June 2011
3 posts
2 tags
Are the changed subscription rules for iOS really...
In episode #29 of the “Build and Analyze” podcast Marco and Dan discuss the recently changed in-app purchase rules for iOS applications with subscriptions. According to the updated rules it is no longer prohibited that publishers offer the same subscriptions for a lower price outside the iOS App Store in their own web stores. The App Store rules however still prohibit that applications...
3 tags
How to type a square character in Mac OS X
The founders of the Paderborn Center for Parallel Computing, my current employer, have made the choice to use PC² instead of PCPC as the official acronym for the institute. While this choice bears the advantage of memorability, typing a square character (²) on a Mac is tedious because the standard keyboard layout does not provide a default key combination to directly type a square character. But...
Walkway for aliens
April 2011
1 post
1 tag
2 tags
TextMate Command for Umlautification of LaTeX...
Before LaTeX gained solid support for UTF-8 encoded text, it was common practice in LaTeX sources to use a "-prefix to turn regular letters into umlauts. For example, the letter ‘ä’ is written as "a in this notation.
The prime advantage of this method is that it works with plain ASCII-encoded LaTeX source files; also it enables users to use umlauts even if their keyboard does...
March 2010
1 post
3 tags
Essential Mac Software - 2010 Edition
It’s time for the yearly update for my list of Mac software which I consider essential for my daily work. There are a couple of new entries, but also a couple of applications that have been retired.
The following list presents a choice of my favorite MAC applications (in alphabetical order):
Aperture iPhoto’s big brother - I love the new photo editing capabilities added in version...
July 2009
1 post
5 tags
New wkpdf implementation released
Edit 17 June 2011: Updated installation command
I happy to announce wkpdf version 0.3.0 - a new implementation of wkpdf, on which I have been working over the last months.
This version does not provide any major, user-visible features but is mainly a re-implementation in the Ruby programming language. Since Mac OS X 10.5 Apple ships the operating system with a full Ruby installation and also...
January 2009
1 post
2 tags
BibTeX style for sorting in reverse chronological...
When preparing a list of my publications, I had the wish to sort the publications in reverse chronological order. While this seems like quite a common task to me, I couldn’t find any BibTeX style that will do this trick. There is however the plainyr.bst style which is similar to the standard plain.bst BibTeX style, but sorts the entries in ascending chronological order.
Based on this style...
February 2008
1 post
2 tags
Book Review: Paul Davies - "The Cosmic Jackpot"
It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve finished reading the book “Cosmic Jackpot” by Paul Davies (ISBN: 978-0618592265) and I’m still impressed by this wonderful book. Paul Davies is physicist and cosmologist and has written a number of popular science books on cosmology. In “The Cosmic Jackpot” Davies discusses one of the fundamental questions of...
October 2007
1 post
5 tags
Automating tracking of outgoing links with Google...
Google Analytics (GA) is a handy tool for generating access statistics for your website. One drawback of GA is that it does not automatically registers clicks to outgoing links on your website. But the information which links have been clicked can be very interesting, e.g., for determining whether the user has downloaded a file on your website or to which site the user has navigated when leaving...
July 2007
1 post
5 tags
Painless Migration of Emails from Outlook Express...
I would like to share a tip with you that is particularly handy for switchers, when migrating from Windows to the Mac. If you are using Microsoft Outlook Express on Windows, you will find out soon, that Outlook Express does not provide a convenient way to export all your emails downloaded from your POP email account to a standard format in one batch.
With this recipe, you will be able to easily...
April 2007
1 post
5 tags
Setting up LaTeX on Mac OS X
Update (21 Sep 2007): TextMate’s LaTeX bundle has been significantly improved and can now be configured using a Preferences dialog which is available from the Gear menu. My recommended preferences: set default Engine to pdflatex, enable use Latexmk.pl, set “View in” to Skim, enable “Show PDF automatically” and “Keep log window open”.
I will write an...
March 2007
1 post
6 tags
MailTags for Apple's Mail.app
MailTags is an incredibly useful tool that could be the envy of your friends running other operating systems. MailTags allows you to add custom tags, priorities, deadlines and notes to email messages. The upcoming MailTags 2.0 (which is now in the beta testing phase) stores these additional attributes to emails not in a proprietary database, but in the email itself by modifying the email’s...
January 2007
7 posts
2 tags
Book Review: "The Undercover Economist" by Tim...
The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
ISBN 978-0316731164
Recently, a couple of economics books that address the layman without prior knowledge in economics have been published. After their success in the US, these books have reached also Europe’s bookstores. The authors set out to prove the prejudice that economics is a dull and boring subject wrong.
Tim Harford is a columnist for...
4 tags
Wrapper Script for Java Command-Line Applications
Java applications with a command-line interface (CLI) are typically started with a shell script wrapper. This wrapper sets up the environment for the Java application, specifies the JVM that is going to be used, and finally starts the application.
Recently, I learned the hard way, that writing a shell script wrapper for a Java application is not trivial. My application, denoted as myapp in this...
2 tags
Essential Mac Software 2007
The Mac market seems to provide a good ecosystem for innovative software vendors and open-source developers. The following list presents a choice of my favorite MAC applications (in alphabetical order):
Carbon Emacs
Cocoabooklet
Flip4Mac
Kinkless GTD
Macports
OmniGraffle
OmniOutliner
PdfView
Quicksilver
Skype
SSH Keychain
SuperDuper
TeXniscope
TextMate
VLC Videoplayer
Plugins for...
2 tags
Processing BibTeX Files with BibTool
BibTeX can be considered the standard bibliography format for scientific wordprocessing with LaTeX. BibTeX and LaTeX form a very powerful team, but the idiosyncrasies of the BibTeX format (macros, LaTeX syntax, cross-references, and special purpose characters) render automated processing of BibTeX files rather difficult.
BibTool is an excellent tool for processing BibTeX files. BibTool can be...
4 tags
Using Subversion Externals for Reusing...
Since you will reuse your bibliographic data, that is your BibTeX file, for all publications it makes sense to store your bibliography information in one central place. You may have guessed that I will argue that you should store your bibliography also in a subversion repository. The advantage of this method is that you can integrate the bibliography to the repository by reference instead of...
4 tags
File and Directory Layout for Storing a Scientific...
In this first article of my collborative paper authoring series I’m proposing a directory layout for storing a single paper. The paper is stored in a subversion repository, thus I assume that you are sufficiently familiar with subversion. A motivation for using subversion and a proposal for storing a whole collection of papers from different authors will be presented in a later installment...
4 tags
Using latexmk and Make for Building LaTeX...
Writing proper Makefiles for building LaTeX documents is a pain, since the steps for creating the final documents depend on the LaTeX features that are used, e.g., BibTeX, makeindex, etc.
John Collins has written an excellent tool named “latexmk” for processing LaTeX documents. It can be obtained from the latexmk webpage. Using “latexmk” simplifies writing a Makefiles for...
December 2006
2 posts
3 tags
Collaborative Authoring of Scientific Papers...
Writing scientific papers for journals and conferences is one of the most important tasks in academic research. Many papers are co-authored by multiple authors, frequently also by authors that are not even member of the same institution.
Typically, a paper goes through numerous states of editing during the writing process, requiring that changes to the document are shared between authors. Most...
3 tags
Book review: Steve Wozniak – iWoz
Steve Wozniak
iWoz (From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It)
ISBN-13: 978-0393061437
Steve Wozniak embodies the archetype of what people (sometimes disrespectfully) denote as a “nerd” or “computer geek”. He is doubtlessly a brilliant engineer and inventor, but on the other side, he is a shy and...
November 2006
1 post
1 tag
Using SQLite database files as the native...
Richard Hipp, the creator of SQLite, was giving a talk titled “An Introduction to SQLite” at Google in May 2006. His talk
has been recorded and is available online.
Although the talk lacks a clear structure in my opinion, it presents a very interesting idea for applying SQLite: the use of SQLite database files as application data files.
Briefly summarized, SQLite is a small SQL...
September 2006
1 post
2 tags
Multilingual spell checking in OS X
The system-wide spell checking facility of Mac OS X allows you to use the spellchecker not only in dedicated text editors, but virtually in any textbox in a user interface. However, if you are writing regularly in different languages, you will find yourself switching between languages frequently.
I was recently asked, whether there is a way for switching between different languages rapidly. Yes,...