Howto on zzamboni.org

Fixing wake-from-sleep in Linux on a Mac when using Ethernet

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Wed, 22 Oct 2025 23:28:00 +0200

Some Macs running Linux hang when waking up from sleep if the Ethernet port was connected. Fix this problem by automatically disabling/reenabling the drivers when the machine goes to sleep.

Reviving an old Mac with Linux (part 2 - prettifying boot)

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 20:24:00 +0200

Improve your Mac/Linux dual boot setup with pretty boot screens!

Reviving an old Mac with Linux (part 1 - installing Linux)

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 22:23:00 +0200

I recently learned how to extend the life of an old Mac by installing Linux on it. It’s like having a new machine!

My blogging setup with Emacs, Org mode, ox-hugo, Hugo, GitLab and Netlify

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Fri, 11 Dec 2020 00:27:00 +0100

My blogging has seen multiple iterations over the years, and with it, the tools I use have changed. At the moment I use a set of free tools and workflows which make it very easy to keep my blog updated. This post gives a brief overview of my setup.

How to easily create and use human-readable IDs in Org mode and Doom Emacs

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 10:20:00 +0100

Automate the process of generating and inserting links to headlines in the current Org document using human-readable IDs instead of the default UUID-based IDs generated by Org mode.

My Doom Emacs configuration, with commentary

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 19 Oct 2020 09:07:00 +0200

I switched from my hand-crafted Emacs config to Doom Emacs some time ago, and I am very happy with it. This is my full, working Doom Emacs config in literate form.

August 2020 release of "Learning Hammerspoon" is out!

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 09:35:00 +0200

I am happy to announce a new release of my new book “Learning Hammerspoon”, including a brand new chapter Hammerspoon Cookbook, Tips and Tricks and many other improvements.

How to insert screenshots in Org documents on macOS

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Sun, 09 Aug 2020 16:44:00 +0200

As I’m taking notes or writing in Org-mode, I often want to insert screenshots inline with the text. While Org supports inserting and displaying inline images, the assumption is that the image is already somewhere in the file system and we just want to link to it. In this post I will show you how to automate the insertion of images from the clipboard into an org-mode document.

New release of "Learning Hammerspoon" is out!

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 08 Apr 2019 09:51:00 +0200

I am happy to announce a new release of my new book “Learning Hammerspoon”, including a brand new chapter and many other improvements.

First release of "Learning Hammerspoon"

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Tue, 16 Oct 2018 21:22:00 +0200

I am happy to announce the first release of my new book “Learning Hammerspoon”, a book devoted to using Hammerspoon to make using your Mac easier, faster and more fun.

My Hammerspoon Configuration, With Commentary

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 08 Jan 2018 13:31:00 +0100

In my ongoing series of literate config files, I present to you my Hammerspoon configuration file.

My Emacs Configuration, With Commentary

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 20:14:00 +0100

I have enjoyed slowly converting my configuration files to literate programming style using org-mode in Emacs. It’s now the turn of my Emacs configuration file.

My Elvish Configuration With Commentary

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 20:21:00 +0100

In this blog post I will walk you through my current Elvish configuration file, with running commentary about the different sections.

Just Enough Lua to Be Productive in Hammerspoon, Part 2

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Wed, 01 Nov 2017 08:16:00 +0100

In this second article of the “Just Enough Lua” series, we dive into Lua’s types and data structures.

Just Enough Lua to Be Productive in Hammerspoon, Part 1

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Sat, 21 Oct 2017 20:36:00 +0200

Hammerspoon’s configuration files are written in Lua, so a basic knowledge of the language is very useful to be an effective user of Hammerspoon. In this two-part article I will show you the basics of Lua so you can read and write Hammerspoon configuration. Along the way you will discover that Lua is a surprisingly powerful language.

Using Nix's "Single-user Mode" on macOS

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 18:24:47 +0000

Here is how to set up Nix in single-user mode on macOS.

Fixing the Outlook-to-OmniFocus Script

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 11 Sep 2017 21:11:29 +0200

Here’s how to fix the breakage caused by one of the recent updates to Microsoft Outlook in the Outlook-to-OmniFocus AppleScript included with my SendToOmniFocus spoon.

Using Spoons in Hammerspoon

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Fri, 01 Sep 2017 17:55:00 +0200

In this second article about Hammerspoon, we look into Spoons, modules written in Lua which can be easily installed and loaded into Hammerspoon to provide ready-to-use functionality. Spoons provide a predefined API to configure and use them. They are also a good way to share your own work with other users.

Hosting a Ghost Blog in GitHub - the easier way

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Fri, 25 Aug 2017 09:00:00 +0200

When I was planning the reboot of my website, I seriously considered using Ghost. It has a very nice UI, beautiful and usable theme out of the box, and a very active community. Eventually I decided to use Hugo, but in the process discovered that it is possible to host a statically-generated Ghost website using GitHub Pages.

Getting Started With Hammerspoon

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 21 Aug 2017 16:34:00 +0200

This is the first installment of a series of posts about Hammerspoon, a staggeringly powerful automation utility which gives you an amazing degree of control over your Mac, allowing you to automate and control almost anything. In the word of Hammerspoon’s motto: Making the runtime, funtime.

Fast translation with Google Translator

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

via https://medium.com/@mrdoro/fast-translation-with-google-translator-and-mac-osx-817e32233b7a

https://medium.com/@mrdoro/fast-translation-with-google-translator-and-mac-osx-817e32233b7a

Nice article about how to create a service to automatically translate selected text from any application. I use this all the time, I have a “German-to-English” service bound to Command-Alt-Ctrl-Shift-E, so I can just select text off the screen, press the shortcut, and a window with the translation will pop up. Very handy.

Spotlight: use-package, a declarative configuration tool - Mastering Emacs

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 00:00:00 +0000

via https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/spotlight-use-package-a-declarative-configuration-tool

Have you ever heard of use-package? It’s a declarative way of expressing package configuration in Emacs but without the tears.

This looks amazingly useful. I need to start migrating my Emacs config to use-package ASAP.

Moving files between git repositories, preserving history

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Fri, 17 Apr 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I needed to copy a directory between two git repositories while preserving its history. I found some good instructions at http://gbayer.com/development/moving-files-from-one-git-repository-to-another-preserving-history/, which got me started, but I figured out a way to avoid having to move all the files into their directory again (lines 5-6 in Greg’s instructions) by reversing the filter to remove everything I don’t want instead of only including the directory I want. Here are the steps (the idea is the same as in Greg’s post, so please read that to get the explanation, I’m only listing the commands here for reference):

Find all single-note tags in Evernote

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been working on cleaning up my Evernote, and noticed that I have a lot of tags assigned to a single note. I had successfully used Veritrope’s excellent Evernote empty tag remover applescript, so I made some small changes to write the attached script, which will find all single-note tags in your Evernote and list them in a new note, including links to each note. This makes it much easier to go through them and see which of those tags could be removed.

Just download the script, open it in Script Editor and run it.

Tip of the hat to Justin for his excellent collection of scripts at Veritrope!

How to solve truncated docker output in Mac OS X using boot2docker

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

If you are using docker on Mac OS X using boot2docker (http://docs.docker.io/installation/mac/), you may see truncated output from docker run, and also may have noticed that docker attach does not work properly, producing only some output and then exiting. This bug is documented here: https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/150, where I also found the following workaround. Documenting it here in case anyone finds it useful:

HowTo: Changing the available display formats for Evernote's "Insert Date" command

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:00:30 -0600

Evernote introduced some time ago an "Insert Date" keyboard shortcut, which is very handy. However, the options for the format of the inserted date seemed limited (only four options). I finally learned how this works, and how to change it on the Mac. The formats offered are those that are configured in the "Languages & Text" preferences panel. If you go to "Region" and then click the "Customize button" in the Dates part of the panel, you will see and be able to customize the formats for short, medium, long and full date representations. Those are the options that are offered to you by Evernote. Just change them to whatever you want, and they will be available for selection. What I specifically wanted to do was to use the YYYY-MM-DD format, so I changed it to the following:

Installing cfengine on Mac OS X

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:31:00 -0500

Cfengine (tested 3.2.0) installs easily on OS X (tested 10.7), given that it's Unix. One problem I encountered was that it does not compile with the bundled version of Berkeley DB (it recognizes it during configure, but produces compilation errors). The solution is to use some other DB engine. I chose Tokyo Cabinet. Using homebrew, the process is simple

Automatically creating tasks from email in Outlook

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:54:00 -0600

Please note: I am no longer using Windows nor Outlook, so unfortunately I cannot offer any help with problems you encounter using these scripts and techniques.

Making cygwin, Windows and emacs understand the same symlinks

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:39:00 -0500

Today I ran into the problem that symlinks created under cygwin using "ln -s" are not understood by Windows, and of course Windows shortcuts are seen by cygwin as regular files. Happily, this is a (semi-)solved problem. For reference, this is what needs to be done:

Storing CFEngine configuration in CVS

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:17:00 -0500

via sial.org

Useful article about storing both development and production configurations of cfengine using a version control mechanism. I am in the process of developing a similar setup using git, I will share it here when I get it to work properly.

Installing cfengine on Windows 7 under cygwin

diego@zzamboni.org (Diego Zamboni) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:14:00 -0500

Update (2011/09/05): Updated the instructions for cfengine 3.2.0, cygwin 1.7.9, and tested them on a clean cygwin install.

Installing the cfengine community edition under Windows (the commercial version includes native Windows support) is fairly easy under cygwin, you just need to have the appropriate dependencies installed. Here’s how I did it.