How to Use mermaid.js with ox-hugo

Introduction This blog is managed with the workflow shown below. graph LR org-mode -- <a href="https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/">ox-hugo</a> --> markdown -- <a href="https://gohugo.io/">Hugo</a> --> HTML When you want to include a diagram like the flowchart above, what methods come to mind? Surely, you’re not thinking about making diagrams in PowerPoint or similar tools, exporting them as images, and… calling it a day? That’s a D-tier move ...

June 21, 2025 · 4 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Guide to Setting Up SKK on Doom Emacs & Mac

What You’ll Learn in This Article What SKK is How to install and configure AquaSKK How to set up SKK (ddskk) in Doom Emacs Challenges in adopting SKK and their solutions Impressions and evaluation after using SKK long-term What is SKK? SKK (Simple Kana to Kanji conversion program) is a type of Japanese input method editor (IME). Unlike typical IMEs, it features explicit switching between input modes and unique operations for selecting conversion candidates. Key characteristics include: ...

April 12, 2025 · 8 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Anki Super Vocab: My Quest for the Ideal Vocabulary Learning Card

Introduction Are you an Anki user? Anki is a powerful memorization tool that utilizes a spaced repetition system (SRS). I’ve been a long-time Anki user, and it’s become indispensable, especially for language learning. Recently, while using Anki for English vocabulary learning, I had an idea for the “perfect” card type – one with features I’d always wished for. I’ve now realized this ideal card type and made it publicly available on GitHub. This article introduces the “Super Vocab” card type, explains the development process, and, for Anki/Emacs users, describes how to create cards using anki-editor. ...

March 17, 2025 · 5 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Startup error in Emacs: "Project … cannot be read"

The Problem The other day, when I started Emacs as usual, the following message appeared in the minibuffer: Project <Project Name> at <Project Path> cannot be read. Emacs then became a piece of software that simply displayed a white screen. I had recently changed the path of this project, so I suspected that might be the cause. I tried modifying/deleting the project path in projectile-known-projects-file, but the situation didn’t improve. I also tried commands like doom sync and doom upgrade, but none of these resolved the issue. ...

February 23, 2025 · 1 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Troubleshooting "Server julia-ls starting exited… Do you want to restart it? (y or n)" in Julia/Emacs

The Problem So, I recently fired up Emacs to do some Julia coding after a while, and I ran into this annoying message: Server julia-ls:50759/starting exited (check corresponding stderr buffer for details). Do you want to restart it? (y or n) It kept popping up (even if I pressed y), and LSP just wouldn’t start. It took me a bit of time to figure this out, so I’m leaving this note here for anyone else using Julia in Emacs. ...

January 29, 2025 · 1 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Fixed Ugly Math Formulas in Anki After Emacs Upgrade

Introduction Hey everyone! I regularly use anki-editor to create Anki cards. But after upgrading Emacs, my math formulas started looking really messed up. Specifically, I had these two problems: In the desktop Anki browser’s preview for each field, the formulas weren’t rendering as formulas. They just showed up as plain LaTeX code. Formulas were being displayed as PNG images. (They used to be rendered inline with MathJax.) Since I rarely edit cards directly in the desktop Anki app, the first issue was somewhat tolerable. But the second one was really bugging me. The image resolution of the formulas was lower, and they didn’t match the size of the surrounding text. ...

November 24, 2024 · 2 min · Kaoru Babasaki

Fixing Reference Display Issues with ox-hugo

The Problem I was trying to use Org Cite Citations and the following code to display my references: #+print_bibliography: But only the “References” header showed up – the actual list of references was missing. I checked the generated Markdown (.md) files in my content/ directory, and the reference list was there in HTML. However, when I looked at the final HTML files in the public/ directory, the references were gone. This suggested the problem was happening during the Markdown-to-HTML conversion (the md -> html part of org -> md -> html). After some digging, I found an issue on GitHub about the same problem, which led me to the solution. ...

November 12, 2024 · 2 min · Kaoru Babasaki