· 4 min read

Mac and Mac OS X

Other software

  • Debian remains my preferred Linux distribution, for philosophical as well as practical reasons (package management, administration scripts, security updates, etc…);

  • I used to be from times to times under OpenBSD, the best platform for security;

  • I used Vim for more than twenty years as text editor, for almost everything (mail, web pages writing, programming, etc…), and most of the time its newest incarnation NeoVim. I still love its modal design and fast response. The best book I’ve found on the topic is by far Practical Vim by Drew Neil;

    I developed a prolog mode (syntax highlighting, and more…) that extends the standard prolog mode. It also provides a few useful key bindings and a better detection of prolog files (.pl not defaulting to Perl mode anymore);

  • I use Exuberant Ctags to move around the many heterogeneous (typically C and prolog) source files of my applications when I don’t have a good enough Language Server Protocol implementation available. I thus needed to add a few lines to my .ctags config file to get the behavior that I wanted;

  • mutt was my mail-client (MUA) and slrn my news-reader. They have a quite close, and very customizable, interface;

  • These days I’m mostly living in Emacs (Doom Emacs) using mu4e for mail, elfeed for rss, magit and AucTeX for their respective features, and of course org-mode…

Languages

  • I mostly use LaTeX when it comes to producing documents, and for some time I’ve been very happy with the beamer class for slides, that I did customize for our internal needs. I do generate some of these LaTeX slides from org-mode source;

  • Besides SWI Prolog and C, the language I mostly use, especially for scripts, is Python, which replaced Perl and its wonderful CPAN archive with its package index. I must admit to also write some shell-scripts, which is made quite easy thanks to ZSH resources like zsh lovers or zsh tips;

  • concerning HTML, there are many good resources like the W3C web site, but I have to link A list apart a wonderful design blog, especially all the content by Ethan Marcotte, and HTML5 Rocks a Google project with everything you need to know about HTML5.

The game of Go

I’m probably playing more Hive than Go but I have played Go for sure for much longer…

  • Fédération Française de Go everything you ever wanted to know about Go in France;

  • Sensei’s Library: a Wiki site that has become the most useful FAQ about Go;

  • OGS a simple yet nice Online Go Server, in your browser;

  • Gobase: a seemingly infinite source of information (players, articles, SGF games, etc…);

  • The Go club of Boulogne Billancourt where I used to play each and every week doesn’t exist any more, but I later joined the first online club affiliated with the French federation: SitS

Blackjack

Everybody now wants to play Hold’em, but…

Dance

  • I enjoy a lot dancing (and listening to) Cuban Salsa

  • Argentine Tango is now rather a nice souvenir…

    • Mephisto Tango: an association providing high quality classes;

    • Tango-L: the authoritative mailing-list about Argentine Tango;

Useful web pages

  • To make reservations or just check schedules/rates, I used to use Trainline instead of the official SNCF-Connect site from the French railways company, but since they were bought out their customer support has gone ugly and they leak private data to FB and such, so…;

  • Webster’s online dictionary, a reference, as well as dictionary.com and JDIC (English-Japanese, Japanese-English, and more…);