Jeromy Anglim is a local blogger who covers a lot of the same territory as this blog. His latest post on running command line programs in Windows is particularly helpful.
Posts about computing
Converting eps to pdf
Oct 1
Now that there is a way to sync a pdf file and tex file in both directions, the only remaining reason to use dvi files is when the graphics are in eps format.
However, that problem has also been solved for those using MikTeX 2.8 or TeXLive 2009. In MikTeX 2.8, simply include the package epstopdf [...]
On Monday night I attended a lecture by Terry Tao on “Mathematical research and the internet”. Terry is Australia’s most famous mathematician, our only Field’s medalist, and one of the most active mathematical bloggers in the world. He has been described as the “Mozart of mathematics” for his remarkable precocity and prolific output. The slides [...]
LaTeX help on StackOverflow
Aug 24
Having discovered StackOverflow for R, I can also recommend it as a great place to go for LaTeX help. Just look under the latex tag on StackOverflow. It is far easier than asking a question on one of the LaTeX mailing lists and the answers seem to be of high quality.
R help on StackOverflow
Aug 24
Ever since I began using R about ten years ago, the best place to find R help was on the R-help mailing list. But it is time-consuming searching through the archives trying to find something from a long time ago, and there is no way to sort out the good advice from the bad advice.
But [...]
Backing up
Aug 21
Ever since I deleted the only copy of my honours thesis, one week before it was due to be handed in, I’ve been obsessive about backups, often to the amusement of my family and colleagues. But every time one of them loses a file or has a hard-disk fail, the smiles fade and they ask [...]
If you use LaTeX, then you probably have a bib file — a data base of all the papers and books that you have cited. It is much more efficient to keep one database in one location, than have multiple copies of it floating around your hard drive. (Or even worse, have different bib files [...]
All researchers need to maintain a database of papers they have read, cited, or simply noted for later reference. For those of us using LaTeX, the database is in the BibTeX format and is stored as a simple text file (a bib file) that can be edited using a text editor such as WinEdt.
But it [...]
Being able to go from a line in WinEdt to the corresponding place in a compiled document is extremely useful and saves a lot of time. This has long been possible using Yap with dvi documents, but Yap is slow and ugly and the dvi files usually have to be converted to pdf before sending [...]
When searching for research articles online, I often find that the article is unavailable unless I go through the Monash library website, especially when working from home. Here are two solutions to the problem
Within Google scholar, go to “Scholar preferences” and under library links search for “Monash”. Tick the entry “Monash University – Check for [...]
