(b)logophile

Thesis-writing in LaTeX

tikitu — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:35:46 +0000

I’ve spent a bit of time organising my LaTeX setup for maximal dissertatory efficiency. Mainly I want a system that lets me put definitions somewhere sensible (a thesis.sty package), but also makes it easy to typeset chapters individually to hand around, without duplicating definitions or having to hand-edit files for book or single-chapter output.

I’ve got a basic system that works pretty well, and now it has its own page on my site. Any suggestions would be welcome.

Heartburn and the elephant

tikitu — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 09:56:35 +0000

Possibly the best band name ever to come to me in a dream.

Bonus for the eagle-eyed: I’m not sure if the dream original was singular or plural. I’m also not sure which would be better.

Esslli quote of the day

tikitu — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:43:32 +0000

I have the feeling that he’s cutting a pumpkin with a pair of shoes, only sometimes it’s not a pumpkin at all.

—Gianluca

Here comes Hamburg!

tikitu — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:46:06 +0000

Heading off to Hamburg tomorrow for ESSLLI. Posting will be even more sporadic than usual.

The bird that baas

tikitu — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:16:35 +0000

On my way to work this morning, I heard a sheep bleating. A bit surprising, in the centre of Amsterdam, and especially when it seemed to be coming from a canal… Turned out to be this little guy:

Fuut (Great Crested Grebe), slightly out of focus

I think he had a fish when I first saw him, I suppose he might have been calling to his young? In any case nobody turned up, and he stopped baaing after a while and ate it himself.

An unexpected acquisition

tikitu — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:51:05 +0000

I went into Scheltema this morning. I wasn’t even looking for a book… but I got sidetracked (it’s a five-storey bookstore, in retrospect it was inevitable). I got caught by this.

That’s Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip. (It’s actually “Volume 1″ of “The Complete…”, projected to run to five volumes, which to my mind is a bit of dodgy advertising, but whatever.)

My day is complete.

The Black Seeds … almost

tikitu — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 22:05:20 +0000

Last night the Black Seeds played the Melkweg. I didn’t go, because today they were on the verandah of Timboektoe, a beach bar. So today I cycled to Wijk aan Zee… and got so lost along the way that I missed the gig.

I can’t post photos yet, for ridiculous technological reasons. I made a map, though, with commentary on various significant occurrences and parts of the trip. (Don’t seem to be able to embed that here either, shame.)

All told it seems to be about 75 km, which I’m fairly pleased with. Would have been even more pleased, of course, if I’d got to hear the band…

Strictly speaking

tikitu — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:33:36 +0000

Joachim Fersengeld, a German, wrote his Pericalypse in Dutch (he hardly knows the language, which he himself admits in the Introduction) and published it in France, a country notorious for its dreadful proofreading. The writer of these words also does not, strictly speaking, know Dutch, but going by the title of the book, the English Introduction, and a few understandable expressions here and there in the text, he has concluded that he can pass muster as a reviewer after all.

—Stanislaw Lem, A Perfect Vacuum (a collection of reviews of nonexistant books)

How can I not have heard of this?

tikitu — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:48:08 +0000

They’re filming Watchmen.

Whether it’s a train wreck or a triumph, I am seeing that film.

My clever friends

tikitu — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 09:58:33 +0000

An old friend of mine has a new website, showing her awesome handmade jewellery.

You might also like to trot over to my sister’s site, aSpire Arts, and check out her weavings. Don’t bother trying to contact her though, she’s in Mongolia for a few months.