Arbitrary Update Gensym

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently pressed my old x220i back into service. Which involved buying a new 9-cell battery¹ for it, since the old one had long since died of disuse. I've put [Debian](https://www.debian.org/distrib/) on it again via my machine-setup project, and it turned out to be almost trivial. In fact, since the last time I pulled this stunt, Debian seems to ship with Free drivers for my wireless card, which means that this machine is just as Free as the Purism I was recently using.

The non-trivial bits were, as usual, nix changes. The rxvt-unicode project is no longer a thing, apparently, and the latest emacs version has incremented. And for some reason, I never did get around to writing a setup.el the last time I ran these scripts. Sort of done. I decided instead to have emacs ensure that the relevant packages are loaded on each restart. That happens in packs.el.

(require 'package)

(add-to-load-path (list-subdirectories "~/.emacs.d/elpa"))

(setq package-archives
      '(("melpa" . "http://melpa.milkbox.net/packages/")
 	("marmalade" . "http://marmalade-repo.org/packages/")
 	("elpa" . "http://elpa.gnu.org/packages/")))

(defvar +package-list+
  '(elfeed
    aes
    magit highlight-parentheses autopair smart-tab
    auto-complete yasnippet paredit
    markdown-mode haskell-mode))

(unless (every #'package-installed-p +package-list+)
  (package-initialize)

  (unless package-archive-contents
    (package-refresh-contents))

  (dolist (p +package-list+)
    (unless (package-installed-p p)
      (package-install p))))

(provide 'packs)

The +package-list+ variable is the place I'll be adding libraries as I decide I need them, and the unless block installs each of the listed packages unless they're already installed².

It feels really good to be piloting this thing again.

I'm not sure where the idea came from that chicklet-style keyboards are the way to go for manufacturers, but I absolutely prefer the Lenovo classic that this thing has.

The machine is also much smaller and lighter than the behemoth I've been carting around, and would be even moreso if I didn't want the extra long battery life from the heftier 9-cell.

To top it all off, the trackpad is less sensitive to random touches, so it's actually usable without an external keyboard and mouse combo. It's almost absurdly better across every dimension except for processor power and memory capacity, despite being years older than what I'd been using. Which is exactly why I'm much happier to be carrying this one around again.

And so unburdened, I hope to resume writing.

1. Thoroughly reccommend, by the way. acpi says 9:58:00 remaining at full charge, which is more than enough for any shenanigans I could possibly want to get down to.↩
2. And also is careful not to attempt a network request unless there's some missing package there. I prefer my editor to start up relatively quickly.↩