EdwinStearns.com

I started a new job and with it I have bought a 15″ Macbook Pro. This is my first Mac and there have been some difficulties getting going with it. The main problem is that there is a lot of muscle memory that is unusable with the keyboard. Many things that I used to do with the control key are mapped to the command key, but not all. The control and alt (or option) keys are not where I’m used to which causes considerable problems in emacs, my favorite programming tool. My solution is to follow the advice I have read many times and change the key mapping so that caps lock is control and control is caps lock. This never made sense to me before because I used the right control key when typing a letter with my left hand and vice versa, the way I was taught to use the shift key. On my Macbook, there is only the left control key, so pressing C-x (a common combination for emacs) felt awkward. Using the caps lock as the control key makes this much easier. The problem now is that I have to think when doing common actions in emacs. This reminds me of the experience start to use emacs for all my programming work. It took about 2 weeks before I felt comfortable. This is better than my experience with vi where I never felt comfortable.

My favorite pen.

I found this pen, a Pentel Client,  over a year ago and it immediately became my favorite pen because of its heft and ease of writing. It is relatively inexpensive (I paid less than $5), but feels like quality. I then lost it and couldn’t remember what it was called and I couldn’t find it in Office Depot. I thought maybe it had been discontinued. This weekend I found it again and I’ll make sure that I’ll always have one.