as bounds of "
"complexity will be introduced."
msgstr ""
"In dit hoofdstuk definieer ik de concepten die gebruikt worden in de rest "
" ... "

The lines in the translated paragraph start with a double quote (") and end with a space and a double quote.

The last line of the translated paragraph ends with a double quote without a space, just like the last line of the paragraph in the original language.

(Example text copied from Writing Documentation, Part IV: Texinfo on Linux Gazette.)

Texinfo commands in paragraphs

Texinfo commands require special formatting of the lines.

For this, we make use of the \n formatting in the strings and paragraphs:

String example:

#. type: smallexample
#: testinfo.texi:1421
#, no-wrap
msgid "Original line to be translated\n"
msgstr "Translated line\n"

Sometimes po4a has recognized the Texinfo command and treated as such, which can be seen at the type of the PO-element, as here above.

Other times the Texinfo command appears inside a paragraphs to be translated. Here we make uses of careful \n formatting in the translated paragraph:

" ... "
"Some text inside the paragraph\n"
"@ifnottex \n@xref{Some-ref}.\n@end ifnottex\n"
"@iftex \n@xref{Some-other-ref}. \n@end iftex\n"
"Some other text inside the paragraph. "
" ... "

Not: the \n is directly followed by a double quote, without a space before the double quote.

Update a PO-file

When later the original Texinfo file gets an update, we have to reflect those changes in our translated file.

Here's how to update the PO-file. Note the use of the name of the new version of the Texinfo file (testinfo-v2.texi) and the name of original file the PO-file was created with (testinfo-v1.texi).

po4a-updatepo \
  --format texinfo \
  --master testinfo-v2.texi \
  --previous testinfo-v1.texi \
  --po testinfo.po

The PO-file in the command above is the same file we created in the first step and has been filled with our translations.

How to recognize changes in the updated PO-file

After running the po4a-updatepo command, the PO-file with our translations is changed. po4a has merged the changes into it.

This means we must go through the PO-file again, to add or change translations. Below follows how to recognize new text, deleted text and changed text.

New text

New lines and paragraphs can be recognized by an empty msgstr. Example:

msgid "Very new chapter"
msgstr ""

Deleted text

Deleted text can be recognized by a pound char (#) at the start of the msgid and msgstr lines. Example:

#~ msgid "This line will be deleted in the next version."
#~ msgstr "Deze regel wordt in de volgende versie verwijderd."

Changed lines

Changed lines are preceded by a line with #| msgid at the start. Example:

#| msgid "This line will be changed in the next version."
msgid "This line is now changed in this version."
msgstr "Deze regel wordt in de nieuwe vesie gewijzigd."

• The line starting with #| msgid is the line as it was in the previous version of the Texinfo file.
• The line starting with msgid is the line as it is in the new version of the Texinfo file.
• The msgstr contains the previous translation, is no longer valid and must be changed into a translation of the new text.

Create translated texinfo file

po4a-translate \
  --format texinfo \
  --master testinfo-v2.texi \
  --po testinfo.po \
  --localized testinfo-nl.texi

Here, the input file testinfo-v2.texi is used as an example. The output file is testinfo-nl.texi, the Texinfo file that is generated using the PO-file and the Texinfo file it was created from.

For convenience, create a Makefile for this:

testinfo-nl.texi:   testinfo.po
    po4a-translate \
      --format texinfo \
      --master testinfo-v2.texi \
      --po testinfo.po \
      --localized testinfo-nl.texi

When only a part of the translation has been done, po4a will refuse to generate the Texinfo output file. This can be configured by using the switch -k, e.g., -k 30 to generate an output file when at least 30% of the translation has been done. The default is 80%.

Generate a PDF file from the texinfo file with the translation

makeinfo --pdf testinfo-nl.texi

To add this to the Makefile, you could do something like this:

testinfo-nl.pdf:    testinfo-nl.texi testinfo.po
    makeinfo --pdf testinfo-nl.texi

testinfo-nl.texi:   testinfo-nl.po
    po4a-translate \
     --format texinfo \
     --master testinfo.texi \
     --po testinfo.po \
     --localized testinfo-nl.texi

When there are some non fatal errors, the makeinfo command can be extended with the switch ---force to generate an output file even when there are errors.

Editing PO-files with Emacs

Here follow some tips for working in Emacs.

Spell check

When working on the PO file and inserting translations, the file will contain text in two languages, the original language and the language we are translating to.

An easy way to spellcheck a single entry is by marking it as a region and run M-x flyspell-region.

First, set the dictionary to be used with M-x ispell-change-dictionary.

Flyspell-mode

Flyspell-mode checks your spelling while you type. Just enable it --after having changed to the right dictionary-- with: ````

M-x flyspell-mode

Curly braces

Texinfo uses a lot of curly braces. Make live easier and enable electric-pair-mode:

M-x electric-pair-mode

This will let Emacs insert the closing curly brace for you.

.dir-locals.el

Set several options automagically with a file named .dir-locals.el in your directory, for example:

((nil . ((ispell-local-dictionary . "nl")
     (abbrev-mode . t)
     (eval . (flyspell-mode))
     (eval . (electric-pair-mode))
     (eval . (company-mode)))))

Where nl is the Dutch dictionary.

View local info file in Info-mode

To open in a local info file in info-mode, use C-u C-h i.

Working with paragraphs

For me, this works convenient:

• First, write the paragraph with the translation just as normal text.
• Next, when needed, correct the paragraph using fill-paragraph, normally with M-q.
• Third, surround each line with double quotes, with a space before the double at the end of the line.
• Make sure the last line just ends with a double quote, not a space and double quote.

Some small Elisp functions can help:

(defun my/quote-region ()
  "Surround each line in the region with quotes."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (save-restriction
      (narrow-to-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "^" "\"")
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "$" " \""))))

(defun my/unquote-region ()
  "Remove quotes around the lines in the region."
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (save-restriction
      (narrow-to-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "^\"" "")
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "\"$" ""))))

(defun my/unquote-region-and-fill-paragraph ()
  "Remove quotes around the lines in the region and fill-paragraph"
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (save-restriction
      (narrow-to-region (region-beginning) (region-end))
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "^\"" "")
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (replace-regexp "\"$" "")
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (fill-paragraph))))

Example key bindings:
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c n q") #'my/quote-region)
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c n Q") #'my/unquote-region)
(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c n m") #'my/unquote-region-and-fill-paragraph)

The function my/quote-region can be improved: it leaves a space before the double quote on the last line.

I started this year with re-reading "Pattern Recognition". This is the first book that I re-read within a year.

Because I really enjoyed this book, I followed it with the other two books of the Blue Ant trilogy.

Non fiction

Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future by Neil Shubin (2025)

• 288 pages
• 5 stars

A book about Antarctic and Arctic expeditions, science, and history.

The book opens with the author, at the time still a student, experiences his first polar expedition. It is the start of a career with 30 years of science and many more polar expeditions.

The book tells about survival on the poles and the life of scientists working in extreme environments, and couples that with historic events. Well written, this book explains how the poles influences our weather and climate, and all life on earth, and the dangers of the current climate crisis. It is easy to read, never boring.

Absolutely recommended reading.

Fiction

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson (2003)

• 368 pages
• 5 stars

A great and captivating story that develops at a good pace. Real and easy to identify with protagonist. Lovely written, with many great sentences, great descriptions of the surroundings, and of the characters. A real and highly recommended page-turner.

Re-read this book. Gibson creates wonderful sentences and I expect to have missed several in the first read, being captivated by the story development. I like Cayse, the protagonist and her way of thinking. This book is definitely becoming a kind of comfort read for me.

Spook Country by William Gibson (2007)

• 371 pages
• 5 stars

Second book in the Blue Ant trilogy. Like the first book, "Pattern Recognition", this is not a science fiction story. Although I felt less connection with the three protagonists, I got quickly immersed into the story. Again the book is wonderful written, good plot, and a page-turner.

Zero History by William Gibson (2010)

• 416 pages
• 5 stars

Third book in the Blue Ant trilogy. Again not a science fiction book. And again a story around the fashion world. I got quickly immersed into the story. Another page turner, wonderful written. I enjoyed this one more then the second book from the trilogy.

These are all three great books, Pattern Recognition is the best, followed by ero History, and Spook Country on third.

I started a new web page, to publish a collection of awesome and inspiring web pages that are worth reading.

Currently the collection is modest, I hope to build over time.

Find this collection of evergreens here.

Implement a simple review process for denote notes with denote-review

How an Emacs package came into existence

Systems in use

Over time I have grown into using several different note systems next to each other, like taking notes in awkiawki wiki and in denote.

Both were a succession of earlier systems:

• My notes in awkiawki once started as notes in vimwiki.
• My notes in denote once started as notes in Deft for Emacs.

OBTF

Thinking about the best way forward I experimented with different options.

Moving towards an OBTF --One Big Text File-- looked promising. I explored org mode options like org refile. To get familiarized I set up some exercises, configured an org capture for an OBTF and started using it.

After getting some hands on experience, I came to the conclusion that I prefer a lot of small note files above one big one.

Migrated awkiawki

I decided to migrate the awkiawki notes to denote and wrote a small Guile Scheme script to convert the wiki formatted notes into denote formatted notes (in org mode). Links between wiki-notes became links between denote notes.

After the migration I ended up with over 1,300 notes in denote.

Need for a reviewing process

All notes are created equal, but some are more equal than others.

It was clear that I needed a system to review the collection of notes, get rid of notes that addressed the same topic or were outdated, and which notes are underdeveloped. Knowing myself, this would result in a early death without a systematic approach.

I started thinking about a simple set up, that would not get in your way and wouldn't affect being "in the flow" when working with notes.

Denote notes

Notes are unstructured data by default, but denote notes start with some structured data, called "frontmatter". It contains metadata like the title, keywords (think: tags), an identifier and the creation date of a note.

This seemed the best place for a small addition. I thought about setting a deadline for each note, before which it had to be reviewed, but that opens another rabbit hole and I decided against it.

I ended up with creating a small system that added an extra field to the frontmatter, a line that stated the last review date, and a method to select some notes and order these by that review date.

I build this and brought it under the attention of Protesilaos Stavrou, the creator of denote, also known as "Prot". Denote supports different kind of formatting of the frontmatter, markdown-toml, markdown-yaml, plain text, and org mode. I had build my system for my own needs, and it just supported org-mode.

Prot nudged me into making the system more general, by adding support for the other formats. This turned out less complicated than I had originally envisioned and the system grew into a usable Emacs package. I submitted the package for inclusion in GNU ELPA. Philip Kaludercic and Stefan Monnier helped me improved the code, and the rest is history.

Usage

denote-review adds an extra line to the frontmatter. Here's an example of the frontmatter of an org-mode formatted denote note:

The function denote-review-set-date adds the reviewdate to the frontmatter, or updates it to the current date.

For convenience, bind this to a keychord, for example:

(define-key global-map (kbd "C-c n x") #'denote-review-set-date)

To get started, select a number of notes in Dired and bulk-insert the frontmatter into these notes, see below.

After extending the frontmatter of several notes with a review data it becomes useful to list them, using the command:

 M-x denote-review-display-list

This command prompts for a denote-directory when needed (when there is more than one denote-directory in your Emacs configuration, or when you have set up several directories using denote-silo). Select a directory using completion.

Next, the command prompts for a keyword to narrow the list to. Choose a keyword or just hit RET (the enter key) for all notes.

This creates a tabulated list with for each note the review date and the file name:

Only notes that contain the reviewdate frontmatter are displayed, notes without a review date are ignored.

The notes are sorted by review date. Click on one of the column headers to order by the contents of that column or to reverse the sort order. Using the key S (uppercase, so shift-s) performs the same actions.

Select a line by moving point up or down in this list. With a single key press, perform one of the following commands:

The tabulated list mode comes with a number of build-in commands, like p and n to move to the previous or next line, SPC and DEL (space bar and backspace key) to scroll down or up.

The general idea is that you from time to time set up a review sessions:

• select a number of notes, f.e., notes with a specific keyword
• go through the list and review notes, for each note edit where needed
• update the reviewdate of reviewed notes

Slowly moving to the situation where all notes have a recent review date.

Note: The filenames in the screenshots above are based on headers in the README from Protesilaos Stavrou, see protesilaos.com/emacs/denote

Bulk-insert the review date

Open a denote-directory in Dired and mark one or more notes with m.

Unmark a marked note with u.

To bulk-insert the review date there are two options:

The original creation date as review date

Issue the command

M-x denote-review-set-date-dired-marked-files

This will insert a frontmatter line with the review date derived from the date encoded in the first chars of the filename.

The current date as review date

Enter the Universal Argument C-u

Issue the command

M-x denote-review-set-date-dired-marked-files.

This will insert a frontmatter line with the current date a review date.

Select multiple notes in Dired

Like Prot has written in his denote manual, it is easy to select and mark a number of notes in Dired using a regexp.

For example, to select and mark all notes with the keyword "foo":

• press %m
• enter _foo RET

To reverse the selection (all notes that don't have the keyword "foo"):

• press %m
• enter _foo RET
• press t (toggle)

Happy note taking!

Project Gutenberg is a fantastic treasure trove filled to the brim with over 75,000 books.

In 2025 I read several books and short stories that are now in the public domain. Here are the most noteworthy.

Books

Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper (1962)

252 pages

Short science fiction novel about a planet in deep space which is being mined for "sunstones". The discovery of a small humanoid furry race set of a chain of events. This book breathes US culture, but is non the less a lovely read.

Gutenberg book 18137

Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul by Marie Corelli (1898)

206 pages

A Gothic novel set in Egypt. A group of English tourists visits Cairo when the mysterious "Princess Zika" appears. Two friends fall in love with her. A spooky story about love and revenge.

Gutenberg book 5079

Short stories

Let's Get Together by Isaac Asimov (1957)

18 pages

Short story set in a world where the Cold War has endured for a century.

Gutenberg book 68377

The Black Kiss by Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner (1937)

20 pages

A horror short story. I almost never read horror stories, this one I enjoyed.

Gutenberg book 76435