Words, code, and information security in Portland, Oregon
This is the website of Erik L. Arneson. I am a freelance writer and software developer in Portland, Oregon.
- Read more about me or enjoy my blog posts listed below.
Blog Posts
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Update: Org to DOCX with Citations
Last year, I wrote about converting Org to DOCX with pandoc. Well, that particular method has needed some improvements. I needed to also support converting Markdown files, and more vitally, I needed to support the new-ish org-cite citation format.
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Writing and Reviewing Jupyter Notebooks
A recent project involves delivering a finished product as a collection of Jupyter Notebooks. This process involves using Emacs for writing, Git for version control, and a slightly tricky process for enabling non-Jupyter, non-Emacs users to perform document review.
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Pattern Matching and Tail Recursion in Emacs Lisp
Functional programming offers a bunch of really cool programming patterns. Two that I really enjoy are tail recursion and pattern matching, especially how they are implemented in OCaml. However, I spend a lot of time writing Emacs Lisp now, and I was wondering if I could find a way to use these patterns in that language.
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New MELPA Package: ddate
I recently wrote an Emacs Lisp package to support the ddate command, a classic command-line utility to display dates from the Discordian calendar.
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An Org-mode to DOCX Pipeline
Freelance writers need to deliver documents in the format requested by clients. However, frequently the requested format is not the writer’s preferred working format. I like to write in Org Mode, but many clients prefer delivery in Microsoft Word’s DOCX format.
This is how I generate DOCX files for my clients.
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Yasnippet and Emacs for Writing
As a freelance writer, I need to be ready to deliver high quality copy in a timely fashion. My editor of choice for writing is Emacs. I have found that Yasnippet templates have streamlined my writing process.
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Solving a Returning 404 Error in WordPress
A WordPress website that I maintain was running into a problem. The most recently published post would periodically lose its permalink and return a 404 error. I tried to find a solution.
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Migrating from WordPress to Jekyll
Since launching this site in 2014, it has run on WordPress. I have always wanted to move the site to another blogging platform, especially since I wasn’t really taking advantage of all of the WordPress features.
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Some Great Fish Shell Plugins
As a long-time Linux user, I am pretty comfortable with command line interfaces. However, as I started learning more about automation and how important it is to get your computer to do more work for you, I leaned toward wanting my command line shell to do more. Eventually I switched to fish shell, a very user-friendly shell with excellent scripting capabilities that is far more readable and less obscure than bash.
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Typing Chinuk Wawa in Emacs
Back in 2015, I took a course in being an ally for local Native American communities from the Portland Underground Grad School (PUGS). One suggested action was learning the local language, but it proved difficult to find opportunities. When the pandemic forced school closures, though, Lane Community College began offering classes online. I found out about this thanks to the Kaltash Wawa blog, and this fall I signed up to take a remote Chinuk Wawa class through Lane Community College.
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