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hello and welcome to my
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emacs conference lightning talk today
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i'll be talking about
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my journey into emacs as a high schooler
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and how it has changed my life
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right so who am i i am a senior at
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stanford online high school
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and i am also a violinist
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i started violin when i was two and a
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half and i have been
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keeping it up ever since violin is a
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huge part of my life
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and i am very much a musician at heart
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i am also a somewhat capable programmer
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i've done a lot of informal programming
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in the past
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and this year i'm taking my first ap
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compsci course
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in my high school and so
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i've done a lot of side projects
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mainly in python and some very short
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scripts in e-lisp
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and last but not least i am a tinker
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i love to play around with things and
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see what i can do better and just
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have as much fun as possible
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so how did i find emacs
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i discovered it actually through a talk
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funnily enough
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at a vim conference given by aaron
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bieber
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titled evil mode or how i learned to
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stop worrying and love emacs
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i watched that talk a couple times over
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just marveling at all the wonderful
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things that he could do in emacs
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and being a previous vim user myself
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i found it very enticing to be able to
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have
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the evil mode package and very quickly
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switch to emacs
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at the time i was also in my sophomore
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year and so
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i had had sort of a note-taking system
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in the past
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but it was not good um and i needed a
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more organized note-taking system
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my parents had suggested paper for a
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while and
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there was the whole organization
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part of that but that did not really
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work out for me
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and so i was trying to find this better
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note-taking system
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and it was very hard
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i had two main criteria which i did not
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define at the time
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but i realized was really what i was
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looking for
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first of all it had to be flexible
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enough and second of all it had
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i had to have control over the data and
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so
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through this process i actually went
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through a bunch of note-taking softwares
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rather systematically i went through
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google docs
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which very much did not work out
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i also went through evernote which also
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was not
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great for me and one note which i
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settled on for a little while
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but it did not meet these criteria
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particularly the second one i had taken
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some notes
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and i wanted to export it and onenote
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did not let me do that
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it was pdf horribly organized pdf
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and that's when i knew i needed some
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change
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so i discovered emacs through this talk
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and through the wonderful features of
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org mode
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this is my first journal entry in emacs
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i had been playing with it for one day
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and i was on the org agenda and i
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happened to press i
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which for the emacs combined is the
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default for
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diary entry and so i was very excited
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um and i shouldn't stay on the slide too
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long unless you read it
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um so let's move on to the next one
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um so the learning curve for me i think
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particularly being an xbm user
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evil mode made it very easy to switch
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thankfully i there was the emax
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reference sheet
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and having evil mode to
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switch between um
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texts and whether it be editing a text
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file
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or going to other parts of just emacs in
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general
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i think vim really helped with making me
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feel comfortable within this new
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environment
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and so having that experience i also
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wasn't
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new to the keybind-based world i have
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been very comfortable with computer
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and the keyboard for most of my life
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and so it was not a totally new
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environment for me
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i also spent a lot of time looking at
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the emacs reference sheet
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just thinking about trying to find
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all of the different functions if i
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didn't know what something was
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then i queried it in emacs and then i
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figured out what it was
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and that was one of the best ways for me
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to discover
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all of the capabilities of emacs
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thirdly of course the self-documenting
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feature
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or nature of emacs and narrowing
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frameworks such as helm
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really helped find things especially for
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mx
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for a while i was just
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i would go about my day and if i pressed
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to keep mine that i didn't know what it
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did
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i would do the losses and
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see the list of key binds that i had
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pressed and
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tried to find that one and query the
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function
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and what not so
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yeah and now we jump to now so
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there there is at least one moment in
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each day when i think
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how would i live without umax
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particularly now during my senior year
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in high school
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things are very busy with school violin
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and other side projects it's pretty
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crazy
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and so emacs
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and org mode has really helped me stay
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on track with everything
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and the flexibility of these software is
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being able to have things in different
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files notes within the tasks
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all of that stuff has been truly a
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lifesaver
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and so i think i can confidently say
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that i have found emacs to be
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the perfect software for me
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over the past two years of using emacs
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now it is about two years and two months
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i have built a fairly well organized
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2000
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plus line org literate config
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and so i actually i started with an
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e-lisp config
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just the vanilla e-max with evil mode
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and i built it up
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from there eventually i switched to org
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literate configs
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and used that to organize the snippets
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that i was putting in there and so
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yeah this is really my workflow now
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currently about 90 of everything i do on
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my computer is in emacs
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the most notable things of course the
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list is far
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too long to put on one slide but i do a
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lot of my programming in emacs
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mainly python and e-lisp
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because of my ap comp sci class i have
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to do java as well
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and thank goodness emacs has wonderful
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support for that as well
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also i do all of my school assignments
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more or less in emacs essay writing i do
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an org mode and i have some template
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files
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template org files which i just include
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at the top
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and then i can export easily to latex
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and a beautiful pdf
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math physics same thing latex fragments
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are a lifesaver
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and also really pretty
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and i take notes on basically everything
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at first i had things separate and then
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i started
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sort of putting it all into onenotes.org
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file or most of it into one
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file and that has actually worked out
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surprisingly well
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especially with all the searching
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features of agenda
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and whatnot um and i also use mail
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i recently made the switch probably
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about one or two months ago
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and it has been one of the best switches
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i've
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i've ever had especially given
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connecting to tasks all of this
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wonderful stuff
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just putting even more in emacs is
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always a good thing i found
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so reflecting back on my journey i think
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one of the most important things was
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just having a reason to use it
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when i came to emacs i had something
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that i was looking for
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and as soon as i found it i delved right
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in
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and i i started using it for that thing
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and so i was sort of forced to
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take the time to read the docs and
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figure out what functions i needed
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to function and how
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i was going to put my workflow
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and also of course the desire to tinker
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and yeah so really what's next for me
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is just wanting to become a more active
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member of the emacs community
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i want to give back and i think this
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talk is sort of the first step to that
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being a more active part of this
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community that has
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indirectly perhaps um but just like
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really helped me become a better and
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more organized human being
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um i have some package ideas that i'm
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slowly working on and yeah i just hope
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to spread the word
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so thank you very much for listening to
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my lightning talk
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if you'd like to contact me here are
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three modes of
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or two modes of communication i will be
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on irc more
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soon and you can always email me if you
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have
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any questions you can also search me on
0:10:23.200,0:10:26.399
youtube
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pierce wong violin thank you very much
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and
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i hope you enjoy the rest of the
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conference
