path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--26-emacs-as-a-highschooler-how-it-changed-my-life--pierce-wang-autogen.sbv

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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