Auberginen, Radiccio, Weißwein sauce

Was:
2 kleine Auberginen
1 Kopf Radiccio
1 mittelgroße Zwiebel feingeschnitten
2-3 Knoblauchzehen
4 gehackte Tomaten
Ziegenweichkäse (Alter nach Vorliebe, frischkäse geht auch ist aber etwas fader)
ein wenig Brühe
\frac{1}{8}l Weißwein (nach Belieben, mir beliebt trocken)
Olivenöl
(roten) Pfeffer
1 Handvoll gehacktes (frisches) Basilikum
Thymian
Dazu: Pasta oder Gnocchi

Wie:
Auberginen halbieren und dann orthogonal dazu in relativ dünne (4mm) Scheiben schneiden. Mit Salz bestreuen und eine Weile weinen lassen (halbe Stunde wäre gut ich bin dafür meist zu ungeduldig. Auberginen mit Olivenöl grillen (oder braten) bis sie zart sind (2-4 min pro Seite je nach Hitze). Radiccio ebenfalls erhitzen bis er welk wird (1-2 min pro seite).
 Ein wenig Öl in einer ausreichend großen Pfanne erhitzen, Zwiebeln und Knoblauch zugeben zwei Minuten erhitzen, Thymian und Petersilie zugeben und rühren bis Zwiebel weich und glasig ist.
Nun Thomaten, Brühe, Weißwein, Pfeffer und Basilikum zugeben und ein paar Minuten simmern lassen.
Auberginen und Radiccio zugeben und abschmecken.
Pasta/Gnocchi in Teller füllen mit Sauce bedecken und zerkrümelten Ziegenkäse darüber streuen. Als Deko eignet sich das obligatorische Blättchen Basilikum.

Warum:
Lecker

Vegetarische Quiche

Ein simples Rezept, das ich sehr schätze:

Teig:
200g Mehl
100g Butter
1 Prise Salz
bis zu 50 ml Wasser
Butter kneten (Küchenmaschine empfiehlt sich), Mehl und Salz einbauen und kneten bis keine Klümpchen mehr existieren, Wasser dazu, kneten und kaltstellen.
In eine (gefettete) Backform packen, mit der Gabel ein Paar Mal einstechen und bei auf 170 Grad vorgeheiztem Backofen etwa 15 min vorbacken.

Füllung:
2 Spitzpaprika
1 Stange Lauch
1 Zwiebel
1 Zehe Knoblauch
 [Chili|Muskat|Paprika], Salz, Pfeffer je nach Vorlieben
Zwiebel und Knoblauch in Fett (Butter,öl) erhitzen, Lauch dazu. Wenns einigermaßen glasig aussieht Paprika dazu. Nach ein, zwei Minuten würzen, fertig! Wein würde sich sicher auch gut darin machen. 
Anschließen in die Form mit dem vorgebackenen Teig füllen.  

Überbackung:
150g Gry\'ere
1 Becher saure Sahne
Zusammen rühren über die Füllung verstreichen und alles in den Backofen bei 170Grad und backen bis es lecker aussieht (15 min?) 

MacOS and package management

This is priceless:

The following 240 additional packages will be installed: a52dec a52dec-dev a52dec-shlibs amrnb amrnb-dev amrnb-shlibs atk1 atk1-shlibs audiofile audiofile-bin audiofile-shlibs autoconf autoconf2.6 automake1.11 automake1.9 avahi avahi-dev bison cairo cairo-shlibs cloog cloog-shlibs compress-raw-bzip2-pm5100 compress-raw-zlib-pm5100 crypt-ssleay-pm5100 daemonic db48-aes db48-aes-shlibs dbus dbus1.3-dev dbus1.3-shlibs docbook-dsssl-nwalsh docbook-dtd docbook-utils docbook-xsl doxygen elinks encode-pm5100 esound esound-bin esound-common esound-shlibs faac faac-dev faac-shlibs faad ffmpeg-dev fftw3 fftw3-shlibs fink-package-precedence fontconfig-config fontconfig2-dev fontconfig2-shlibs freeglut freeglut-shlibs freetype219 freetype219-shlibs gawk gcc45 gcc45-compiler gcc45-shlibs gd2 gd2-shlibs getoptbin gettext gettext-dev ghostscript-fonts ghostscript6 giflib giflib-bin giflib-shlibs glib glib-shlibs glib2-dev glib2-shlibs glitz glitz-shlibs gmp gmp-shlibs gnome-doc-utils gsm gtk+ gtk+-data gtk+-shlibs gtk+2 gtk+2-dev gtk+2-shlibs gtk-doc html-parser-pm5100 html-tagset-pm id3lib4-dev id3lib4-shlibs imlib2 imlib2-shlibs intltool40 io-compress-pm5100 jack-dev jack-shlibs jadetex lame lame-dev lame-shlibs libao2-shlibs libavahi-client3-shlibs libavahi-common3-shlibs libavahi-core6-shlibs libavahi-glib1-shlibs libavcodec-dev libavcodec51-shlibs libavformat-dev libavformat52-shlibs libavutil-dev libavutil49-shlibs libdaemon libdaemon-shlibs libdatrie1 libdatrie1-shlibs libfaad1-dev libfaad1-shlibs libfaad2-shlibs libflac8 libflac8-dev libgettext8-dev libgmpxx-shlibs libgnugetopt libgnugetopt-shlibs libid3tag libid3tag-shlibs libidn libidn-shlibs libjasper.1 libjasper.1-shlibs libjpeg8 libkpathsea4 libkpathsea4-shlibs liblzma5-shlibs libmad libmad-shlibs libmikmod3 libmikmod3-shlibs libmodplug libmodplug-shlibs libmpc2 libmpc2-shlibs libmpcdec3 libmpcdec3-shlibs libmpfr1 libmpfr1-shlibs libogg libogg-shlibs libpng14 libpng14-shlibs libpng3 libpng3-shlibs librarian.08-shlibs libsamplerate0-dev libsamplerate0-shlibs libshout4 libshout4-shlibs libsndfile1-dev libsndfile1-shlibs libthai libthai-dev libthai-shlibs libtheora0 libtheora0-shlibs libtheoradec1-shlibs libtheoraenc1-shlibs libtiff libtiff-bin libtiff-shlibs libtool14 libtool14-shlibs libtool2 libtool2-shlibs libvorbis0 libvorbis0-shlibs libwww libwww-bin libwww-pm5100 libwww-shlibs libx264-57-shlibs libx264-dev libxml libxml-shlibs libxml2 libxml2-bin libxml2-py26 libxml2-shlibs libxslt libxslt-bin libxslt-shlibs m4 make ocaml openjade openmotif3 openmotif3-shlibs opensp4 opensp4-dev opensp4-shlibs pango1-xft2-ft219 pango1-xft2-ft219-dev pango1-xft2-ft219-shlibs passwd pixman pixman-shlibs ppl ppl-shlibs python26 python26-shlibs rarian rarian-compat sdl sdl-shlibs sgml-entities-iso8879 sgmls-pm shared-mime-info t1lib5-nox t1lib5-nox-shlibs t1lib5-x11 t1lib5-x11-shlibs tetex-base tetex-texmf texi2html uri-pm5100 wavpack1-dev wavpack1-shlibs xdg-base xft2-dev xft2-shlibs xinitrc xmkmf xml-parser-pm5100 xmms xmms-bin xmms-shlibs xvidcore xvidcore-shlibs xz 

Guess what package I was installing. Unbelievably mpd! 

I have now tried macports, homebrew and fink and they all suck. It's unbelievable how bad of a copy of most linux package managers they all are.

First of all why do i have to compile every package on all three of these tools. I know it is a lot of work and fink are working on it but it's been a year since snow leopard is out. Being forced to compile is the thing that most people erroneously make fun of when talking about linux. It is ridiculous that this troll is actually true when considering mac, and no even though most packages are more for convenience I don't think an OS without wget is to be considered complete.

 Macports really duplicates a lot of stuff unneccessarily and some packages break for me, Homebrew also broke on two packages and plain didn't have formulas for a lot of other (although it hast the rather sane policy of not duplicating anything already in MacOS, which is a big plus) and fink just sucks for the reasons above.

I don't think gentoo prefix would make the situation any better. I guess i will try to live with homebrew and write patches for it. :( I had a thought the other how i hardly ever had the urge to write a program on linux since somebody almost surely has done it before. Maybe I am not compatible to Macs, but i have never programmed as much as on Mac and that out of pure need! 

IPv6, dyndns and all the rest

I have a dream! And that is listening to music from my server without 10 minutes of foo to get it started. I am still working on a solution that is plug'n'play. There are two major solutions that i considered: A network audio system and a filesystem share with a local player.. Since Pulseaudio (and basically every other network audio solution except esd) doesn't have MacOS support and because my admin wouldn't install nfs and sshfs under Mac is a joke I am going to rely on esd.

Now that server needs to push its sound to me somehow and i wanted this to be done without thinking about firewalls, natting and the like. That is why i wanted it to work over IPv6 since this is virtually unfiltered in the networks i live in at the moment. The only problem is that i need to push the data not pull, so the server needs to know my ip. I thought: That's easy, just use dyndns.
What i didn't know is how difficult it is to get a dynamical dns provider that actually supports ipv6. I had a long list of services grabbed from some update client.

• dyndns.* would have been my first choice, if it weren't for them only doing ipv6 in beta in their non-free custom dns scheme. 

• freedns.afraid.org was next and it has a ipv6 enabled dns server which you get for free but you can't update it via the client api! :(
• no-ip.com doesn't have v6 at all from what i could gather
• ... 

By this time i was annoyed and googled more thoroughly again and found: majimoto. Now that guy is awesome. Seems to be a german who does web hosting in his spare time and was annoyed by the same things as i am and just made a free, client updatable ipv6 enabled dynamic dns available to the general public. YEAH! This guy deserves some applause.
Now onto esd :)
Update:  Joshua from afraid.org answered me and yes it is supported just not officially:
"If you create a IPv4 A record, go to 'dynamic DNS' and get the update URL, you can then append &address=<ipv6 address> (without <>'s) and it will convert the record into a AAAA record "

MacOSX and IPv6

MacOSX supports IPv6 natively of course but what good is that if your ^.*$ network administrator won't allow that. Now my dorm is part of a larger network run by an organization which really goes out of its way to provide IPv6 and they offer static tunnels (unpractical in my case), Teredo (not stable/performant enough by their own judgement) and ISATAP.
Now Snow Leopards ISATAP support is virtually inexistent. In fact it was only offered by ancient miredo versions and support was dropped in version 1.1.6. I could have lived with an old version since i don't suscribe to the idea of software magically turning stale over time although this meant compiling by hand in this case. The only problem is miredo is just such a bitch to configure that i couldn't get it to work for the life of me.

Anyway I then used the linux instructions for doing it by hand and converted them to the mac equivalents:
#!/bin/sh 
ISATAP_RELAY="10.156.33.6" # isatap-relay.lrz-muenchen.de
IPV6_PREFIX="2001:4CA0:0:FE00::" # LRZ ISATAP-Prefix 
IPV4=$(ifconfig $(route get ${ISATAP_RELAY} | grep interface | sed -e 's/ interface: //') | egrep '\' | awk '{print $2;}')
ifconfig gif0 tunnel ${IPV4} ${ISATAP_RELAY} 
ifconfig gif0 inet6 ${IPV6_PREFIX}5EFE:${IPV4} prefixlen /128
route -n add -inet6 default ${IPV6_PREFIX}5EFE:${IPV4}

Test with: 
ping6 www.lrz.de 

Zuchini, Tomato, Spinach Risotto

Today I was inspired to make do with what i had (read I didn't go shopping, it was sunday and i was pretty much out of everything). I had Tomatoes (molding), Zuchini (overdue) and frozen, thawed, refrozen spinache, rice, noodles as well as half a grana padano. I was sick of pasta with sauce and thus sat there for a while, pondering and finally came up with a splendid idea: risotto

List of ingredients:

• A pound of rice
• 4 tomatoes (estimated from what was left after cutting out the mold)
• A third of a pack of frozen spinach
• A yellow zucchini
• 2 cloves of garlic
• A big white onion
• Butter
• Olive oil
• 150g grana padano
• A tiny rest of ginger that had to go
• 7 sun dried tomatoes rehydrated
• A tea spoon of rosemary
• A tea spoon of basil
• Broth (half a liter?)
• The last dregs of red wine
• The juice of one lime 
• A lily for decoration (I didn't have basil) 

The rest works as always, cut it all finely (or press the garlic if you are lazy), put onion, garlic, and ginger in a pot with a big stick of butter and let it fry in that for a while; add zucchini. Meanwhile put olive oil in a bigger pot and add the rice, heat and stir. Once you feel its good add red wine, (in my case it was gone shortly after so i didn't have to wait). Wait a bit until its not soggy anymore, add all the veggies and keep adding broth while stirring but only so much that it is barely covered, once you're out of liquid, add spices and grated cheese, fold it in and enjoy.

I have plenty of ideas on how to make it better (for a start take fresh veggies and herbs instead of old ones) but this was so tasty that I am still surprised. I haven't quite figured out what made it so yummy.

US Alt Gr Intl

I was annoyed by the weird keyboard layout on my mac (de) way back and so i learned about ukelele and hacked up my version of us alt gr intl. The problem is i can't find the full version anymore. I believe the woman i will always love took it with her on her external hdd when she dumped me. I only got the minimal version i use left, which is plain us + umlauts and ß.
If that is of any use to you get it here.

Why MacOS is not ready for the Desktop yet

After owning my macbook air for roughly half a year and using it daily i feel quite entitled to some sort of small review. At first i was mad at it for behaving in ways i felt "wrong" but I overcame a few of those which were of course just the usual head banging experiences you have because something is different. Still after getting used to the mac way and using it rather extensively I still feel it seriously lacks in certain ways.

It's probably worth pointing out I'm not a "Mac Person". I've only used MacOS for about 6 months where I've used Linux for over four years now and Windows for like 15 years already. To be fair some issues wouldn't exist if you ran MacOS on better hardware but then again that's not a very standard or supported choice so I think it's valid to critize Apple for that. I will also not exclude problems coming from Safari, iTunes and Quicktime, since they're so integrated into the OS that they are essentially a part of it.

Ok. So what's wrong with MacOS that makes it not ready for the desktop? I've tried Leopard and Snow Leopard but will mainly focus on SL since it is the newer one. The issues fall into 5 basic categories stability, simplicity, consistency, size and comfort.

The first issue whose existence i found rather surprising is stability and i actually mean the crashing kind. Before switching to Mac I heard all these stories of a miraculary stable Unix System underlying MacOS. It was somewhat chilling to see how untrue that was. It is a triviality to crash Safari, Opera and Firefox on the Mac. I see at least one crash in these browsers once every two days but that's not all. Since I live on the Internet these are the most noticable nuisances but I managed to crash Quicktime and even the UI server as well. That one time when the UI server restarted every 5 seconds I even had to reinstall despite some rather advanced methods employed in trying to fix it. I have not seen a problem that forced me to reinstall Linux in years and even Windows is getting there. The regular user will not tolerate this sort of hickup and give up although I have used Windows long enough to overlook this until Apple has had more time to produce a stable OS.

The second issue is the lack of simplicity. First of all why do I need to hunt all sorts of packages for my system to achieve functionality that should have been implemented by the OS in the first place like custom keybindings, undervolting, fan monitors, usable keyboard layouts,... The list would go on for quite a while and I'm not even talking about hunting their dependencies. Of course for a few essential (and some not quite so important) pieces of software there is always fink and macports, but then both are still "source based" as in you have to compile all of it because there are no binaries for snow leopard. If I had wanted LSF or Gentoo i would have installed it in the first place. How can apple expect regular users to cope with such an incomplete desktop with no decent installer?

An important obstacle for a regular user is consistency: Of course anybody who learns a new system will feel uncomfortable when her or his old ways stop working and the new ways just seem wrong. This is painful but unavoidable and it was all worth it once you have learned new and better ways (I am not arguing to be as similar to Windows/Linux as possible that would be foolish). The problem is that shortcuts plain don't work the same across all applications. Yes some of the very basic work the same in every application which is very commendable (copy, cut, paste, Preference Dialogue), but a lot of important ones don't like Beginning and End of line, moving wordwise and selecting text in between. On top of that it would be a lot easier to remember differnt ways of working if they followed a philosophy (like all text editing short cuts using the ctrl key) but this isn't consistent either. This is confusing to the regular user and will make them unwilling to relearn their skills and overcome their muscle memory.

The fourth major matter of contention for me is size: Of course it is not as bad as Windows 7 for that matter but still I am struggling to keep my system with just bare functionality under 25 Gb. Getting rid of languages and more importantly code for different architectures is absolutely non-trivial and highly risky business and should not be necessary. MacOS really fails in this area and Apple should try to make amends if they ever want to conquer the regular user segment of the market.

The final major issue is comfort. It is just plain to hard to use comfortably and this encompases a lot of issues. Why does there have to be an update roughly every other week that forces me to restart the computer? Why does Apple make it impossible to swap a few keys or make more custom keyboard shortcuts possible and Yes I am prepared to argue that the default is brain dead. Why can't i reasonably use MacOS with either just mouse/touch pad or keyboard (i could live without mouse but keyboard is essential)? I guess this isn't all that import if you have a macbook but for standard desktop macs without a touchpad close to the keyboard this is just painful. And last but not least, why is there no compatibility for Windows applications and don't tell me about wine it's a very long way from usable even for the more tech savy user.. How is a regular user to switch to mac if all the programs he or she needs are Windows based. This really is more important than most people think. If the regular user is pushed too far out of the regions she knows and expects she will just not follow and instead go back to what they are used to even if it means an inferior OS.

I think of MacOS the way I thought of gimp years ago: a very promising product with a rather limited audience. Apple made a big effort that deserves admiration and MacOS really is a nice product for nerds and enthusiasts but too inconsistent, uncomfortable and idiosyncratic for the regular user. If MacOS is to make major inroads on the regular desktop it will have to receive a lot of polish before that.

Communication fail

I had an interesting fail combination today. First of all the d-link dir 655 i just bought decided to reboot roughly once a minute on average. This was somewhat unsatisfactory since the WLAN reconnect of my macbook takes over 20 seconds :).

So I started phoning the hotline, the number of which i already had from the day before. Now the fun begins: My phone doesn't support tone dial but the hotline insists on being directed by those which the nice lady explains to me as slowly as she can so it costs me 50 cents just to listen to her telling me to do something I can't.

I figured I could just turn tone dialling on on my phone but it doesn't have that feature either (Why is this so hard?). My next try was googling for a tone dial sound generator applet on the internet (this one works btw: http://www.dsptutor.freeuk.com/dtmf/ToneGenerator.html) and holding the telephone microphone close to the pc speaker but then my ISP screwed the routing and internet was down as well. :(

Great Internet down -> phone down -> internet down. Don't you love modern times.

What is forward/backward searching?

Forward searching (in this context) is the process of editing a latex file and by a keypress and some magic you are catapulted into your pdfviewer to the exact same point that your cursor was pointing to in your editor.
Backward searching is the reverse process, where you click on some place in the pdf viewer and you are then referred to the source of this text within your favourite latex viewer.

Requirements:
Vim/MacVim and latex-suite; some pdfviewer (skim here) with pdfsync support and one of the two latex/tex packages pdfsync/synctex.

To make it work in Skim you need to open the preferences, goto the sync tab and enter:

Preset: Custom

Command: mvim

Arguments: --remote-silent +":%line;foldo!" "%file"

Drop this code into a file in your path and make it executable

#!/bin/sh

/Applications/Skim.app/Contents/SharedSupport/displayline -r "$2" "$1" "$3" 

Then put this into your vimrc file:

let g:Tex_ViewRule_pdf = 'pathtofile'

let g:Tex_ViewRule_ps = 'pathtofile'

let g:Tex_TreatMacViewerAsUNIX = 1

This was the only way i could get it to work under vim and macvim simultaneously. Then you just need one last line in every tex file you want it to work to set everything up:

\usepackage{pdfsync}

It's really that easy. Now in order to jump from vim to skim you need to type \ls and to get from skim to vim you would Shift+Command-Click
Try it; its grand. Enjoy!

Shortcut nuisance

I started wondering what the bash (or rather libreadline with emacs key bindings) command was for deleting the next word (already making extensive use of ^u, ^w and the like).
bind -P| less is a big helper here, http://www.bigsmoke.us/readline/shortcuts is also.

My revelation now was finally realising that few of the keystrokes work on mac the same way as usual because the option key is not meta; meta is provided escape. So instead of Alt+b i actually want Esc+b.

I now have several options all of which suck:

• I can turn option into meta in the terminal app which will cause me to loose my Umlauts (I use a selfbuilt kind of US-Alt-Intl keyboard layout)
• I can let it as it is but then i have to remember the press escape along every time (escape seems the only special key that does not autorepeat). Btw i use http://pqrs.org/macosx/keyremap4macbook/extra.html to make caps lock escape which really helps here and in vim.
• I could switch to iTerm which is as pretty as terminal when choosing the same fonts and then adapting http://ninjamonkeys.co.za/2007/07/19/iterm-tip-to-get-forward-alt-f-and-backward-alt-b-word-working/ to get all alt combinations to work but this only worked for half of those 
• There is also something that looked like the answer to my prayers: a hacked iTerm that has a (mac) normal right option key and a (linux/unix-like) normal left option key (aka alt) (or v.v.). Unfortunately my Umlauts then only work in vim and not in bash. I don't know where this is coming from and i don't know how to go about debugging this. 

BTW Terminator doesn't do any of this right so forget it. (UPDATE: MacWise as well)
I think I will go with 1.

What annoys me most is that in all Cocoa apps these shortcuts have identical meaning to term/bash but only the ones using the control work. Why?

If someone has a workaround please tell me.
My Requirements:
I like my umlauts on right alt + Key, I'd love emacs binding to work with the left alt and if possible i'd love them to work in every Cocoa app.

usability fail

This is me trying to log in to the apple forums to comment on Safari not being able to set its language accept field in the http headers to anything other than the language set in system preferences (epic in itself i dare say).

So what's wrong here? This is actually an error page! I already hit the Create Account Button and this is the page telling me that the nick is already taken.  At least that is what i figured out after trying two other browsers that failed as well and finally succeeding by choosing a different nick.

<Apple Fan Boy Attitude> This is Apples way of making my user experience better by preventing discomfort caused by error messages.</Apple Fan Boy Attitude>

Commands that save your Sanity No 1

:w !sudo tee %

overwrites a file that you don't have permission to write to but edited with vim nonetheless.

Replacing parts of your Macbook Air

I had a need for replacing my Macbook Air's top case and heard it was insanely difficult beforehand. This was definitely not the case (despite some 80 odd screws of over ten different sizes) thanks to this guide. So if you need to do it yourself don't fret, trust ifixit!

On a side note: I was thoroughly surprised to see how thought out and beautiful the inside of the Macbook Air was. I'm still unsure what to think of it but they even introduced blinds in black varnish look that have no other purpose but optical ones. Overall it is really an impressive piece of craftsmenship though not necessarily all by apple (e.g. i was most impressed with size of the mainboard)

Mac OS X Skype Tab switch shortcuts

Since I had a hard time finding out what the command is for switching the tab in the conversation window, let it be known that it is Command+Shift+left/right Arrow

big/small delimiters fontsize

Ok this is old news but i am sick of googling it now.

Delimiters can be sized manually (i.e. not with \left \right) with \big \Big \bigg \Bigg. The sizing of these is adjusted (to the better when loading the amsmath package)

Non delimiters (and this includes Integrals and Sums) can be resized with \tiny
\scriptsize
\footnotesize
\small
\normalsize (default)
\large
\Large
\LARGE
\huge
\Huge

overlapping/embracing braces

I recently had trouble trying to tex this:



If you have some experience with latex you see the trouble with the overlapping here. It took a while and it's a load of patchwork, but it works beautifully.

\contraction{a_{n'} + \makebox[0pt][l]{$
\displaystyle{\cuntraction{\phantom{a_r(k) +
\overline\psi(x) \gamma^\mu \psi(x) A_\mu(x)}}}$}
a_r(k) + \overline\psi(x)} \gamma^\mu \makebox[0pt][l]
{$\displaystyle{\contraction{\phantom{\psi(x)
A_\mu(x) a^{+}_{n}}}}$} \psi(x) A_\mu(x) a^{+}_{n}
\ket{0}
It looks like this:


contraction was defined here and cuntraction is the same with an overbrace instead. To understand all ingredients review this pdf

The main idea is that makebox collapses the bounding box that latex uses to position items on a page without touching the content, so the under/overbrace will be displayed and dimensioned according to the lenght of its argument, which in turn won't be displayed because it's hidden via phantom. Since the bounding box is collapsed the following text will start as if there hadn't been any box.

PS:
I thought the above was complicated. Well i stand corrected, the following is plain ridiculous:

QFT/QED weirdness

I am latexing QED and QFT at the moment and some of it is just price less, so I thought I'd share to save you some time.

First up is the Feynman slash, i first tried hacking something up myself:
\renewcommand{\slash}{\hskip -3pt\not\hskip -2pt}
this however has a few issues because it would need to be skipped differently for different letters, the line width of the slash was never quite right and it's too low.

After some more googling i found the slashed package. Which looks better:

Next up was a contraction symbolized by an underbracket. This functionality is provided by the mathtools package except that it looked to big for the fonts i use. Fortunately there are some optional arguments that fix that issue.

\newcommand{\contraction}[1]{\underbracket[0.2ex][0.5ex]{#1}}



And now comes my favourite: My Quantum field theory professor decided to make up a nonstandard way of being undecided about whether we are in a continous or discrete space and just superimposed a sum and an integral instead of using common sense and Dirac measures.
Marvel at this beauty:
\newcommand{\Sunt}[1]{\hskip5pt\int\hskip -15pt \sum_{#1}\kern 2pt}
\newcommand{\sunt}{\hskip3pt\int\hskip -10pt \sum}
Of course capital is for Displaystyle.

Quabla/D'alembert & Laplace in Latex

Forgot to post it in English: The short story is try the Operators defined below if you have a need for the differential operators. I'd be glad to hear someone suggesting something even better.


Ich habe mal wieder den Quabla und den Laplace gebraucht und bisher verwendete ich immer \Box  und \bigtriangleup.
Das sieht so aus:  
Ich bin persönlich nicht wahnsinnig anspruchsvoll was das Design angeht, aber heute fand ichs einfach zu hässlich und hab nach etwas ausgiebigerer, erfolgloser Suche  (GINMF) beschlossen einfach selbst einen zu bauen. Zunächst sind mir die Operatoren einfach etwas zu groß, vor allem bei kleinen lateinischen Buchstaben und desweiteren finde ich dass gerade bei dem \phi das ganze auch etwas zu hoch sitzt.
Nach einem ausgiebigen Buchstudium musste ich feststellen, dass das jeder Autor anders löst und die meisten schauen nur OK aus, der Rest noch schlechter. Auffällig dabei ist, das drei verschiedene Zeichen im Gebrauch sind für das Laplace, \bigtriangleup, \Delta und eins, was ich nicht identifizieren konnte, vermutlich eine italizierte Version von \Delta. Das ist natürlich alles eine Frage des Geschmacks und der Konvention für Vektoren im jeweiligen Text; ich präferiere auch nach dem Vergleich noch \bigtriangleup.
Nach einigem rumprobieren musste ich feststellen, dass tieferstellen gerade bei Buchstaben wie dem A, das eine relativ definierte Baseline hat, nicht toll aussieht und habe letztlich nur alles etwas kleiner gemacht. Das Problem dabei ist, dass \scriptsize für den Quabla und \footnotesize Laplace optimal wären in meinen Augen, es aber inkonsistent aussieht, wenn die in verschiedenen Größen in der gleichen Gleichung auftauchen.

 Ich würde daher vorschlagen, wenn beide in einer Gleichung vorkommen \footnotesize zu nutzen und ansonsten das jeweils optimale wählen. Ist zwar auch inkonsistent, aber das kleinste Übel in meinen Augen. Ergebnis:


\newcommand{\Lapl}{\hbox{\footnotesize{$\bigtriangleup$}}}
\newcommand{\Quabla}{\hbox{\footnotesize{$\Box$}}}
\newcommand{\quabla}{\hbox{\scriptsize{$\Box$}}}

Das Endresultat sieht so aus:

Cleaning a Compaq 6910p keyboard

Ever wondered how to clean your keyboard? Well I didn't but my girlfriend decided it was time to pour a strongly coffeinated, sugary liquid (Club Mate) into my compaq. This was a source of great distress for me since i had a very important oral exam the next morning and i really needed the laptop for that. Anyway it survived by the inexplicable mood swings of some higher power and the great workmanship/design of HP.
Still the keys were kind of unusable since they stuck upon being pressed down and made an aweful sound at that which earned me some hateful stares in the library. To put an end to this i tried to find manuals/a replacement keyboard. This however seemed rather unecessarily hard/expensive and i therefore figured I'd just go ahead with good judgement and the air of luck that seems to surround me most times.

I tried to find out which screws to unscrew and was surprised to figure out that the ones that were labelled in such a way to indicate they were responsible for the keyboard weren't sufficient. After unsuccessfully removing all other screws I came up with the idea, that those little plastic thingies on the top row are actually fasteners and... STRIKE! You have to pull them all downwards and then you can lift the keyboard.

Then just remove the two flat ribbon cables connecting the keyboard to the motherboard. I then removed all keys with a small screw driver, a lot of care and a moderate amount of force as well as the white plastic hinges and "cooked" them in boiling water (alphabet soup anyone?) 
I have to admit i was kind of afraid for the nipple mouses electronics and there didn't seem to be a frigging way to remove it, so i spent a buck on distilled water and soaked the main body of the keyboard in it. Maybe someone could clarify whether this is necessary at all or not. 
When all this was done i let it dry for a while, speeding the process with a hair dryer and then spent a lot of time puzzling about the way the layout was before i ripped it apart. Actually i now know it is still wrong, i swapped two umlauts that i don't use since the keyboard layout (us-intl with some modifications) i use is not even close to being in use on a physical layout as far as I'm aware of.
Anyway i have to say I'm almost content with the result. It was quite fun, lasted four hours including the trip to the shop to pick up the water and cost about one Euro. The only downside is the fact that i might have ruined two keys, although I'm working on it still.  Good luck with this if you have the same problem.

On a side note, I have no clue where this blog will head to but given the nature of my character I'm confident everyone will only find interesting pieces here and there and be appalled or worse bored by the rest. So I'll just go ahead with what interests me. I wouldn't be any good at anything else really :). I guess It'll be a mere braindump so i can google solutions to problems i've had and couldn't google before :)