Collected here are a load of hints, hacks, and howtos that I have used at some point to get my computers to behave the way I want them to (as opposed to me behaving the way they want me to). Often these only need to be done once, until I do something stupid like upgrading my system. By that time, however, I've usually forgotten the details of how I did whatever I did. So I've started keeping notes. I'm switching to keeping these notes in a blog as the most useful resource that I've found is other people's blogs explaining just how they got the text in their xterms to be mauve. So I've put these here just in case they are useful to someone else.

Some things that I keep having to look up about the Z-shell.

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I've decided to start using a document revision system for my papers. My current ad hoc method is getting seriously strained; exchanging copies with collaborators, merging their comments with my revisions, preparing different versions for different places (archives, journals, home pages); it was all getting too confusing.

So I had a look around on the web and found a paper (also available as a wikibook) promoting the use of subversion. This is actually a software revision system. However, the general principle is the same: a typical LaTeX paper consists of several text files and this is exactly what a typical piece of software consists of and thus what software revision systems are designed to track.

There are several different systems around and it's not clear which is the "right" one. Subversion certainly seems better than CVS, but there's also GNU Arch and its variants. I had a quick play with subversion, but am going to give bazaar a serious go.

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Plugin Name: bbPress LaTeX
Plugin URI: http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey/HowDidIDoThat/bbPress/bbPressLaTeX
Description: Add LaTeX support to bbPress
Version: 0.2
Author: Andrew Stacey
Author URI: http://www.math.ntnu.no/~stacey

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Markdown+Itex is a combination of the Markdown Extra extension of Markdown together with iTeX to convert LaTeX-like equations to a viewable form.

• Markdown Syntax

  _your text_	→	your text
  **your text**	→	your text
  `my code`	→	my code
  * Bulleted list * Second item	→	• Bulleted list • Second item
  1. Numbered list 1. Second item	→	1. Numbered list 2. Second item
  Definition list : is useful	→	Definition list is useful
  [link name](URL)	→	link name
  	→	Image
  ## Header ## ### Subheader ### #### Subsubhead#### ##### Etc. #####	→	Header Subheader Subsubhead Etc.
  ***	→	Horizontal rule
  Some text[^fine] here. [^fine]: The fine print.	→	A footnote
  *[LA]: Los Angeles *[ppm]: parts per million	→	Abbreviations

• iTeX Syntax

  iTeX is entered between dollar signs, single for inline and double for display. It is very similar to LaTeX mathematical syntax. This link contains a full list of the iTeX commands.

Here is a rendering of Atiyah's mathematical genealogy. It is currently woefully incomplete, in particular Hodge's supervisor is not known on the MGP.

This version uses GraphViz to render the graph directly as a png and as a postscript file. The dot file originally produced by the ggg program was heavily edited to create the hyperbolic effect (the fonts didn't seem to scale correctly when I created a svg file, and so a png seemed the best way to display the file). The picture is rather large so I haven't embedded it in this page. You can download or view it by clicking here for png, here for another png, and here for postscript.

On this entry I'll document what I did to generate a genealogy graph. I'm doing this after having done one for the department of pure mathematics in Sheffield whereas what I should have done is started documenting when I started doing that graph. Ah well, better late than never. This is the steps for generating the graph of an Important Mathematician.

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This website is powered by Blosxom. My main reasons for choosing this were its size (I originally installed geeklog but that sent me way over quota before I'd even put in an entry) and the fact that it is written in perl. I'm reasonably competent at writing perl programs now so I felt able to hack blosxom as needed. In fact, I didn't need to hack the program itself since it is considerably extendible through its plugin facility.

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I have two machines running Ubuntu. One runs Edgy but is not connected to the internet. The other runs Dapper and has a fast connection. So to keep the Edgy one up to date I want to download the software on the Dapper machine and transfer it; but I want this to be as easy as possible so I want to use the apt system as much as I can. The following does not depend on the fact that the machine connected to the internet runs Dapper, though it was useful for figuring out some of the information that I needed. It should be simple to modify this process for another machine.

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When I switched to using a computer for my lectures instead of a chalkboard, I also took the opportunity to add a few animations/simulations to my lectures (see applets). Then I started using my iPad for the lectures, which meant that those applets would no longer work, even over the internet (as they use processing which is built on java). Fortunately, I was told about Codea (formerly known as Codify). As luck would have it, this is heavily influenced by processing so my applets should transfer -- once I've learnt a bit of lua.

Codea has its own forum and wiki. Here, I'll mainly put links to my code.

Unless otherwise stated, all of my code is placed in the public domain to the extent governable by law. Explicitly, I place it under the CC0. The code that this does not apply to is that which I have derived from someone else's code or code that has been adapted from some other format.

Note Regarding Attribution

Code that is placed in the public domain does not require attribution. However, if you have found this code useful, the best way to say "Thank you" is to point others to it.

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There's various computer-related projects that I'm working on, and it's easy to forget ideas that I have, so here's a "scribble pad" of some ideas. Many may be daft, or unimplementable.

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In the search for a "style" for the n-Lab, here's a CSS garden to play in. It's ever-so-strongly based on the CSS Zen Garden (indeed, I'm using a bit of their code). The garden itself is a page from the n-Lab copied here so that CSS stylesheets can be added at will.

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This page explains how to find and compare information on mathematics journals. At the moment, it covers information mainly gleaned from the AMS and the ISI and derivatives of the latter. The full list of sources is:

• American Mathematical Society
• ISI Web of Knowledge
• Journal Prices
• Eigenfactor
• Norwegian Journal Rankings

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Having figured out how to keep a Ubuntu machine up to date without connecting it to the internet, I'd like to be able to do the same for the fink installation on my iBook. It's not too hard, but there doesn't seem to be a single set of instructions for how to do it so I've gathered together the necessary steps here.

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I am my primary audience for this section of the website so these hacks are written so that I can follow them. Therefore although I have tried to be helpful in how I write the entries, they probably assume a reasonable familiarity with the programs that I am familiar with. In particular, I am not a programmer but I have been using Linux for a decade now and have picked up the basics here and there. I figure I'm reasonably competent with perl and shell scripts and know my way around a typical system.

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