Chez G blogs

ACM SigPlan style with latex on ubuntu

George — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:56:23 +0000

These are just some notes on how I got the ACM sigplan class style working with LyX under Ubuntu.

Install class file
- Download class file
- Save in /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/sigplanconf.cls (must be root)
- Tell latex it’s there: sudo texhash
Reconfigure LyX
- In Lyx, Tools->Reconfigure. Then restart LyX.
Open this LyX template

Strangely, after doing this (probably the texhash), my paper size changed to A4 from letter. To fix this:

su, then echo “letter” > /etc/papersize
sudo texconfig-sys and set paper size

Then, as is usual and baffling for me and Latex, the papers generated from LyX came out as A4 for a while, then went back to letter. I’m not sure if LyX is caching something somewhere, but that’s my guess.

How to bypass voicemail prompts

George — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:56:20 +0000

David Pogue of the NYT has been tirelessly bugging cell phone companies to reduce the irritating messages that you must listen to before you can leave your friend a voicemail. Today, he posted some interesting instructions:

And I’ll admire you if you’ll re-record your own voice mail greeting so that it includes instructions for bypassing the carrier’s own recording: “Hi, it’s David. To jump to the beep, press 1.” (It’s 1 for Sprint or AT&T, * for Verizon, # for T-Mobile.

So let’s all change our voicemail greetings to tell people how to shortcut the blather.

New recipes posted

George — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:28:46 +0000

Theresa had a “cooking club” meeting at my house last week. She showed us how to eat Polish Borscht (I say that because she prepared it that day before). And she showed us how to cook Gołąbki. Both were delicious.

I’ve also posted one of my favorite The Pump Energy Food recipes, the Dionysus Plate. It’s light, fresh, and full of protein for you muscularnes out there.

Video and music with XBMC, Boxee, and Windows Media Center

George — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:10:18 +0000

Here’s what I do today. Mostly I’m running XBMC on Linux on a computer under the TV. I get TV shows via bittorrent — mostly documentaries from PBS. I also boot into Windows 7 so that I can watch streaming Netflix via Windows Media Center (which is built in to Win7). Unfortunately, I hate the music interface to WMC, so I use 2 programs.

I just tried the (closed) Boxee beta today. Someone figured out how to download the beta and posted it to bittorrent (see [1] below). Running on Win7, it searches all the various places to get media (such as Hulu.com and Netflix). It presents you with a listing of, for example, various TV shows and then connects you to the service that will stream it, whether it’s netflix or abc.com or whatever. That’s nice, and helps with the chaos described in the NYT article.

Problems:

Unfortunately, Netflix still hasn’t provided a Linux version, hence Win7.
The video streaming services are still trying to decide what the rules of the game are. For example, there’s a popular piece of $150 hardware called the Popcorn Hour that allows you to play DVD’s, music, netflix, etc. — but Google has just shut down their YouTube access.
Boxee has played cat-and-mouse games with some content providers, trying to circumvent their blocking the video streams. For many sites it has a contract agreement (e.g., Netflix) and that will probably be the wave of the future. Honestly, most of the sites appear to be funded via inline ads (just like regular tv), so that business model should still work.

The Boxee Box (hardware) was recently announced (due at CES in January) and should cost $200. It’s not really possible to replace a cable subscription yet, IMO. But, if you’re a non-rabid consumer of tv like me, it does work acceptably well (especially with Netflix streaming).

-g

[1] http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5211168/Boxee_Beta_0.9.20.9647

9 Gigabytes of Spam

George — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:34:44 +0000

I run my own mailserver, for better or for worse, and I use SpamAssassin to catch spam. For years I have been tucking it away in a folder. Guess how much was there? Give up? Nine gigabytes! Thanks, spammers!

Tomato 1.27 and Ubuntu Karmic

George — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:19:58 +0000

Curious thing some of you may run into. I tried to plug a Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 linux machine into my router running Tomato 1.27, but it failed. Turns out you need to disable IPv6, since Tomato does not support it.

Right click on NetworkManager panel applet.
Choose Edit Connections…
Choose “Audo eth1” (or whichever port)
Press “Edit”
Select IPv6 tab
Set Method to “Ignore”
Click Apply

LyX, Memoir, run-in headings

George — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:30:51 +0000

Here’s the magic code for your document settings -> LaTeX preamble to get run-in headings:

% makes 4-th level (SubSubSection) headings run-in
% page 154 of memoir manual
\setbeforesubsubsecskip{0ex}
\setsubsubsecindent{\parindent}
\setaftersubsubsecskip{-1ex}

What is a run-in heading? Normal headings are on their own line. Run-in headings have the text immediately following on the same line.

This is a heading
This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph.

This is a run-in heading. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph. This is the body text that is in the paragraph.

Now, if anyone knows how to make this appear in LyX by editing the layout file, I’d love to hear it.

LyX and Jurabib

George — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 01:15:39 +0000

I’m writing a book, so fussy things like getting references to appear right in the text have been occupying my time unexpectedly. I use the LyX document processor, which I really enjoy for writing long documents like my thesis and this book.

Here’s how to get nice reference to appear in the text like this (Smith, 1995).

In LyX:

Document->Settings->Bibliography select Jurabib
Document->Settings->Latex preamble paste this:

% Jurabib bibliography
\jurabibsetup{%
titleformat=italic,%
titleformat=commasep,%
authorformat=and, % yield foo, bar, and baz not foo/bar/baz
commabeforerest,%
ibidem=strict,%
citefull=first,%
lookat,%
oxford,%
pages=format,%
idem%
}

Do one of these two things:
- For every citation in your document, when you insert it, select the “citation style” on the citation dialog that looks like (Smith, 1995)
- Do a global search/replace on the raw .lyx file using a text editor, making sure every citation looks like “LatexCommand citep”, not “cite” or other variants.

Adding comments to PDF's -- free

George — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:13:44 +0000

My extensive research into the subject (i.e., googling for 30 seconds) has revealed that there are two free PDF readers (Win/Mac) that will let you add comments to PDF documents. I’ve tested them, and those comments can be seen when you open it up in other readers, like Adobe’s free reader.

Good to know if, like me, you plan to send out PDFs and hope to get comments back on them.

Chapter revision

George — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:18:48 +0000

Ok, so it doesn’t have the pizazz of a whole new chapter, but the chapter on architecture models has been seriously revamped. I changed the example that runs through the chapter and added several sections on views. But perhaps the most important change is that I packaged it better — frontmatter introduces the topic and sets expectations better, transitions are more effective at signposting, and the conclusion really is one and not just a summary.

It’s kind of nice to be back on book writing after taking a few months off to teach classes. Still, I hope to be doing some more classes soon.