Hello World

Org Reminders

Qiqi Jin — Sun, 01 Jun 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Overview

I use Reminders on my iPhone or iPad for daily to-dos, but Emacs org mode on my computer. This makes switching between the two applications uncomfortable.

Org mode is a powerful tool for editing and managing to-do lists on a computer. Apps like beorg allow you to edit and sync Org mode files on mobile devices. You can use it to get a familiar experience on computers and mobile devices.

But I think Reminders offers a simpler, more intuitive mobile experience. I'm building an Emacs plugin to sync to-dos between Org mode and Reminders.

Thanks reminders-cli to provide a simple and good performance CLI tool for interacting with macOS reminders.

Because I needed specific features, I forked it to ginqi7@reminders-cli.

Thanks jdtsmith provide great ideas for true sync logic. this is the discuss.

Design

Project Structure

There are two components:

org-reminders-cli : A controller for monitoring the org mode file and Reminders. When changes occur in the org mode file or Reminders, it compares the differences between them, updates Reminders, or sends messages to Emacs.
org-reminders elisp : A frontend that receives messages from org-reminders-cli and updates the org mode file.

Websocket-bridge

Using WebSocket bridge to communicate between Emacs and a Swift program enhances message handling robustness.

Treesite-org

Parsing the org mode file using org-tree-sitter is remarkably efficient, processing ten thousand items in under one second.

Emacs Brew Manager

Qiqi Jin — Wed, 09 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Summary

A simple Homebrew manager by Emacs.

The brew CLI is already sufficient for adding, deleting, or searching for formulae. However, when reviewing installed formulae — such as identifying unused ones or checking for version updates — a GUI is more convenient. That's why I created this Emacs package to manage installed formulae with additional features.

Features

Display all installed Formulae and Casks.

You can view all installed Formulae and Casks, with columns indicating the available new versions for updates and whether the Formula or Cask is used by other Formulae or Casks.

You can use the list information to decide which formulae and casks to delete or update, making your computer system cleaner and more controllable.

Display all installed Taps.

You can check the Tap to see how many Formulae and Casks are available and how many are installed.

You can delete unnecessary taps and interactively select to install Formulae or Casks provided by a specific tap.

How it works

Essentially, it is a wrapper around the brew command line, utilizing websocket-bridge-ruby as a bridge. The choice of Ruby is due to its ease in handling shell outcomes.

Image Slicing

Qiqi Jin — Sat, 01 Jun 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Overview

In Emacs, displaying an image occupies one line regardless of its height. The movement over the image while navigating by lines can be quite frustrating.

Although pixel-scroll and iscroll have improved image movement to some extent.

I hope to move images in the same way as moving text, line by line.

So I created this package to horizontally slice the images referenced in the buffer into multiple images. In Emacs, only a portion of the original image is displayed on each line. Finally, the image can be moved line by line.

During the development process, I found org-sliced-images which was almost the same as my idea. And thanks to him for letting me know about insert-sliced-image in Emacs.

Prerequisites

CLI

Curl: Used to download remote images.

Require Packages

org-element: Used to parse the buffer to retrieve all links.
image: Used to create an image object.
url-util : A utility for handling URL formats.

Install

clone the project in your own emacs configuration files directory, like:

git clone git@github.com:ginqi7/image-slicing.git ~/.emacs.d/lisp/image-slicing

add the path to 'load-path'

(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/.emacs.d/lisp/d/lisp/image-slicing"))

Configuration

Here are a few variables that can be used for configuration:

(require 'image-slicing)

Variables

variable	default value	explain
image-slicing-download-concurrency	20	the maximum concurrency of images download
image-slicing-line-height-scale	2	how many line height an image slice occupies
image-slicing-max-width	700	the maximum width of images display
image-slicing-cursor-fringe-bitmaps	'(left-fringe right-arrow warning)	the Fringe Bitmaps indicator for the cursor position.¹

EWW Config

cancel the eww defualt image render.

(add-to-list 'shr-external-rendering-functions
             '(img . image-slicing-tag-img))

Add image-slicing to eww-after-render-hook

(push #'image-slicing-mode eww-after-render-hook)

Elfeed Config

image-slice can also work with elfeed:

;; add to shr-external-rendering-functions (skip if alread setup for eww)
(add-to-list 'shr-external-rendering-functions
             '(img . image-slicing-tag-img))

;; advice `elfeed-show-entry' to trigger `image-slicing-mode'
(advice-add #'elfeed-show-entry :after #'image-slicing-mode)

Features

image-slicing-mode: Automatically finds image links in the buffer and renders them as multiline display.
Asynchronous: Asynchronous download of remote images.
Multiple Modes: Support multiple modes like org-mode, eww, elfeed.

Supported Link Format

Org Links
- [[url][tag]]
- [[url]]
Pure Links
- file:./hello.png
- http://image.png
EWW Html Links
- <img src=''>
- Support base64 formatted images

Example

Disadvantages

If there are many remote image links in the buffer, it will generate many temporary image files in the temporary system directory.
If the URL link is too short, the number of slices of the original image will be small, and the image line height will be large.
Only one buffer can be rendered at a time.

Todo List

Adapt nov

Development History

Dec 18, 2024

I find a similar package named org-sliced-images, so I study some code from it to make my code simpler.

In Emacs, we can display a part of an image by using ('display . (list (list 'slice x y dx dy) image)), without needing to actually slice the image using ImageMagick, so I remove the dependency about ImageMagick.

Dec 16, 2024

There have some issues in last version:

There is slow when ImageMagick handle remote images.
Though I will delete the placeholders when the user removes the overlays, there is still a risk of polluting the users' buffer.

So I use asynchronous processes to run ImageMagick, guaranteeing that it will not freeze Emacs. On the other hand, I removed the placeholder and just placed some overlays on the original URL text.

May 12, 2023

I got the idea to slice the image into many pieces, making Emacs display the pieces line by line.

Use the CLI ImageMagick to slice images.
Insert some special text like "#_#_@@_#_#" as placeholder, and put an overlay on that placeholder to show image pieces.

Footnotes

Emacs Fringe Bitmaps ↩︎

"Project Hail Mary" Reading Notes

Qiqi Jin — Thu, 01 Jun 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Author: Andy Weir

Other works: The Martian

The second novel by Andy Weir that I've read. His science fiction is still relatively easy to understand, without any particularly profound concepts. The story creates a crisis environment and uses basic physics concepts to solve problems step by step.

The protagonist is not a hero who sacrifices everything to save the world, and is even timid. However, he remains a person of integrity, always acting for the benefit of the world when faced with difficult decisions.

In the end, he proves more decisive in saving his friends than in saving the world itself.

The final ending is quite interesting, avoiding depictions of a devastated Earth or a hero's return. Instead, it opens up a whole new world.

And until the very end, the protagonist remains just an ordinary teacher.

Using Emacs Combine Anything

Qiqi Jin — Wed, 01 Jun 2022 00:00:00 GMT

I've written several Emacs tools to be more productive. As an Emacs Lisp novice, instead of writing pure Emacs Lisp programs, I used Emacs Lisp to encapsulate several console tools and use Emacs as an adhesive. Overall, it feels good to use.

I feel using Emacs as a console tools' GUI interface is a good choice. On the one hand, it can reuse a series of methods and plugins of Emacs and write some frequent operations as Emacs functions and bind them to a shortcut key. You can run some console commands easily and quickly while writing documents, On the other hand, there is no need to repeat the core logic of console tools.

Recently wrote for 4 Emacs tools:

leetcode-emacs: https://github.com/ginqi7/leetcode-emacs, an emacs plugin to write Leetcode programs
hbase-shell-emacs: https://github.com/ginqi7/hbase-shell-emacs, A Emacs Plugin for Hbase shell
kubectl-emacs: https://github.com/ginqi7/kubectl-emacs, This is an Emacs plugin that makes it easier and faster to manage k8s using kubectl.
global-interactive-emacs: https://github.com/ginqi7/global-interactive-emacs, Global Interactive Emacs

These tools can be divided into two categories:

The first 3 tools use Emacs as a GUI or interactive interface for a series of command-line tools

The last one is using Emacs as the backend of the system application shortcut launcher. Use interactive methods outside of Emacs defined in Emacs.

Using Emacs as a GUI or interactive interface

The idea and implementation of using Emacs as a GUI or interactive interface are very simple and intuitive.

Using emacs to define an interactive function for command-line tools, while you want to fuzz search some options or inputs to run a complex command.
Using emacs ctable¹ to list outputs and bind some function on hotkey in its cell, while you want to review command-line tools' output, and run some frequency operations on some specific output.

Example

Global Interactive Emacs

This tool is inspired by article : Global interactive Emacs functions.It provides an idea to run Emacs functions outside of Emacs.

So I try to use this idea to write a tool like lauchbar or Alfred. It can help users quickly launch apps or run workflows.

I'm using it to replace the Launchbar.

Principle

the idea of Global Interactive Emacs is so interesting.

On Emacs, using completing-function to implement interactive function, it will use minibuffer to input function parameter.

Global Interactive Emacs overwrite the completing-function, using choose² to accept parameter. So we can run Emacs interactive function without focus Emacs.

Pros and cons

This tool has some pros and cons, and I think if you have the following needs, you can try to use it :

you don't want pay for other tools like lauchbar or Alfred .
you wish some function in Emacs could run out of Emacs.
You're familiar with Emacs, there are some plugins, and custom functions that you want to reuse.
You don't want to learn a new language or workflow of a new software
…

Pros

free: Whether Lauchbar or Alfred, you need to pay for it to use it comfortably and efficiently. Just need Emacs and some open source software that you can use for free.
consistency: You can use the same features inside or outside of Emacs and have a similar experience.
Simple Configuration: If you are familiar with Emacs, you can easily configure it with emacs-lisp without having to relearn the language and process of other tools.
Scalability: You can write your interactive functions and plug them into the tool, or use the Emacs plugins developed by others to extract the interaction functions and plug them into the tool.

Cons

Not powerful for now: Obviously, the tool is not as powerful as Lauchbar or Alfred. At the moment it is only useful for my own needs. I will continue to improve according to my needs, and anyone is welcome to help improve it.
Can't perfectly support all Emacs interactive functions: There are currently some Emacs interaction functions that cannot be run outside of Emacs, such as execute-extended-command. I don't have the train of thought to support it yet.

Example

Footnotes

emacs-ctable : Table Component for elisp↩︎
choose github :Fuzzy matcher for OS X that uses both std{in,out} and a native GUI↩︎

Goodbye, Time

Qiqi Jin — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 00:00:00 GMT

When we first parted, we each entered different worlds, some fresh and exciting, others daunting and frightening. We often talked about our experiences, sometimes with excitement, sometimes with sadness. We felt that at this moment, we had someone to confide in, to share our joys and sorrows with. It felt warm and beautiful, and our relationship felt deeper than ever before.

As time went on, we got used to our new worlds and became busy with our own lives. We still kept in touch with each other, but we soon realized that sometimes we couldn't help each other with our problems or understand each other's joy.

When we finally reunited after a long time, we had so much to say, but didn't know where to start, so we just chatted about the weather and other small things. Before we knew it, we had run out of things to say. Maybe we weren't old enough to reminisce endlessly about the past, or maybe we had completely different perspectives on new things. We didn't burst each other's bubbles, we just continued with small talk. Occasionally, we shared our thoughts, but found it difficult to agree with each other, so we either nodded and said "I agree," or just smiled and changed the subject. If someone else were to observe our conversation, they would see two people laughing and agreeing with each other, seemingly in harmony.

As we parted ways again, "we exchanged pleasantries and promises to meet again", and each breathed a sigh of relief as the other left.

On the way home, thinking back to our meeting, tears welled up in our eyes.

Chess Game

Qiqi Jin — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It's like when you invite someone to play chess with you. You are full of enthusiasm and think that the other person is also enjoying it. Until the end, when he pushes the chessboard away and leaves, you realize that he was bored and couldn't bear it anymore. Looking back at the chess game, you can see his emotions everywhere, but you didn't notice it at all. The reason is that you thought you had similar interests, while he thought he could tolerate it. In the end, when the chess game is over, one person is full of complaints, while the other is confused. If you had communicated your thoughts from the beginning, the outcome might have been different.

The Story Ending

Qiqi Jin — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 00:00:00 GMT

On the way home, he suddenly thought it would be better to buy some fruits for his parents, so he found a good-looking fruit stall on the roadside. He forgot what fruits his parents liked, so he squatted down and tried to choose as many varieties as possible.

"Sir, how much is this pear per kilogram?"

This voice, just like the half-hour recording in his phone, is a voice he will never forget. He looked up and saw the side face that had been outlined countless times in his mind, as if he was stunned. He just looked quietly without speaking or getting up. The woman who was buying the pear took it and turned around, surprised to see the person staring at her. But soon, it turned into a gentle smile.

"You're back!"

He stood up, straightened his clothes, and then spoke.

"Well, it's been a long time. I didn't expect you to keep your hair so long."

"Yes, ladies look better with long hair. You've changed a lot too."

"Haha, handsome, right? Do you regret deciding to get rid of yourself so early!"

He said in a joking tone, his eyes unconsciously glanced at the ring on her left ring finger. As if the ring was too dazzling, he quickly moved his gaze away.

"Huh, you're still so narcissistic."

Her tone was a bit awkward, and he realized that some jokes couldn't be made anymore. For a while, he didn't know what to say. Somehow, he blurted out:

"You look pretty now."

"Thank you." She didn't know what to say to him either. It's been too long.

He was very annoyed that he had brought the topic to a dead end. At this time, she noticed the gray and white scarf he was wearing, which didn't match his clothes at all. She suggested to find a topic:

"You're still so casual in your dress, and the scarf doesn't look good."

He was stunned for a moment, staring straight at her, then suddenly laughed heartily, as if he had breathed a sigh of relief.

"But it's quite warm."

For a moment, it seemed that a certain emptiness in his heart was filled, and the stuck wheel of fate began to turn forward again. Perhaps he had been waiting for this moment in front of her for the past five years, to be able to laugh openly. The next moment, he was pushed forward by fate, and he thought he should have the courage to step into the future.