20260317 Emacs Continuity Continues

As a few months of 2026 have passed it’s time I suppose to reflect upon my project, or projects I should say to be more satisfied with my computer use with a focus on my smart phone. While I am not swinging from the metaphorical treetops things have been going well. I don’t find myself furiously drawn to posting blog entries from my phone… But I do find myself happier with my mobile with emacs present.

Graphene OS continues to be a joy. While I can have access to “required” tools like my bank’s app, I can keep them segregated in a user account which stays logged out. In a way it has a better security posture than just running Linux. The Android open source projects idea of sandboxing has complications but by using some hackery on signing termux I’m able to have most CLI apps along side emacs.

Graphical Emacs on Android has also been a game changer. I’ve learned quite a bit, for example emacs will recognize fonts in a ~/.fonts directory allowing you to customize your font on Android. Then I learned that ttf fonts work but otf do not. All of these things have helped me establish a good understanding of what my phone’s OS is capable of I was never able to grasp on an iphone.

My Emacs Config is a mess right now due to this, and perhaps the other elephant in the room. Its impossible to avoid the topic of LLM’s in this day. In using these at work, specifically Claude code, I’ve ended up with AI generated code leaking into my config. I’ve allowed Claude to fix things that it buts into with vterm. It’s not really been successful but learning how to use these tools have been engaging, but I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with the fact that its leaked into my editor config. We shall see.

The next thing I’m working to bring into a more free and sustainable bit of software are my on the go activities. While I don’t intend to replace VLC in playing music on the go, I do want to get drawing apps and reading more into emacs. I already read some books in emacs on my mobile and its been wonderful. I’ve re-read Prot’s Book in org mode on emacs on the go this month as well as a few other short things. I want to get some blog reading into emacs on the go but the big push is doodling. Not having my phone distracting me with notifications and locked down software has had an odd side effect. I’ve been drawing quite a bit more albeit freehand with a pencil. A few years ago I was learning to do some drawing on a computer using Aseprite but found it limiting as most locked down software is.

I’m currently reading up on emacs’ capabilities on graphics rendering. I’ve used org to display inline images for work presentations for years. What I did not know much about was Image Mode which has led users to create things like this workflow to allow for editing svg images. I’ve already found this to mostly work on mobile setting up a world where perhaps I can doodle on the go and really anywhere. This type of consistency is why this project continues.