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WEBVTT
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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
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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
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