I'd like to talk about some software available for Ubuntu among other operating systems.

LaTeX (pronounced "lay-tek") is a wonderful tool I have been required to use for certain classes. It's a typesetting program. To phrase things plainly, it allows an author to use a simple markup language in documents called TeX files to compile documents in PDF or PS format that will be able to be displayed accurately on other systems, and it allows for the easy representation of complex mathematical and scientific notations. The easiest way to illustrate this is to provide screen-shots.

The following is a segment of a TeX file being edited in Gedit.

( TeX File in Gedit )

And the following is the generally corresponding area in the PDF once compiled.

( Compiled PDF )

The benefits may not be readily apparent given only a small view of the document, but as the document becomes longer and full of more complex notation and formatting it becomes a lot easier to manage merely the content and let the compiler handle the presentation. What's more, some of the mathematical and scientific features are very difficult to achieve with other software.

Two further pieces of software help a lot to translate LaTeX into a form useful for giving presentations. The first is Beamer, which allows for TeX files to describe slide presentations in PDF or PS format such that they will be guaranteed to display correctly on the machine used to present. Beamer creates all the structure for the slides, including the title, headers, navigation, bullet point advancements, and formatting, leaving only the content necessary to be filled by the author.

Working pleasantly with Beamer is Dia, which makes it quite easy to develop diagrams of many different possible notations and export them to EPS format, among others. It uses a GUI to allow drag-and-drop placement of diagramming symbols and the editing thereof. Only a small piece of markup is necessary to include one of these diagrams in the TeX file once it has been exported to EPS.

The following is a Beamer slide with mathematical notation.

( Beamer Slide )

The following is another Beamer slide including a Dia drawing.

( Beamer Slide with Dia Drawing )

Since all components of the final LaTeX, Beamer, and Dia presentables are in some PDF or PS format, not only will they display correctly universally but they are vector-based and completely resizable and printable without any loss in detail.

I like them. I like them a lot.

I was told that the reason it was reasonable to picket the Mormon church over Proposition 8's passing in California was that they contributed 25% of the funding in support of the measure from their headquarters in Utah. No. I calculated it myself from the most commonly available information, and they contributed less than 8% despite their happy claims of having contributed much more than that. Not only that, but those in support of the measure had less funding than those opposing it by over a million dollars. The Mormons did not get Proposition 8 passed. Quit blaming them and find a less convenient but more accurate demographic to hate if you can't survive without blaming others.

Normally I abhor "passing it on" or "tagging" or "filling out this survey/list," but I read this one on Erik's blog and I found it too true to pass up. Below is the list as posited on some tech interest site. I've highlighted those in bold which I do, indeed, consider true for me to at least a defensibly partial extent.

1. Install a hard drive in a laptop.
2. Perform a clean OS install on a machine with two OSes.
3. Swap out the battery on your iPod/iPhone.
4. Jailbreak an iPhone.
5. Wire your house for Ethernet and Coax cable.
6. Use BitTorrent and RSS to automatically download new shows from trackers.
7. Use an A/V receiver to its fullest capability (every port is taken).
8. Calibrate an HDTV without the manual.
9. Use a DSLR in full manual mode.
10. Hack the encryption and mooch your neighbor's Wi-Fi.
11. Solder cleanly enough to get around a circuit board.
12. Use your 3G phone as a Wi-Fi access point.
13. Shove the guts of a modern game console into a retro game console.
14. Design a webpage in HTML by hand that features a picture of your cat.
15. Use Photoshop to imperceptibly doctor a photo.
16. Abstain from buying extended warranties.
17. Know where to buy cheap cables and accessories.
18. Fix your parents' computer over the phone without looking at a computer.
19. Enter the Konami code.
20. Comment on Gizmodo from your phone.
21. Type quickly using T9 texting.
22. Program a universal remote.
23. Contribute code to the Linux kernel.
24. Hide porn from your significant other.
25. Avoid DRM on everything.
26. Know how to back up your data to networked storage—and actually do it.
27. Watch TV shows on the internet for free.
28. Edit together digital video ripped from YouTube.
29. Play any SNES game on your computer through an emulator.
30. Reset expired trial software by messing with the registry.
31. Hackintosh your PC.
32. Download pre-release movies from Usenet.
33. Hack the Wii to play homebrew games.
34. Get around web content filters on public computers.
35. Get into a Windows computer if you forgot your password.
36. Securely erase your data so it can't be recovered.
37. Share a printer between a Mac and a PC on a network.
38. Build a fighting robot.
39. Write your own Firefox plugins.
40. Navigate and reorganize the files on your computer in DOS.
41. Get something on the front page of Digg.
42. Get through to executive customer service.
43. Rip a CD to V0 quality MP3s.
44. Rip a DVD to DivX.
45. Build your own computer from parts.
46. Swap out the hard drive in your DVR for a bigger one.
47. Get an NES cartridge working again by blowing in it.
48. Calibrate a 7.1 surround-sound system.
49. Play downloaded games on a Nintendo DS.
50. Talk about things that aren't tech related.

Unfortunately, I don't score as high as I feel I should by all rights.

PMS chocolate is just like regular chocolate, but the rate at which one consumes it can be modeled as a function mapping non-negative integers m and non-negative reals f onto non-negative reals c.

m represents the number of times per day one regularly consumes chocolate.

f represents one's extent of dolor with normality being 0, PMS being 1, and death occurring at infinity.

c represents the amount of chocolate one eats.

The function is c = m ^ (f + 1). I will now discuss the implications of this model.

Clearly, if one does not normally eat chocolate or if one normally eats chocolate only once per day, there will be no impact on one's chocolate consumption. However, if one regularly eats chocolate more than once per day, one's chocolate consumption will grow at an exponential rate quickly exceeding realistic human capacity for said activity.

...Om nom nom.

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