GNOME Pages mockups

The GNOME folks are rethinking the browser for desktop. Meet GNOME Pages. Seif Lotfy blogs about some very clean mockups.

Proof Wiki

I stumbled upon an interesting site called Proof Wiki, might be a valuable resource. Besides laying out proofs and relating them, there are also bibliographical references.

Android 4.0 (ICS) for x86 released!

Android 4.0, aka ICS, is out for x86. There is an ISO available, featuring hardware acceleration for AMD Radeon, but not yet for Intel-based systems. There is also a VirtualBox image available. Also related, there are some videos floating around of ICS running on the ZTE Blade.

Update: there is a video on YouTube showcasing Android 4.0 x86.

Zotero to help me research, Pandoc to power my website

Some days ago I've stumbled upon Zotero, a well-integrated application to aid in collecting papers.
Meanwhile, while thinking about that I want to update my homepage I googled for yet another website generator and I encountered Pandoc, again. This time I looked a bit more carefully to the Pandoc's help page and found CSL, "an open XML-based language to describe the formatting of citations and bibliographies." I can use Pandoc to load my BibTeX databases, through Andrea Rossato’s hs-citeproc. I can even use templates to customize the output. Seems interesting.


PhD dissertation tips and some relevant PhD thesis

Tips on PhD dissertation proposal tips.

• Dalhouse University has some PhD thesis proposal guidelines.
• Trevor Strohman gives some dissertation proposal tips.

Relevant Computer Science dissertations:

• William C. Benton. Fast, Effective Program Analysis for Object-Level Parallelism. It is about multicore and parallel programming. Has a delightful typesetting, a good overall structure, and even tablatures (!).
• Daniel Frampton. Garbage Collection and the Case for High-level Low-level Programming. Was distinguished by CORE with best PhD thesis, 2011. Is working on implementation issues for X10 with Josh Milthorpe.
• Alexandra Tsyban. Formal Verification of a Framework for Microkernel Programmers. Highlights the relevance of formal verification.

PhD thesis templates (LaTeX and XeTeX)

I am gathering a list of PhD templates to use in my thesis:

• xdthesis
• xelatex_thesis_template: Has support for XeLaTeX. Got stuck the absence of file svn-multi.sty, installed it with command sudo yum install texlive-svn-multi. Then I got hit by

  The font "Courier 10 Pitch" cannot be found.

  on the line 53 \setmonofont{Courier 10 Pitch}, from file fonts.tex. I commented out that line. I had to install package texlive-ntheorem. Finally, got hit by error message:

  kpathsea: Running mktexmf rsfs10
  ! I can't find file `rsfs10'.
  

• cambridge is a classic.
• Thesis/Template looks like a complex, useful piece of work.
• willb/wi-thesis-template has a very nice readme and looks good too and points to a solid collection of tips for LaTeX packages used in the template.
• LaTeX for humans presents a list of templates from English and American Universities.

Some links on XeTeX, OpenType fonts

XeTeX seems as an improvement over LaTeX. One of its nice features is that it is easier to use TTF and OpenType fonts on the document typesetting. David J. Perry made a nice open font named Cardo and also a tutorial on XeTeX. Google Webfonts is a great resource for open source fonts. Hyndman—has a great looking homepage—gives a a push on Getting started with XeLaTeX. TUG also has a good resource listing on XeTeX.

Package iftex is important to enable adjustments to your style when running under LaTeX, XeLaTeX, or LuaLaTeX.

To install the cardo font on Fedora 15, just do:

sudo yum install scholarsfonts-cardo-fonts

XeTeX on Fedora 15

XeTeX (XeLaTeX) is broken out-of-the-box on Fedora 15, see bug #717268. To make it work, install and update texlive from the TeX Live 2011 repository:

sudo rpm -i http://jnovy.fedorapeople.org/texlive/packages.f15/texlive-release.noarch.rpm
sudo yum clean all
sudo yum update
sudo yum install texlive-xetex
sudo yum reinstall texlive-xetex # make sure the configuration is refreshed

The error I had was:

$ xelatex file.tex 
This is XeTeX, Version 3.1415926-2.3-0.9997.5 (TeX Live 2011)
 restricted \write18 enabled.

kpathsea: Running mktexfmt xelatex.fmt
I can't find the format file `xelatex.fmt'!

The idea to update the TeX Live distribution came from Leo. The tip on how to refresh the configuration of XeTeX came from Stephen.

Java 7 brings you fork/join, phasers

Yay, Java 7 is here and with it:

• fork/join barriers
• phasers (aka clocks) barriers

MeeGo really fast review

I just installed MeeGo on my netbook. This new segment stemmed innovation in the Linux world, which brings me back to the old days of trying out each and every new distribution out there.

I use my netbook for surfing the web, writing documents (LaTeX), create presentations (LaTeX), and program in Java (with Eclipse). Unfortunately, this distribution has no proxy support, or a usable wireless connection application. Since It lacks support for HTTP proxies, I cannot connect to the wired network at work. Also, there is no way to connect to a WPA Enterprise wireless network, thus I cannot connect to the wireless network at work. So, for my use case, this distribution is still in its infancy.

Pros:

• fast boot (below 30secs)
• common applications are well integrated in the interface
• fast and simple user experience

Cons:

• rudimentary wireless connection interface
• no HTTP proxy support
• screen brightness mostly working
• does not hibernate (only suspend and shutdown)