Blogs

I’ve been seeing lots about how AI, and the ever-growing use of LLMs, is creating slop that is killing the internet - making us angry and breaking our brains. I wrote about how this might impact scientific publications in 2023, but I think we should revisit this topic in light of a quote that shifts how I think about content today. In her video, My 17 Minute AI Workflow To Stand Out At Work, Vicky Zhao makes the point that, “in 2025, it will take you longer to read something and comprehend it than the amount of time it took to create it”....

I started using emacs in 2020 after reading a long-lost article about using org-mode as a blogging platform. It hit at the right time as I was looking for a tool that enabled auto-generated, centralised, todo lists - something that was surprisingly difficult to do at the time.1 I have written quite a bit in the last five year, including a peer reviewed journal article and use Emacs every day in my corporate job, both during my science days but also since my move to IT....

I am a big fan of building tools for your workflows. Here is another quick example. To create these blog posts I need to create a markdown file with some front matter. An example of this is below - indeed this is the front matter for this post. --- author: Timothy Johnson title: Emacs - Quick Blog Function date: 2025-05-27 draft: False featured_image: "" tags: ["Emacs", "personal", "tech"] --- Each time I write a blog I need to do this, I hate duplication of work!...

Learn the tool once, benefit for a decade. That’s compound interest for your career. If you’re committed to long-term projects—whether it’s a PhD, a book, or building your career—then mastering the right tools and workflows isn’t optional. It’s foundational. A John Kitchin quote that’s stuck with me for nearly a decade captures this perfectly: Scientific publishing is a career-long activity, and one should not shy away from learning a tool that can have an impact over this time scale....

Very quick one today. Recently I’ve started to feel the need to build out some predefined window pane layouts within emacs. This started when I realised I was spending quite a bit of time flipping between various windows while I was under utilising screen space. Double this with some (forced) time spent in a VSCode for work and seeing what an advantage having a file tree, main code window and terminal would be - even when just playing with text....

Introduction In the hype around quantum computing, it’s hard to separate genuine opportunity from science fiction. As someone who’s been tracking this space, I’ve noticed a clear pattern: industries fall into one of three camps – the overly excited (often without understanding the technical details), the dismissive skeptics (“call me when it works”), or the genuinely confused. What I feel is missing is a straightforward way to think about how quantum computing might actually affect specific industries without getting lost in complex physics or marketing buzz....

Alec over at Technology Connections recently posted a video that I suspect might just put words to the issues many are facing today. I have written before about the energy barrier needed to get change to happen and how, doom-scrolling and short-form contents are the opposite of mindfully approaching content on the internet. I have seen significant improvements now that I actively stop this - taking time to seek out long form articles, essays and news sites that I trust and can learn from....

Motivation A key task at the moment is individual 1-to-1s/catch-ups. These come around quick, and I often don’t have a huge amount of time to deal set them up. I have stared to tag things in Emacs with peoples name so that I can run queries against my agenda and pull out all tasks that I’ve tagged for someone - a great way to get info to the right people....

Motivation I am doing lots or recruitment at the moment - some weeks it can be near 15-25 % of my time. It is for this reason I wanted to think about my workflow and put in some automation to help me with the process. I am currently living almost exclusively in denote - the fantastic notes package by Prot. The real aim here is to remove as much cognitive load as possible and reduce the amount of time needed in preparation of interviews....

I have heard wonderful things about gptel - the Emacs package that gives an interface to various LLMs. I will admit however I really struggled to get this working using my OpenAI API key with the Docs in their GitHub. Below is a quick guide for anyone else that got stuck - running a Linux machine. First things, get gptel installed - add the below to your config: (use-package gptel :ensure t) (setq gptel-api-key (getenv "OPENAI_API_KEY")) You will notice here we have to specify out OpenAI API key....