Use your geography knowledge to figure out the mystery country in as few guesses as possible!

Every element has a unique set of absorption and emission lines that create spectral signatures. These signals are key information for astronomers studying faraway objects—but what happens when there’s no good match for a particular signature? While studying Pluto and Saturn’s largest moon Titan, researchers spotted a missing band of light in their spectral signatures, specifically at the 5.11-micrometer line. However, after searching past datasets and literature, they weren’t able to find any suitable matches for whatever molecule was responsible for this phenomenon. In other words, Pluto’s and Titan’s surfaces may harbor an unknown molecule—a substance that we’ve never seen anywhere else in our solar system and beyond. A paper detailing the results has been accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics and is currently available as a preprint in arXiv. “We have a few candidates, but it will not be a simple compound,” Bruno Bézard, the study’s first author and a researcher at the Paris Observatory, told New Scientist. “Whatever it is, it will be a surprise.” ## Close but far Pluto and Titan don’t look much alike externally, but both possess nitrogen-rich atmospheres with some methane. Photochemical effects create a “ubiquitous organic haze” that eventually trickles down to shape the surface morphology of Pluto and Titan, according to the paper. Researchers behind the latest paper selected a narrow spectral window least affected by the haze to investigate the surface beyond the foggy atmosphere. They probably weren’t expecting to learn of an unidentified substance, however. That Pluto and Titan share the same missing spectral band was fascinating on its own, but the team couldn’t find a good match for the chemical compound responsible for this absorption. According to the data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the absorption line for Pluto is roughly three times thicker than Titan’s, where the molecule causing this gap appears to be more unevenly distributed. This difference likely stems from the “physical state of the unknown compound at the molecular scale,” the study noted. ## Waiting for Dragonfly The researchers scoured the literature to see if anything could be even remotely similar, and, to their credit, they did find some decent fits, such as “allenes and, if mixed with other species, benzene, ketene, or less likely acetylene,” according to the paper. However, there isn’t enough information available to determine whether the mystery compound is one of these candidates or none at all. “The lack of onboard infrared spectroscopy capabilities prevents any direct observation of the spectral feature itself in surface materials,” the researchers concluded. That said, the team told New Scientist that it had already secured more JWST data for follow-up investigations. Further down the line, NASA’s Dragonfly mission is slated to reach Titan in the mid-2030s, and the hope is that the spacecraft will send back some new information about Titan’s surface.

I have worked on a quite a few WordPress projects lately that use Elementor, which is a website builder with a drag-and-drop interface and some other user-friendly bits. In the past, I have typically avoided these kinds of tools for WordPress, because they caused more problems than they solved, but recently, my mind has been changed. A few months ago, I helped start a new business, Middle Chamber Media, which focuses on building websites for Masonic lodges. My business partner brought me on because of my experience as a web developer with experience with WordPress. I have built a ton of custom themes in the past, frequently using either a child theme approach or starting from a bare-bones theme and building from scratch. This has worked quite well, and though it can produce a robust and speedy website, it can result in maintenance challenges in the long-run. An animated logo that I created for Middle Chamber Media, rendered as an animated GIF. However, with Middle Chamber Media, we were suddenly faced with the process of managing and deploying a large number of WordPress sites, and there are just a couple of us working on it. Currently, our process involves my partner doing most of the theme development and website setup, and then I go in and fine-tune the website for responsiveness (i.e. for phones and tablets). This process has been working pretty well for us. ## More Elementor Experience Earlier this year, I also helped another client with an Elementor-based WordPress website. This client wanted some SEO help, but wanted to continue managing the website on their own. Since the client is not a WordPress expert, Elementor presented an easy user interface for theme edits. We worked together, using Elementor to clean things up for SEO purposes. And it worked! This processes have led me to a surprising conclusion: **Elementor is great for certain things!** It has been a very big time saver and an enabler of collaboration across different WordPress skill levels. I had to adjust to the new workflow and learn the Elementor editor and paradigm, but it has been worth it. It is such a huge leap forward compared to previous drag-and-drop theme builders for WordPress. They all used to really suck!

Reveal.js Presentation Back-End for Org Export Engine - hexmode/ox-reveal

The Oregon Scottish Rite Education Foundation awards scholarships annually to students across Oregon who are entering into college or trade schools. Over the past few years, their foundation has grown, requiring them to distribute more scholarships than ever. However, since the foundation board is small and composed entirely of volunteers, they were looking for some way to automate their application process to reduce the number of manual steps required. ## Initial Approach Members of the board approached me with a wish list of features and requirements. They wanted a system to integrate seamlessly with their website, while incoming applications should be automatically checked, sorted, and categorized by county. They already had a spreadsheet system for tracking applicants as well as a cloud storage system for storing supporting documents; they wanted the automation system to integrate with these existing components. Since the board was already utilizing Google Business products for cloud documents and storage, I decided that the best approach would be to lean into Google Cloud services. Following their list of requirements, I implemented a Google Cloud Run service in Go that processed incoming applications from their website, then updated the spreadsheet while preparing their cloud storage system for each application’s supporting documents. The spreadsheet now contained all the application data, including a link to an automatically generated PDF version of the application and a link to the cloud storage location. This initial approach cut out an enormous amount of manual work. Previously, applications were submitted via the website and emailed to a board member, who then manually sorted them by county and generated PDFs for storage and later distribution. ## Implementation Challenges The application submission window for the Oregon Scottish Rite Education Foundation runs from December through March of each year, which gave us a limited amount of time to observe incoming live data and how the automation was performing. My initial approach worked fairly well, and handled 94% of incoming applications properly. However, the last 6% ran into various problems that prevented correct processing. One error arose from a misspelling in a county name, which was caught early and corrected. Another series of errors arose from processing errors with the Google Sheets API, which has both rate limiting and more mysterious, inexplicable errors. I added additional error correction and error checking, but there was still some additional manual work to enter data from a handful of applications. By the end of the application period, we had managed to reduce the amount of manual data entry and processing by a large percentage, maybe as much as 60%. After discussing the current process automation with the board, we began to see opportunities for further automation and improvement. ## Additional Development After the first year’s application submission window, I began working with one of the board members to plan out how the process could be improved even more. My list of improvements were primarily on the backend, and involved robuster error detection and reporting, as well as a backup data store that would allow the automation to recover from the Google Sheets API errors more elegantly. The board proposed an additional feature set that would further reduce manual data processing, by allowing applicants to upload supporting documents such as letters of recommendation and high school transcripts. These uploaded documents would then be processed and stored in the proper cloud storage location, thus reducing the amount of manual file management required by volunteers. Implementing these two new features went very smoothly. It required the development of a new frontend, using Typescript and Svelte. This frontend allowed applicants to upload their supporting documents via a unique link given to each of them by automated email. It used both Google Cloud Storage and the Google Drive API to store these files. The improvements on the backend used Google Cloud Datastore and a more robust error recovery system. It now backed up all incoming scholarship applications until they could reliably and more slowly be added to the spreadsheet with the Google Sheets API, thus nearly eliminating all rate limiting errors. In addition, progress reports and error output could now be viewed using a new frontend administrative interface. ## Results This round of improvements produced significant results. Over the entire span of the second year of application submissions, error rates dropped from 6% to _just one unrecoverable error._ While I had been hoping for improvement, even I was surprised by how much of an improvement we achieved! The board reported that the amount of manual processing was reduced by another 80-90%, with only a few applicants resorting to email for sending in their supporting documents. While we have discussed further improvements to the process automation for the next application submission window, the board is satisfied with the improvements provided by the level of automation implemented so far. ## Lessons This project benefited a lot by reviewing requirements and expectations frequently with the client. They were great at providing me with very clear goals from the beginning, and as we progressed and it became clear where the most volunteer time was being spent, we were able to identify more tasks for automation. On the development side of things, three things were clear. First, cloud services really make the development and deployment of process automation tools like this a breeze. Costs can be kept low while still providing robust infrastructure for hosting. Second, I learned once more the importance of unit tests. I wrote unit tests for most elements of the automation software, which allowed me to catch breaking changes and test features very quickly. Test-driven development can be a great way to run a project, and though I did not follow all of its parameters strictly, that particular philosophy did guide my decision. Third, once more I was reminded of how the best-planned software runs into difficulties when it collides with the real world. I failed to anticipate the Google Sheets API issues and did not implement enough comprehensive error correction early on. That is not an error I shall repeat again! Finally, I learned that even with a project that seems as straightforward as this one, it is important to control expectations early. This turned into a multiyear project because we saw room for improvement. I think it is important for a business or organization looking for process automation to understand that it can be an ongoing series of improvements; not everything will be accomplished or perfected after one pass. Overall, I found this to be a rewarding project. I enjoyed working on software that was aiding a good cause: helping high school graduates fund their education. It was also very nice to work for a charitable foundation instead of a for-profit business; it made all of my programming feel a lot better. I hope to work for more charitable foundations in the future.

A series of tutorials about emacs-calc. Contribute to ahyatt/emacs-calc-tutorials development by creating an account on GitHub.

Freelancing for small businesses and organizations leads to a position where you are juggling a number of projects for multiple clients. You need to keep track of a number of tasks ranging from software development to sending emails to project management. This is a lot easier when you have a system that can do a bunch of the work for you, which is why I use Emacs as my freelancer command center. I would like to share some of the tools and workflows I use in Emacs to help me keep on top of multiple clients’ needs and expectations. ## Organization with org-mode It should be no surprise that at the center of my Emacs command center is org-mode. I have already written about it a lot. Every org-mode user seems to have their own way of keeping track of things, so please don’t take my organizational scheme as some kind of gospel. A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I handle to-do lists in org-mode, and I am still using that method for to-do keywords. However, file structure is also important. I have a number of core files. ### `Freelance.org` This top-level file contains all of my ongoing business tasks, such as tracking potential new clients, recurring tasks like website maintenance and checking my MainWP dashboard. I also have recurring tasks for invoicing, tracking expenses, and other important business things. This file is also where I have my primary time tracking and reporting. Org-mode already supports this pretty nicely, I just use the built-in clocktable feature. ### `Clients/*.org` Clients that have large projects or ongoing business get their own file. This makes organization a lot easier. All tasks associated with a client and their various projects end up in these individual files. The important part is making sure that these files are included in the time-tracking clock table _and_ your org-mode agenda, so you can see what is going on every week. ### References and Linking I have `C-c l` bound to `org-store-link` and use it all the time to link to various files, directories, URLs, and even emails. I can then use those links in my client notes, various tasks in my to-do list, and so on. This helps me keep my agenda organized even when my filesystem and browser bookmarks are a bit of a mess. ## Email with mu4e I have been reading and managing my email in Emacs for over 25 years. There have been a few breaks here and there where I have tried out other software or even web mail clients, but it has always been a headache. I return to Emacs! Long ago, I used VM (which seems to have taken on new life!), but currently I use mu4e. This gives me a ton of power and flexibility when dealing with email. I have custom functions to help me compose and organize my email, and I can use `org-store-link` to keep track of individual emails from clients as they relate to agenda items. I even have a function to convert emails that I have written in Markdown into HTML email, and one that searches for questions in a client email to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The ability to write custom code to both process and create email is extremely powerful and a great time saver. ## Writing Code I don’t know what else to say about this, I use Emacs for doing all of my software development. I make sure to use Eglot whenever there is a language server available, and I try to leverage all the fancy features offered by Emacs whenever possible. The vast majority of projects for clients are PHP (thanks WordPress), Go, JavaScript, and TypeScript. ## Writing Words Previously, I have shared quite a bit about writing in Emacs. I like to start everything in org-mode, but I also write quite a bit in Markdown. Emacs has become a powerful tool for writing. I use the Harper language server along with Eglot to check grammar and spelling. ## Track All Changes with Magit Version control is essential, a lesson I have learned over 30+ years of software development. While Git is not part of Emacs, the software I use to interface with Git is. Magit is a Git user interface that runs entirely in Emacs. I use it to track my writing, my source code, and even all of my org-mode files. Using version control is so essential that I have a weekly repeating agenda task reminding me to check all of my everyday files to make sure I have checked-in my changes for the week. ## Thinking Music with EMMS I like to have some soothing background music when I am programming, writing, or otherwise working on my computer. However, if that background music has lyrics, it can be really distracting. It is easy to make a playlist for various suitable SomaFM channels to load into EMMS (the Emacs Multimedia System) using the command `M-x emms-play-playlist`. Try saving the following into `playlist.el` somewhere, and using it the next time you are writing: ;;; This is an EMMS playlist file Play it with M-x emms-play-playlist ((*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/synphaera.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/gsclassic.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/sonicuniverse.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/groovesalad.pls"))) And make sure to check out SomaFM’s selection to find some good background music that suits your tastes! ## And the tools I have missed There are undoubtedly Emacs tools that I have missed in this brief overview. I have been wracking my brain as I write, trying to see what I have forgotten or overlooked. Frankly, Emacs has become such a central part of the organization for my freelancing that there are probably many tools, packages, and processes that I use every day without thinking about it too much. Emacs makes it possible for me to freelance for multiple clients and small businesses without losing my mind with organization and task management. The tools it provides allow me to stay on top of multiple projects, handle client relationships, and keep track of years worth of tasks, communications, and projects. Without it, I’d be sunk! What Emacs tools are you using to manage your freelance business? I am always looking for ways to improve or streamline my process. _The featured image for this post comes from Agostino Ramelli’s_ Le diverse et artificiose machine _(1588).Read more about it on the Public Domain Review._

Clojure HTTP server abstraction. Contribute to ring-clojure/ring development by creating an account on GitHub.

A simple command line utility that succeeds sometimes. - pymander/maybe

Freelancing for small businesses and organizations leads to a position where you are juggling a number of projects for multiple clients. You need to keep track of a number of tasks ranging from software development to sending emails to project management. This is a lot easier when you have a system that can do a bunch of the work for you, which is why I use Emacs as my freelancer command center. I would like to share some of the tools and workflows I use in Emacs to help me keep on top of multiple clients’ needs and expectations. ## Organization with org-mode It should be no surprise that at the center of my Emacs command center is org-mode. I have already written about it a lot. Every org-mode user seems to have their own way of keeping track of things, so please don’t take my organizational scheme as some kind of gospel. A couple of years ago, I wrote about how I handle to-do lists in org-mode, and I am still using that method for to-do keywords. However, file structure is also important. I have a number of core files. ### `Freelance.org` This top-level file contains all of my ongoing business tasks, such as tracking potential new clients, recurring tasks like website maintenance and checking my MainWP dashboard. I also have recurring tasks for invoicing, tracking expenses, and other important business things. This file is also where I have my primary time tracking and reporting. Org-mode already supports this pretty nicely, I just use the built-in clocktable feature. ### `Clients/*.org` Clients that have large projects or ongoing business get their own file. This makes organization a lot easier. All tasks associated with a client and their various projects end up in these individual files. The important part is making sure that these files are included in the time-tracking clock table _and_ your org-mode agenda, so you can see what is going on every week. ### References and Linking I have `C-c l` bound to `org-store-link` and use it all the time to link to various files, directories, URLs, and even emails. I can then use those links in my client notes, various tasks in my to-do list, and so on. This helps me keep my agenda organized even when my filesystem and browser bookmarks are a bit of a mess. ## Email with mu4e I have been reading and managing my email in Emacs for over 25 years. There have been a few breaks here and there where I have tried out other software or even web mail clients, but it has always been a headache. I return to Emacs! Long ago, I used VM (which seems to have taken on new life!), but currently I use mu4e. This gives me a ton of power and flexibility when dealing with email. I have custom functions to help me compose and organize my email, and I can use `org-store-link` to keep track of individual emails from clients as they relate to agenda items. I even have a function to convert emails that I have written in Markdown into HTML email, and one that searches for questions in a client email to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The ability to write custom code to both process and create email is extremely powerful and a great time saver. ## Writing Code I don’t know what else to say about this, I use Emacs for doing all of my software development. I make sure to use Eglot whenever there is a language server available, and I try to leverage all the fancy features offered by Emacs whenever possible. The vast majority of projects for clients are PHP (thanks WordPress), Go, JavaScript, and TypeScript. ## Writing Words Previously, I have shared quite a bit about writing in Emacs. I like to start everything in org-mode, but I also write quite a bit in Markdown. Emacs has become a powerful tool for writing. I use the Harper language server along with Eglot to check grammar and spelling. ## Track All Changes with Magit Version control is essential, a lesson I have learned over 30+ years of software development. While Git is not part of Emacs, the software I use to interface with Git is. Magit is a Git user interface that runs entirely in Emacs. I use it to track my writing, my source code, and even all of my org-mode files. Using version control is so essential that I have a weekly repeating agenda task reminding me to check all of my everyday files to make sure I have checked-in my changes for the week. ## Thinking Music with EMMS I like to have some soothing background music when I am programming, writing, or otherwise working on my computer. However, if that background music has lyrics, it can be really distracting. It is easy to make a playlist for various suitable SomaFM channels to load into EMMS (the Emacs Multimedia System) using the command `M-x emms-play-playlist`. Try saving the following into `playlist.el` somewhere, and using it the next time you are writing: ;;; This is an EMMS playlist file Play it with M-x emms-play-playlist ((*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/synphaera.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/gsclassic.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/sonicuniverse.pls")) (*track* (type . url) (name . "https://somafm.com/groovesalad.pls"))) And make sure to check out SomaFM’s selection to find some good background music that suits your tastes! ## And the tools I have missed There are undoubtedly Emacs tools that I have missed in this brief overview. I have been wracking my brain as I write, trying to see what I have forgotten or overlooked. Frankly, Emacs has become such a central part of the organization for my freelancing that there are probably many tools, packages, and processes that I use every day without thinking about it too much. Emacs makes it possible for me to freelance for multiple clients and small businesses without losing my mind with organization and task management. The tools it provides allow me to stay on top of multiple projects, handle client relationships, and keep track of years worth of tasks, communications, and projects. Without it, I’d be sunk! What Emacs tools are you using to manage your freelance business? I am always looking for ways to improve or streamline my process. _The featured image for this post comes from Agostino Ramelli’s_ Le diverse et artificiose machine _(1588).Read more about it on the Public Domain Review._

A combined sewer overflow (CSO) advisory has been issued for the Willamette River.

Quickly and easily listen to Wiz Biz with Alexx and Erik for free!