ChapterZero

I discovered this little piece of wisdom while visiting Aaron Krowne’s webpage, looking to see how his Noosphere CMS handles the displaying of LaTeX code. That led me to this guy’s site, where he has posted the LaTeX code, and diagram code for his open source math book, along with the book itself in several convenient formats. What more could you want? Anyhow, this is from the introduction to the book, which is just as untraditional as the idea of an open source book (which has 2317 pages, at least in the display edition, but still, that is a lot!).

The title is only making light of naming conventions in the sciences and is not an insult to engineers. If you want to
learn about some mathematical subject, look for books with ?Introduction? or ?Elementary? in the title. If it is an
?Intermediate? text it will be incomprehensible. If it is ?Advanced? then not only will it be incomprehensible, it will
have low production qualities, i.e. a crappy typewriter font, no graphics and no examples. There is an exception to this
rule: When the title also contains the word ?Scientists? or ?Engineers? the advanced book may be quite suitable for
actually learning the material.

Excuse the extraneous crap– I ripped the text from the PDF file. Which is legal, in this case, although I freely admit I would have done it even if it wasn’t legal.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Installing TeTeX latex packages (2/28/2005)
• Quick break (3/14/2003)
• Some thoughts on shareware (7/14/2007)

It’s a wonderful feeling when someone you admire, but who doesn’t seem to like you that much, walks up to you and starts having a conversation. Or maybe, I’m just a touch depressed, and needed some validation to start feeling good again. Whatever it is, I feel much better now.

I’m considering attempting to write a poem because, posted on the Honors Mailing List, was an invitation for students to submit up to three poems, one of which is _guaranteed_ to be published in a new Honors publication. I would do it just to be published usually, but now I feel like I have things to say, get off of my chest. Problem is, I’m not an artist in that sense of the word– I have no skill in wordsmithing. I don’t even know what it is I want to get off my chest; I only know the feeling itself. I’ve considered writing about Barbados, but I can only think of cliches– maybe I could write about how much it’s changed, become more Americanized– about its beaches and awesome natural beauty. But I don’t really feel qualified to write about those, even, seeing as how I haven’t been back there in what will be a small eternity tomorrow. I’ve also thought about writing about the war on Iraq, but I have an aversion to political poetry, plus I would have nothing to talk about but my own confusion and indecision: I don’t like the idea of the war, but I see how it may be necessary. Of course, my whole drive to write a poem may have just be fueled by my subscription to the Word of the Day list.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Too much… (3/25/2003)
• Bye, grandma (10/17/2008)
• My blog, talking ’bout my blog (3/13/2002)

I have an entire month that consisted of nothing but business. I can’t even remember the specifics of each week, but I can’t get over the feeling that I haven’t had time to really take a break, or even to study properly, in the past couple of weeks. Compound that with the fact that I’m sure I failed my EM (Electromagnetics) test horribly, and you can guess how drained I feel.

This week’s list of immediacies: I must finish grading a set of 75+ projects by Monday, each of which will I should allocate 10 minutes towards grading properly. I have an Algebra test, tomorrow, and I haven’t had time to do any of the homework from those chapters, or even read them yet, and this time, it turns out we’re covering material I’m not really that familiar with– so those two activities, which I can usually scorn, are close to essential. I have circuits’ homework due tomorrow, which will take at least 4 hours to complete, and I haven’t started it yet. Just the grading is enough…

Long term, I have to start working on a project for my circuits lab class, which is due sometime next month, I believe. I’d like to start it this week, just to ease my mind, but that is unlikely to happen. I’d also like to be able to study more, in all of my classes, not only the ones in which I have an admittedly tenuous grasp on the material. It will be a wonder if my GPA survives this semester unscathed. Please, please– I do so want to qualify for the Engineering Honor Society next semester.

I’m wondering whether I should take less classes next year, or just quit proctoring. I don’t feel I’m a very time efficient proctor, and I think I’ve forgotten a large percentage of the material the students ask me about, but I do like the money and other emolulents that come along with the job. On the other hand, I would like to get degrees in both engineering and math, so my schedule needs to be crowded, unless I’m willing to spend 6 years of my life in college, which I am most definitely not. Mayber I’ll discover some time-management skills, and see that they can help in situations like these, but I doubt it.

Possibly relevant posts:

• My mountain of work (8/5/2005)
• Quick UpDate (1/28/2003)
• Life sucks! (2/27/2003)

Other people take a Kit-Kat break, I take a blogging break. School has been exhausting this week, and even a little scary. I’ve skirted the Academic Honesty Policy here at UH pretty closely this week in a way I will *never* do. Not only was it nerve-wracking, it was also a stupid mistake. But life goes on, thankfully, no matter how stupid and thoughtless I am at times.

Today I bought “A Guide to LaTeX” and “The LaTeX Graphics Companion”, which I have promised myself will be my last LaTeX related purchases for a while. I now have enough reference material on TeX, LaTeX, MetaFont/Post, and ePix to last me a short lifetime of experimentation and reading. So until I master those tools, and can you use them *at short notice* to whip up pretty much whatever I want, I intend to buy no more such books. And after that, I shouldn’t need any such books, so it’s a win-win situation. Considering that those books cost $100 together, those will be my last book purchases for the next two months.

Look for me to start a LaTeX/Metafont related project weblog sometime soon. I’m feeling very motivated after visiting a fellow UHer’s website: he has some of his exam crib sheets (legal, of course), and the solutions for some assignments in previous classes he’s taken posted as pdfs. I intend to do more than just upload scanned pages, though– eventually. Until then, I’ll hone my skills in the wonderful world of typesetting and programmatic illustration online where anyone who cares to can comment, or just learn by watching.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Life sucks! (2/27/2003)
• Mission Accomplished (8/7/2003)
• Book Naming Conventions (3/27/2003)

I’ve watched two similar questions slowly come to light in my mind: how does one (particularly me) come to like new music, and how did family names come into being?

They are similar questions because they both deal with overcoming incredible inertia, although of course of different kinds. In the case of the music, the inertia is the fact that people tend to listen to one type of music, and to like the songs they already know, and to switch the radio channel when anything they don’t already know comes on– at least, that is what I’ve noticed about myself. And yet, I still end up liking new music, and several times my preferred class of music has changed. Although, I had to force the latter type of change: from country (that was what my parents listened to when I was a kid), to alternative rock (because that was what the other middle-schoolers listened to), to contemporary christian (because I felt it would make a better Christian; and it did, for a while), to a final abortive attempt to like classical music. Mostly, when I begin to like individual new songs, I only notice liking those that I instantly like: like Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” or any of John Mayers’ songs. It seems like the rest just seep around the cracks, inveigling themselves into my consciousness to the point where they become familiar and then even liked.

As for the family names, I’ve always wondered about those: where did they originally come from, and even though I understand that they can be legally created or destroyed now, how often does that process happen? Like most black people in the Western Hemisphere know where their last names come from: the family names of the ‘owners’ of their enslaved ancestors. But where did white people get their names? The ones that don’t have obvious etymologies, like Baker or Smith. Where did names like Jahn, or Schultz, or any other millions of surnames that I can’t think of off-hand come from?

Possibly relevant posts:

• Amusing covers (2/2/2008)
• Pharell? (6/28/2008)
• linux friendly online music services? (4/16/2007)

I’m being tempted to buy a subscription to O’Reilly’s Safari Service. I was looking for a good book on X Window programming using Xt/Xlib/Motif, any kind of fundamental non-GTK/QT based, and hence more portable, architecture. Amazon.com had nothing, so then I visited O’Reilly.com, where I made a detour to Safari. The idea isn’t half bad at all, but in looking through the listings, I didn’t see anything about X-Window programming, which leads me to wonder what other omissions I could be glossing over in buying that service. All of that is moot however, my main reason for not subscribing to Safari is the fact that it doesn’t provide access to math books. Probably the only service like that I would subscribe to would have to provide access to my triumvirate of interests: computers, math, and science fiction/ fantasy. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Meta Category setup (1/23/2005)
• Caltech’s subpar library system, or there’s an ILL fee?! (8/19/2007)
• Switched servers (tangentspace.net is now at a new IP address) (9/17/2008)