computing
Kafkian Vista performance
It turns out one of the best features of the Microsoft Vista OS is its intense checking on itself. Performance is carefully monitored. Of course, this results in lower performance…
Anyway, here is a summary of things I have learned trying to calm down my mysteriously busy laptop.
Quick LaTeX posters
Quick and dirty, I was going to write, but the output is quite nice, actually.
My advice, in a nutshell: use the a0poster class. Then, modify the poster.tex file in Andrea’s site.
ATI config under linux
About the only problem I have with my OpenSUSE 11.1 on my desktop PC at work is the ATI graphic card configuration. Each time I upgrade the kernel I have to rebuild the module again, so I enclose here a list of steps that seem to work fine. I have taken these from pongaunagujeronegroensuvida.
Obtain the [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Acentos, latin1, utf-8, LaTeX…
Otra entrada en español, sobre un asunto que lleva tiempo dándome guerra. En algún momento, linux fue cambiando de la codificación de caracteres (encoding) latin1 al estándar actual, utf-8.
Como resultado, los documentos en texto, sobre todo las famosas “fuentes LaTeX, que nunca hay que cambiar porque son texto” pueden cambiar después de todo (a efectos [...]
Get your units right with LaTeX
The LaTeX package SIunits (which seems to be a descendant from the units package that I once used) addresses one of the most nagging issues in physics and engineering: getting the units well typeset. While the source is a bit cumbersome, it is quite readable:
$R=8.314$ \joule\per(\mole\usk\kelvin)
There are prefixes, so that “\mega\ohm” is ok. Many ready-to-use [...]
The typography nazi + LaTeX
That’s right, typography über alles. A nice article on receding hairline exposes some common typographic mistakes, and how to fix them. I was aware of some of them, and I think I know how to fix them in LaTeX:
Use “ and ” for quotes, always. emacs does this automatically, if in tex mode!
‘ should do [...]
Math fonts for (La)TeX
How could I have overlooked this Survey of Free Math Fonts for TeX and LaTeX! An excellent read, it shows the author has himself been involved in font design. As I mentioned in my entry on XeTeX, it is great to have many fonts for text (and XeTeX really takes a leap forward in this [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )XeTeX
Today, I had the strange experience of rendering a LaTeX source producing a pdf with a perfect verdana font. Simply by including some lines in the header of the source (“preamble”), then invoking xelatex.After struggling with fonts in TeX for years, it seems like a miracle that the mere invocation of a font’s name “just [...]
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )mplayer and mencoder spells
The program mplayer is easily the simplest solution to get DVD playing on a system (with smplayer providing a nice GUI). It turns out it even provides a tool to rip DVD titles. Here are some spells.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Simple linux backup software
I have been looking for some simple linux backup software for some time. There is this nice program called, precisely, simple linux backup software that seems to be doing the job just fine.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )« Previous Entries
