§ May 19th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 2 Comments
Wolfram Research, probably most known for their Mathematica calculation product, has launched an online service which makes various calculations and visualizations for free, and with just a web browser:
http://wolframalpha.com
This project makes me really respect Wolfram. I spent quite some time browsing the examples, almost exclusively from the “mathematics” part, picking like a shy visitor at other areas. Some of my online friends write that “knowledge becomes less of a fashion in our times”. I do not agree a bit. Just look at this product.
§ May 11th, 2009 § Filed under IT § 1 Comment
10 and more years back, when I studied mathematics, I was an active user and promoter of the (La)TeX typesetting system. Since then, I almost did not use it, but kept the warmest memories of this creation “by mathematicians, for mathematicians”. Yesterday… I can’t say I changed my mind, but I’m not so sure any more about my attitude.
I had to remake a one-page document, for which I already had an old LaTeX template source. Edit the source, “make”, and a nice PDF is ready. Well, now the text which I inserted contained the @ sign. And of course (pdf)LaTeX did not compile.
I did not remember what should one do to typeset ‘@’ literally. I certainly remembered it 10 years back, but that’s not the kind of knowledge which stays alive when not used. It took me about 15 minutes to find the answer.
And now I’m not sure whether I shall promote TeX at all. From my viewpoint, this 15 minutes is unacceptably too much for such “problem” (actually, the very fact that this made a problem, is unacceptable in my current view). I expected the first link in Google search to give the solution, but the reality was very far from that. And – unfortunately for the others – I consider myself as a quite experienced (La)TeX user: I followed news:comp.text.tex, created own document classes, which were also used by other people, and so on. I knew well how it works. I knew where to look for documentation, and what kind of documentation I need. And still this thing, which should never be a stumble at all, took me 15 minutes. I can easily imagine that it takes full day from a person new to the TeX world.
Conclusion: sorry, none at the moment…
I’ve started writing about my last year bike trip in the Indian Himalayas. Before I had not forced myself to more than one blog post and an unsorted pile of photos. Now I’ve started with a short illustrated text about practical issues, answering questions which I had at the planning stage:
Cycling in Himachal Pradesh: practical issues
My next plan is to publish the daybook with facts and impressions. Stay tuned.
