Howdoi use howdoi in Emacs?
One of my favorite things about howdoi is the portability - meaning that you can get instant coding answers anywhere (not just on the command line). Contributors have created integrations for howdoi on Slack, Telegram, Discord, Visual Studio Code, and Alfred (just to name a few!).
As an Emacs user, you can use the code snippet below to get instant answers inside Emacs.
(defun howdoi (start end command)
(interactive
(let ((command "xargs -0 howdoi"))
(if (use-region-p)
(list (region-beginning) (region-end) command)
(list (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position) command))))
(let ((response (shell-command-on-region-to-string start end command)))
(kill-new response)
(save-excursion
(end-of-visual-line)
(newline)
(insert (shell-command-on-region-to-string start end command)))))
(defun shell-command-on-region-to-string (start end command)
(with-output-to-string
(shell-command-on-region start end command standard-output)))
Then, when you want to know how to # format a date in bash you can invoke M-x howdoi on that line and voila!
Major League Hacking Mentorship
I am again excited to be participating in the MLH Fellowship, a 12-week program pairing promising young developers with mentors and experts working in the world of open-source software development. It is a fantastic program that has allowed me to work together with talented students all over the world.
This semester’s fellows are assisting with the development of howdoi, a simple tool for finding answers to common programming questions.
Quieting Adium, or, OCD Dockwork
As technology continues to roll toward a more standards-driven regime, a delightful bit of nostalgia can be gleaned from the rich and varied history of the chat application. Not unlike the lineage of the User-Agent string during the browser wars, Instant Messenge applications were written, rewritten, copied, and abandoned while efforts to standardize the protocols of the big three IM companies (AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo!) foundered.
Liberating Google Voice: Placing and Receiving Calls from your Computer
I’m a big fan of Google Voice back from the days when they were called GrandCentral. Among the many niceties provided by the service are receiving voice messages as email, sending and receiving texts from your browser, and the ability to keep the same phone number forever.
One of my favorite Google Voice tricks is receiving and placing calls from the computer. The process used to be super simple using the now-defunct Gizmo5. Back in the day whenever someone called your Google Voice number the Gizmo app running on your computer you let you pick up the call. Placing calls from Gizmo was a snap and had the interesting side-effect of allowing for free calls from your computer. Google acquired Gizmo5 in 2009 and shut down the service in 2011, channeling the acquired technology into the current Google Voice Chat that allows you to place and receive free phone calls from Gmail.
