Procrastiblog

March 18, 2007

Buffer-local Dictionaries

Filed under: Emacs, LaTeX, Tech — Chris @ 10:00 pm

If you write technical documents—especially technical computer science documents with code snippets and the like—you’re likely to come across a spell-checking dilemma like the following:

Unrecognized word: pBuffer

Replace with: (0) buffer (1) puffer (2) puffier (3) pouffe …
Space: Accept word this time
a: Accept word this session
i: Insert into personal dictionary

“pBuffer” is not a real word that should go in your personal dictionary, so you accept the word for this session. Say you’re going to write 5,000 more drafts of this document. All of those weird little technical words could get pretty annoying after a while.

In Emacs, you can type ‘A’ instead of ‘a’ to insert the word in a “buffer-local dictionary.” You can also presumably add a Local Words comment somewhere in your file by hand, like

% Local Words: pBuffer

Why is it always so hard to figure this stuff out?

Hat tip to the Linux Documentation Project.

Bonus tip: You want an em dash in your blog post? Try —. You would think I couldn’t be so em dash-happy and not know this already, but I am and I didn’t.

March 17, 2007

\tag{eqname}

Filed under: LaTeX, Tech — Chris @ 11:22 pm

So you want to give an equation a name in LaTeX, instead of the number it gets automatically… For some reason, Google will resist telling you how. You may be tempted to use the eqname package. No need! No need at all! Use the \tag command. Why isn’t this easier to figure out?

UPDATE: I apologize to the writers of the amsmath documentation, who mention this pretty much immediately after they introduce the concept of equation numbering. I always assume that Google can find these things for me.

March 16, 2007

Lazy Scholarship

Filed under: LaTeX, Not Tech — Chris @ 8:31 pm

Fill in the blanks: You are ___% more likely to get cited if you include BibTeX and/or EndNote entries for your publications on your web page. You are ___% less likely to get cited if the PDF of your paper doesn’t support cut-and-paste.

March 5, 2007

BSG 3.16: "Maelstrom"

Filed under: Battlestar Galactica, Not Tech, TV — Chris @ 3:55 pm

There be SPOILERS ahead.

File this one under: be careful what you wish for. Ballsiness aside, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing Starbuck again in one form or another. Which will it be: Cylon, dream sequence, or creature of pure energy?

As much as I’ve enjoyed Katee Sackoff throughout the series (in those scenes where she wasn’t making puppy-dog eyes at Apollo), I think I would prefer if the point of this episode was that Starbuck totally lost her mind and died for no reason, rather than following her spirit into the fourth dimension wherein she will fulfill her Destiny. I’m getting pretty tired of all this Destiny crap.

As H said to me last night, “So, remind me of what it is you like about this show again?” To which I respond… I think the last few episodes of last season and the first few episodes of this were some of the best that BSG has ever done. But ever since “The Exodus” from New Caprica, I feel as if the drama of the show has gone slack. I’m afraid we may have jumped the shark… Here’s hoping for a rocking season finale.

P.S. Last week’s episode, which barely merits comment, provided some new data for my ongoing research into discipline aboard Galactica: treason merits a slap on the wrist, fomenting a general strike will almost get your family shot.

March 4, 2007

Newlines in Regexps

Filed under: Emacs, Tech — Chris @ 7:23 pm

This tip rocks: to search for a newline in Emacs type C-q C-j.

February 21, 2007

Jump, Jump!

Filed under: Not Tech, TV — Chris @ 3:45 pm

Speaking of sharks, remember when that was a website and not just a cliche? The vast majority of people who bothered to vote seem to think The Gilmore Girls took a wrong turn sometime in the last two seasons (this is ignoring “Never Jumped” voters, who are ignorant pigs).

My own feeling is that the show started to decline in quality around the time that Rory started seriously dating Logan and did a nosedive after she became disillusioned and dropped out of Yale. Which, you’ll recall, was the same time that she started flirting with DAR membership and stopped speaking to Lorelai—a more severe case of misunderstanding your own show’s core appeal I have never seen. It was like sending the cast of ER to spend a summer at the happy puppy farm.

I watch too much TV! It’s embarrassing!

The Gilmore Girls are Tired

Filed under: Not Tech, TV — Chris @ 1:34 am

Has any show ever fallen farther faster than The Gilmore Girls? What went wrong exactly? Is it just the ineluctable storyline exhaustion of a sixth season? Is it, as Virginia Heffernan claims, the loss of “despotic creator” Amy Sherman-Palladino?

It’s not just the on-again, off-again Luke-Christopher-maybe-Luke-again thrum of Lorelai’s love life or the dreary attraction-dating-marriage-baby death-march of Lane and Zach. It’s not even Rory’s soul-killing romance with a callow trust-fund jerk. It’s just… boring. It’s flat where it used to be spritely. It’s preposterous where it used to quirky. It’s deathly dull and obvious where it used to crackle with intelligence.

And… sputter… I’m a man! I didn’t ever even properly love this show the way it was meant to be loved.

Blah.

I don’t think the show was ever fated to survive Rory’s departure for college. It’s appeal was too much based on the central relationship between Rory and Lorelai to survive their physical separation, even with Rory driving home for an implausibly large number of laundry loads and local dance recitals. There’s too many damn scenes with them yapping on the phone that are cut head shot, head shot, head shot, head shot, “Bye,” “Bye,” click, end scene.

Argh.

In case you can’t tell, I’m typing this while H watches the show against my will.

Gronk.

February 20, 2007

Comments in BibTeX

Filed under: LaTeX, Tech — Chris @ 11:52 pm

Be warned: there is a @Comment directive in BibTeX, but it doesn’t appear to do anything.

UPDATE: @Comment works as expected so long as you use it outside any other directive. E.g., the following will not work,

@InProceedings{ key,
  title = {\BibTeX comments considered harmful},
  author = {Christopher L. Conway},
  booktitle = {Procrastiblog Symposium on \LaTeX Arcana},
  year = 2007,
  @Comment{ This never actually happened. }
}

whereas the following is fine,

@InProceedings{ key,
 title = {\BibTeX comments considered harmful},
 author = {Christopher L. Conway},
 booktitle = {Procrastiblog Symposium on \LaTeX Arcana},
 year = 2007,
}

@Comment{ The above never actually happened. }

BSG 3.15: "A Day in the LIfe"

Filed under: Battlestar Galactica, Not Tech, TV — Chris @ 3:21 am

Roslyn to Adama: “I’d love to turn you on.”

BSG gives off the vibe of a show where the stakes are high, but the only semi-major characters who have ever died were Ellen Tigh and Kat.* This is getting pretty unbelievable… How many planets has Starbuck crashed and been abandoned on? Cally and Chief aren’t even in fighting trim… they’re supposed to survive explosive decompression with nothing more than a burst blood vessel?

I have no use for these bonus scenes. Cut it into the episode or put it on the DVD. I don’t need your leftovers.

* The Sopranos benefits from the same perception and suffers from the same problem. You think nobody is off limits, but the only long-term character to die since Big Pussy was Adrianna. Characters like Ralph Cifaretto are blatantly brought on to get whacked—the only surprise in that case was how long it took and why it happened. Would it kill you to lose a Paulie Walnuts just to maintain some believability here?

I assume that in the last season, we can expect a little more blood to flow. Though I also assume, since the idea of a Sopranos movie has been knocked around, that we can expect Tony to survive.

February 15, 2007

On Wisdom

Filed under: Not Tech — Chris @ 5:45 pm

Paul Graham is both smart and wise. On the futility of seeking wisdom qua wisdom:

People seeking some single thing called “wisdom” have been fooled by grammar. Wisdom is just knowing the right thing to do, and there are a hundred and one different qualities that help in that. Some, like selflessness, might come from meditating in an empty room, and others, like a knowledge of human nature, might come from going to drunken parties.

Perhaps realizing this will help dispel the cloud of semi-sacred mystery that surrounds wisdom in so many people’s eyes. The mystery comes mostly from looking for something that doesn’t exist.

On the discontent of the over-achiever:

To me it was a relief just to realize it might be ok to be discontented. The idea that a successful person should be happy has thousands of years of momentum behind it. If I was any good, why didn’t I have the easy confidence winners are supposed to have? But that, I now believe, is like a runner asking “If I’m such a good athlete, why do I feel so tired?” Good runners still get tired; they just get tired at higher speeds.

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