One of my favorite but little used emacs features is rectangular editing. It's little used because I don't need it all that often. It's one of my favorites because when I do need it, it's just so amazingly useful.

The idea is you can mark a rectangle of text, cut it and later paste it. This means that if you have three columns of text:

a b c
d e f
g h i
j k l

You can easily mark the middle column (b e h k) or even just the b e and h, cut it and paste it elsewhere as a rectangle. You can also open up a rectangular region (filled with whitespace). There are a couple of other niceties but that's the basic idea.

Here's a link to all the functions:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Rectangles.html

And the video:

Enjoy.

Relevant links:

• Video series overview page:
  • http://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs
• Code:
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/master

Apparently, if you view this on mobile it asks if you want to download the story every time so I changed it from an inline iframe to a link:

Link to the story

I'm guessing my views on this aren't very popular -that's OK, every community needs a curmudgeon.

A few years ago, I cautioned if we weren't careful, once the big players got involved, CS Ed would go the way of other disciplines, and not in a good way. It looks like indeed we're well on our way down that road.

I've ranted before about things like non-profits, drop in and summer programs. STEM Oil Salesmen ¹ selling easy fixes, exciting kids and parents, using the Think Method just like Professor Harold Hill only to send the kids off where they can blame a future teacher for failure.

I've also ranted about teacher preparation and how all the rage is short term, Superficial PD and scripted curricula and my concern that once the politicians can say CS is in the schools, we'll be done.

I've been working towards getting CS to all students for most of my career and while it's wonderful to see us getting closer to the goal, I'm seeing more and more signs that my caution is becoming reality. and CS Ed is going the way of other Ed - aligned to testing and more to the whims of the power players and politicians than to teachers and students.

The other week I noticed, this post by Code.org trying to encourage more students to take the APCSP exam - not encourage more students take the class or some other class or to have more students be exposed to CS but to actually sit for the APCSP exam. That post was followed by this one which also highlights actually taking the exam.

This didn't sit well with me.

What does the exam do for the kid? It doesn't drive instruction - by that time, any good teacher knows their student and is better served by using their own assessments. The college credit thing? I'm skeptical. Fewer and fewer schools are giving credit for APCSA let alone this new CS0 non major course. Blanket credit? Since full time students pay for a range of credits, I'm still skeptical here. Placement? It's a course for non-majors - what exactly are you placing out of?

Reasons not to take the exam?

• If it doesn't do anything for the kid, why take it
• Stress of taking the exam
• There are other ways of placing out of courses once in college
• Save the expense

As a general rule, I'm against forcing students to sit for AP exams. At the extreme case, since we've been brainwashed to think that a school that has lots of kids sitting for exams is good, I've seen at least one case of a principal having all his kids sit for, and just about all fail AP Calculus - that is, get a 1 or 2 on the exam. This principal had all his students take the exam, and only 2 scores were 3 or higher. This principal then parlayed his success into a higher profile gig - he's moved up in the world while setting up his students to fail.

This follows last year's announcement that code.org was partnering with the College Board - offering PD to teachers for free if the schools signed up their students for the PSAT 8/9 - another meaningless exam. So, we get teacher training light ² as long as the school pays for the PSAT8/9 for every kid so that the kid can take yet another test with really no value³.

Why should students pay for an AP exam that doesn't do anything for them? Why should Jane Q Taxpayer pay for exams that only server to enrich the College Board.

True, The College Board is a big player. They already have much more influence of American High School education than they should. It's easy to climb on board the AP train for entre into our schools. The question is, should we use positions of influence to push efforts that might help our end but leave collateral damage to students and the public.

I don't doubt code.org's sincerity in wanting good CS in all schools nor the efforts or value as an advocate for CS Education. I'm concerned that the desire to win big and win now is moving us in a direction that we'll regret years from now.

Like many of my fellow bloggers and tweeters, I generally keep this site clear of political issues with the exception of those that are directly related to education.

Also, like many of my fellow bloggers and tweeters, this week has provided a reason to break with that tradition.

Many people, including some friends, all more eloquent than I have already posted, tweeted, and Facebooked about the behavior of our President and government.

Long time blogger Dave Winer put together trumpstatus.org where he's collecting many of the issues that we're all so alarmed with.

I would add cabinet appointments to his list with my particular personal concern over DeVos and the department of education. I've been meaning to blog about that for a while - perhaps this week.

My concern for today is something else. Every day, I see a new Trump induced crisis and every day I see a different subset of my circles respond. It's not quite as bad as:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

People are indeed speaking out, but I am concerned that people are going to rise up for their personal issue and when placated go back to business as usual - this is NOT the time for business as usual.

With the ACA repeal, I saw concerns from my working class friends and friends that work with lower earning populations.

Going into the DeVos hearing, mostly educators - real educators not astroturf reformers.

With Friday's order, the whole tech community came out.

Here's part of a thread by tech activist Anil Dash calling out, calling on, and crediting assorted tech players.

When net neutrality was the issue, Google, Twitter, Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr, etc. had a blackout, and it worked. This is far more grave.

— Anil Dash (@anildash) January 28, 2017

A powerful, straightforward statement from the CEO of Box — another publicly-traded company. https://t.co/wz5mQmTh6P

— Anil Dash (@anildash) January 28, 2017

We have to remember that all these order, policies, appointments, and plans are coming from the same place - Donald Trump and those politicians that are enabling him.

If he backs off on immigration, education issues remain, if he backs off there, we still have ACA, if that eases up, what about Women's rights and on and on.

This means we all have to get involved and stay involved.

What have I been doing?

• I finally joined the ACLU and set up a monthly donation.
• I subscribed to Daily Action so that I get a reminder each day of someone I can call to make a difference.
• I'm starting to accumulate my representatives phone numbers as I make those calls and am trying to make at least a call a day to remind our representatives who they work for.
• Education and advocacy

And if you suggestions for me - please post them here.

Thus ends my not business as usual post. What's going on in America is not someone else's problem - it's all of our problem and we all have to be active and vigilant to make it through tough times to come.

While I use emacs for all all sorts of things, one of the things I haven't done much is run shells from within emacs. I'm not sure why. I'm a command line wonk and adding command line goodness and emacs together seems like a natural. Maybe it's because back in the day I spent a lot of time on MS-DOS systems. You could get a reasonable Unixy facsimile using tools like the MKS toolkit and I like so many other young computer scientists wrote our own small shells when we learned C so I used that insted of command.com.

In any event, I'm trying to use the shell within emacs more.

Here's a quick video showing both shell, which runs whatever your default shell is in an emacs buffer and eshell which is emacs own shell.

I use a couple of packages to smooth over a couple of things.

Virtuelenvwrapper smooths things voer with the python virtaulenv and virtualenvwrapper linux packages:

(use-package virtualenvwrapper
      :ensure t
      :config
      (venv-initialize-interactive-shells)
      (venv-initialize-eshell))

Only relevant if you use Python and virtualenvs.

and more importantly, better shell:

(use-package better-shell
    :ensure t
    :bind (("C-'" . better-shell-shell)
	   ("C-;" . better-shell-remote-open)))

cleans things up when using a termianl to connect to a remote machine.

If you use a shell from within emacs as part of your workflow, please post how, or better, make a video!!!!

Enjoy

Relevant links:

• Video series overview page:
  • http://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs
• Code:
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/master

A while ago I did a couple of videos on how I use org-capture (part 1, part 2). I didn't get into a big part of org-capture - how I use org-mode and capture to manage my calendar and todo lists.

I was waiting to see if I liked my current setup - using org-gcal to sync with my Google Calendar for appointments while using my main org file for my todo list.

Coincidentally, Rainer König recently put up a video on how he syncs with his Google calendar. He uses a different method than the one I present in this video so make sure to check out his approach. In fact, you should check out his entire series on org-mode.

Here's the code I use install org-gcal. The video steps through setting up things on the Google side. You'll have to replace the client ID and client secrets in the code below as well as use your calendar name and whatever org file you want to sync with.

(setq package-check-signature nil)


(use-package org-gcal
  :ensure t
  :config
  (setq org-gcal-client-id "oauth 2.0 client ID"
	org-gcal-client-secret "client secret"
	org-gcal-file-alist '(("zamansky@gmail.com" .  "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/gcal.org"))))

I use these two hooks to sync things semi-automatically. The first hook syncs whenever I load the agenda. Since this happens in the background, if I just added something to my calendar, I might have to reload the agenda by hitting r in the agenda view.

The second hook syncs with my Google calendar when I capture.

(add-hook 'org-agenda-mode-hook (lambda () (org-gcal-sync) ))
(add-hook 'org-capture-after-finalize-hook (lambda () (org-gcal-sync) ))

Here are the rest of my settings. The org files I want to include in my agenda views:

• gcal.org – the one I'm syncing
• i.org – my main org file for todo items (the todo capture places things in here)
• schedule.org – my old schedule before I was syncing with Google. Not active anymore. I should probably remove it.

Also, my capture settings:

(setq org-agenda-files (list "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/gcal.org"
			     "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/i.org"
			     "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/schedule.org"))


(setq org-capture-templates
      '(("a" "Appointment" entry (file  "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/gcal.org" )
	 "* %?\n\n%^T\n\n:PROPERTIES:\n\n:END:\n\n")
	("l" "Link" entry (file+headline "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/links.org" "Links")
	 "* %? %^L %^g \n%T" :prepend t)
	("b" "Blog idea" entry (file+headline "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/i.org" "Blog Topics:")
	 "* %?\n%T" :prepend t)
	("t" "To Do Item" entry (file+headline "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/i.org" "To Do")
	 "* TODO %?\n%u" :prepend t)
	("n" "Note" entry (file+headline "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/i.org" "Note space")
	 "* %?\n%u" :prepend t)
	("j" "Journal" entry (file+datetree "~/Dropbox/journal.org")
	 "* %?\nEntered on %U\n  %i\n  %a")
	("s" "Screencast" entry (file "~/Dropbox/orgfiles/screencastnotes.org")
	 "* %?\n%i\n")))

The end result is that I can add an event in my Google calendar (or accept a calendar invite) and it appears in my org-mode agenda. Likewise, I can add a scheduled event using capture and it will sync up to Google. I can also just add an event by editing gcal.org but then would have to run org-gcal-post-at-point to send it up to Google.

Now, I can use bring up a regular agenda C-a a, my todo list C-a t or by adding a custom agenda command:

(setq org-agenda-custom-commands
      '(("c" "Simple agenda view"
	 ((agenda "")
	  (alltodo "")))))

a combined agenda and todo view using C-a n

Finally, there's calfw. It's a nice tool to view calendars in Google. I don't use it much anymore but it is nice:

(use-package calfw
  :ensure ;TODO: 
  :config
  (require 'calfw) 
  (require 'calfw-org)
  (setq cfw:org-overwrite-default-keybinding t)
  (require 'calfw-ical)

  (defun mycalendar ()
    (interactive)
    (cfw:open-calendar-buffer
     :contents-sources
     (list
      ;; (cfw:org-create-source "Green")  ; orgmode source
      (cfw:ical-create-source "gcal" "https://somecalnedaraddress" "IndianRed") ; devorah calender
      (cfw:ical-create-source "gcal" "https://anothercalendaraddress" "IndianRed") ; google calendar ICS
      ))) 
  (setq cfw:org-overwrite-default-keybinding t))

(use-package calfw-gcal
	:ensure t
	:config
	(require 'calfw-gcal))

Enjoy.

Better version:

Old, bad version:

Relevant links:

• Video series overview page:
  • http://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs
• Code:
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/master

Over on Facebook, a friend commented on my last post. He commented on the rigor of BA vs BS degrees. The comment mentioned Physics and Math degrees but I thought Id follow up a bit on CS degrees.

I took a quick look at three computer science programs - Cornell, UMich, and Queens College. Cornell because my daughter is there, UMich, my son, and Queens College because it's a CUNY college that offers both a BS and a BA in computer science.

Today's video talks about using emacs Tramp mode.

Tramp mode allows you to edit remote files using your local emacs. I usually do this over ssh.

To edit a file on a machine www.cstuy.org I would first find-file using C-c C-f and then for the file name to open:

/ssh:www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/testfile

this would open the file testfile in the absolute directory /home/zamansky/sc. If my username on the remote machine is different:

/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/testfile

And I can also work relative to my home directory:

/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:sc/testfile

If I just hit enter after the machine name and : -

/ssh:username@www.cstuy.org:

I end up in a dired buffer on the remote machine.

Likewise if I run a shell or eshell in the tramp buffer, it will run the shell on the remote machine. In the video I showed how shell didn't work because locally, I'm configured to use zsh and I don't have zsh installed remotely. Eshell, however, worked fine.

Using tramp in this way gives us all of the power of our local emacs configuration to edit a file on a remote machine.

You can also use tramp to edit local files as root using sudo:

sudo::/tmp/sc/rootfile

Note the double colon.

Finally, you can do the double-whammy - remote root editing:

ssh::www.cstu.org|sudo:www.cstuy.org:/home/zamansky/sc/rootfile

If you use zsh and any of this freezes, just do a search on "zsh tramp" and the top couple of hits will tell you what to add to your configuration files to fix things.

Finally, I mentioned in the video that I don't use tramp all that much anymore. That's mostly because I don't do much remote editing anymore. I used it more when I was administering a number of machines at Stuyvesant.

I still use it periodically, but I also use sshfs, a Linux tool (which may be available for other operating systems) that allows me to mount a directory tree from a remote machine and use it on my local machine.

Relevant links:

• Video series overview page:
  • http://cestlaz.github.io/stories/emacs
• Code:
  • https://github.com/zamansky/using-emacs/tree/master