Another Font for a Very Specific Purpose
I have been reading stuff on my HP200LX palmtop using VR, the Vertical Reader. It basically turns the LX into a pretty useful book reader — ASCII only. You have a single column of text, rather like a newspaper column. It’s most excellent. It comes with search, bookmark and various customisation facilities.
However, I found the fonts that came with it just a bit too small. I decided to make one of my own, which is at an old post here, but it went too far the other way and is too wide. So I decided to take that font and narrow it a bit — make a condensed version, in the correct parlance. Thus:
The two fonts are shown below. The comments about the design philosophy in the earlier post remain valid; but the new one is I think just as readable and gets quite a bit more text on the screen.
‘djgtry2.vfn’
Using the font ‘djgthin.vfn’.
The new font is available at DSPACE, along with the earlier one. The file to download is DJGTHIN.VFN.zip.
Scones using only 2.5 ingedients
This recipe courtesy of Kylie Evans at Biotext. May need to try it a few times to get the knack.
First, preheat oven to about 200oC and line a couple of baking trays with paper.
Work fast.
You will need:
o some volume of self-raising flour (a couple of cups)
o half that volume of thickened cream.
Combine flour and cream in a bowl, mixing with a bread and butter knife until combined. The less mixing the better.
The half an ingredient: If any dry material is left (say as crumbs in the bottom of the bowl) use a little milk just to add liquid. Mixture should not be sticky.
Use your hands to press out the dough into slabs about an inch thick. Use a cutter (about 1.5 inches across) to cut out the scones.
Bake for 10 minutes, maybe 12.
Impressions of wine
Wine is a mighty thing. Wine is a project to allow Linux (and Mac OS) users to run Windows programs. It does not emulate a Windows machine, the way, for example, DOSBox emulates the hardware that DOS runs on or that VirtualBox (VB) does on a much larger and more complex scale. It is more like an interpreter. The website calls it a ‘compatibility layer’. What that means for us non-experts, is it takes Windows’ instructions to the hardware and translates them into Unix equivalents, then passes them on. This is a less flexible approach than simulating hardware (it is specific for Windows, for example, where a VM can run any number of operating systems) but it is much faster and allows excellent seamless integration with the Linux environment.
I have used Wine on and off for years, but I am not a regular user. I use VB to run a Windows 7 VM on my main workstation, because I have to work with people who use Microsoft Office and various add-ins like MathType, and at the time when I set the VM up it was probably the best solution.
I’m not so sure now.
I have an old CD of MS Office 97. I recall trying to install it under Wine a few years back, and it was not highly satisfactory. Word threw some funny errors, and I could not type into Excel. But that was a few years back, and I use Debian on my desktop, which is not renowned for using the latest versions of packages.
So I thought I’d try it again.
I have a Netbook running current Debian, which is a lot newer than the ‘old stable’ I have on my workstation. I have a USB CD drive, so I gave it a lash.
Brilliant.
Plugged in the CD drive. It appeared in the file manager. [Caja — I use MATE, which I think is a great example of a FOSS project. Dissatisfaction with where the Gnome desktop was going (when it switched from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3) prompted people to get together to continue to refine Gnome 2. The result is a desktop environment which is very congenial for us slightly older users who first saw a GUI in the 1990s and reacted violently when Microsoft introduced the ribbon, for example. Now users can choose between Gnome and MATE, and everyone has more options.] I then opened a terminal and went to the CDROM subdirectory (in this case, at /media/cdrom) and ran:
/media/cdrom $ wine autorun.exe
or whatever the installation program was called. Wine opened it like a native Linux application, installed the program (the psuedo-Windows hard drive is hidden away in .wine/drive_c of the user’s home directory).
It appeared in the ‘Other’ menu under the MATE Applications menu. So did a bunch of other stuff; it seemed to generate menu entries for all sorts of Windows executables that I did not want to use.
But that’s OK. Installed and ran Mozo, the MATE menu editor, and turned off all the entries I didn’t want, and moved Word and Excel to the Office category, and bingo I have Word and Excel (97, admittedly) running like native applications, almost no effort required.
Found an old zip file of Rietica1.7.7 (32 bit) on my hard drive; that installed perfectly as well. The Rietica website only hosts the new 64 bit version; I’ve not tried that.
Don’t know if I’ll even use Word and Excel, but the jump in the quality of the experience compared to Wine a few years ago shows how it’s a vibrant, massively useful project. A great solution.
Older tech.
Journal self-archiving policies
One of the most-viewed pages here (it’s all relative; still not very many hits really) is the list of dodgy publishers. It’s a drop in the ocean, but it gets a few hits. Something else I’d like to bring all into one place, even though it’s been done elsewhere, is to summarise self-archiving polices. I’ll focus on the journals I’ve published in, preparatory to putting together a web archive of all my papers that I am allowed to self-archive (on my website and maybe on ResearchGate). It’s really just a resource for me, but I might as well make it public.
Some journals are open access; you don’t need to self-archive those, but usually you can.
Some allow you to archive a proper reprint, processed and edited by the journal — like the IUCr, as shown below.
Some suggest you archive the ‘author’s final version’ but don’t want you to put up anything with the journal’s imprimatur.
Some say ‘mine mine mine’ and don’t let you host it at all. I hope to make this clear.
The page lives at https://darrengoossens.wordpress.com/journal-self-archiving-policies, and so far has exactly one (1) entry, the good old IUCr, which has a very enlightened policy. They allow self-archiving as long as you use the official e-reprint, rather than just the downloaded PDF, and they request that you provide a link to the journal. Seems very reasonable. The official e-reprint is easy to recognise; it has a distinctive front page with some official words on it, something like this (colours may vary):
Note the box with the notice near the bottom of the page.
I think their policy is very reasonable because the IUCr has a very professional publication and editorial team who need to be paid and ought to be paid. Subscriptions are part of the mix, yet they allow authors to house their own work and to distribute copies to colleagues freely. It seems a very sensible mix.
Add LibreCaslon (to name one) and Computer Modern (to name two) to Word
Not much really.
- Websearch for ‘librecaslon’
- http://www.impallari.com/librecaslon
- http://www.impallari.com/media/fontdownloads/librecaslon/librecaslon-v1.002.zip
- Open the zip file. Extract to somewhere temporary.
- Find the OTF files.
- Highlight them all.
- Right click.
- Select install.
Now, if you do not have admin rights it is more interesting:
- Right click.
- Swear.
- Go to https://portableapps.com/download
- When asked, select ‘Local — install for current user’ or similar.
- Finish installing.
- Use the Explorer to go to: C:\Users\username\PortableApps\PortableApps.com\Data (‘username’ is the login name of the user installing the software).
- Create a ‘Fonts’ folder in there.
- Put the OTF files into this folder.
- Start the Portable Apps Platform (if no shortcut/menu entry is available, go to C:\Users\username\PortableApps\PortableApps.com and run PortableAppsPlatform.exe). If it was started during installation, stop it and restart it.
- Open Word, say, and LibreCaslon now appears in the fonts menu.
- Close the Portable Apps Platform and it will not be accessible, though Word might still list it.
- Add any other fonts you like this way, but they’ll only be available while the Portable Apps Platform is running, and you’ll need to stop it and restart it to make them appear. On the other hand, installation/removal is really simple; to uninstall, turn off the platform and remove from the Fonts folder!
Lots of other great applications (LibreOffice, gnumeric, GIMP, all that) are available through the Portable Apps Platform.
Oh, Computer Modern is at https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/computer-modern and https://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/fonts/cm-unicode/fonts/otf.
Non-breaking en rule (en dash) in Microsoft Word… not really.
Say you’ve got a number range. The proper way to format that is with an en rule (en dash), so it looks something like ‘4–5’ whereas a hyphen would look like ‘4-5’. Now, you probably don’t want the number range to break across lines. That’s fine with a hyphen, since Ctrl-Shift-Hyphen gives a non-breaking hyphen (in Word). But you don’t want a hyphen you want an en rule. One option is to put in a non-breaking hyphen then make it twice as wide.
- Highlight the non-breaking hyphen (and the hyphen alone, not any trailing/leading characters or spaces).
- Right click on the hyphen and select the ‘Font…’ menu, then ‘Advanced’ (rule #1 in Microsoft products: Just about anything worth doing is considered ‘Advanced’).
- Change the number in the ‘Scale’ box to be about 200%.
- Exit from the menus.
- Type an en rule in your document, alongside the stretched hyphen. (Ctrl-Keypad Minus.)
- Compare.
- Swear.
- Use it anyway since it’s the most reasonable alternative. You may want to adjust the height; but will this highly manual fix work if font is then changed? No.
- Watch while Word mysteriously moves the instruction to widen the characters to random places in the document so you end up with double width text in unexpected places.
- Swear.
- Learn LaTeX where all you need to type is \mbox{4–5}.
Stretch out the hyphen (or anything else) using the ‘Scale’ box. Gives fixed selections but can type in other values. Something between 175% and 225% usually works. Note: Can also be used to adjust the position if need be.
I have tried putting text in boxes, but the baseline is not maintained – it sits high. Character positions can be adjusted down, but then Word boxes clip the contents. Perhaps there is a better solution? I tried making it an equation, or using a minus character, but neither was really satisfactory. I’d like to hear about a better answer because, sadly, using LaTeX is not always viable.
Non-breaking en rule in Word; results of stretching a hyphen.
Cygwin without Windows administrator access
This is really simple, but useful. Especially since I have a work-provided computer and the IT people don’t give us members of the proletariat administrator access. ‘Cos, you know, we’re unreliable and might do something crazy. Now, I could get back at them by wasting their time getting them to do every little thing for me. (‘Ticket #12456: I’d like a different screensaver picture, please.’) But that’s petty and not good for my reputation. So it’s useful to look at installing things without admin rights. MikTeX works that way, and so does cygwin. Even if they will install cygwin for me (they would, I’m pretty sure), I don’t want to have to put in a job request every time I want to install a cygwin package. Fortunately, it’s no big deal. It’s designed that way.
(A) Went to cygwin.com and downloaded setup*.exe
(* is just x86 or x86_64, depending on your bits)
(B) Created C:\Users\username\installs\cygwin and put it in there
Opened a command window (cmd.exe). In the command windows, typed:
H:\> C: C:\> cd C:\Users\username\installs\cygwin C:\Users\username\installs\cygwin> setup-x86_64.exe --no-admin
Then clicked through in the usual way. This installed cygwin to C:\cygwin64
For future use, I created a batch file, cygwin_update.bat
and all that is in it is:
C:\Users\username\installs\cygwin>setup-x86_64.exe --no-admin
and I put it in my path. Now, also simple to make a Windows shortcut
-
Right click on setup-x86_64.exe, select ‘Make shortcut’
-
Right click on setup-x86_64.exe - Shortcut, select ‘Properties’
-
Look in the ‘Target’ box. It should say something like:
-
C:\Users\username\installs\cygwin\setup-x86_64.exe
-
-
Just add the flag to the end of this
-
C:\Users\darren\installs\cygwin\setup-x86_64.exe --no-admin
-
-
Rename the shortcut to something more useful, like ‘Cygwin Setup’
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To update or install new packages, double click the shortcut.
The batch file and the short cut.
Bossypants by Tina Fey: A view from outside.
How many people who’ve read this book have never seen an episode of 30 Rock or SNL? Not many, I’m guessing. But I am one such. SNL has never to my knowledge been shown on free-to-air TV in Australia (and I’ve yet to see a compelling reason to pay for TV). 30 Rock has been on Aussie TV, but slid past my radar of the time.
It’s a good book. The stuff of greatest value (at least for me as a white male) outlines the biases (conscious and unconscious) that she faced moving upwards in the comedy business. I’ve seen the same prejudices in science and heard of it in so many fields, I always end up wondering how many potentially fantastic talents have been stifled, often intentionally. Sadly, a second theme, or at least undercurrent, is that these biases are overcome through patronage rather than cultural change. One enlightened individual in a position of power makes all the difference.
It’s a funny, easy read. Made me laugh out loud in a few places, and was consistently amusing and often insightful. Recommended if you like comedy or autobiographies or yellow. And it’s not a problem if her shows are not familiar, though they do feature heavily — after all, they are a big part of the setting of her story.
Extra ultra super glue.
Just a useful trick. Some people use the word ‘hack’ for stuff like this, but I … don’t.
However, I will say that I have found that super glue, by which I mean cyanoacrylate glue, is lousy for fixing the plastic that most kids’ toys are made from. However, some companies now sell a double-pack for fixing that kind of stuff — it’s sometimes called ‘Toy Fix Glue‘ or similar.
You can buy it, but it costs a premium, and what is in the pack is a felt-tip marker filled with MEK or something very similar, and a tube of what smells a lot like super glue. Now, you’ll pay something like $10 for this tube of super glue and a few ml of this primer. It works, though.
But, instead, I prefer to pay like $2.50 for a multi-pack of no-name super glue and then go to the plumbing section and get a container of primer for joining PVC pipes for about $6. Now, this primer can be coloured, so it’s a good idea to get the transparent, colourless one.
I use a paint brush, like a cheap watercolour brush, to pain the primer onto both surfaces to be joined. Then I let it evaporate off, and apply the glue to one surface and then hold the surfaces together firmly for as long as possible.
This fixes plastics that super glue won’t normally bond, as well as ceramics — I’ve glued up teacups that have then been used for years, though I don’t put them through the dishwasher. Probably could, but don’t.
Warnings:
Use in a well-ventilated area!
Some plastics will be softened by the primer, so avoid applying more than necessary, and if it is a really valuable/valued item, maybe ‘do a test in an inconspicuous area’, as they say.
Super glue is dangerous and must be kept away from skin, eyes and any other body parts, whether your own or those of other people.
Keep out of reach of children, and don’t let them touch the glue either.
Changing the language in Word comment boxes
M$ Word does have a lot of power. It’s very successfully buried. Here’s a thing: the proofing language for the text is set separately from that for any comments you add to the text. It is I suppose a good thing to have separate control over these types of content. The language for comments is determined by the template for the file and may not be what you want. The link below goes to a very useful explanation that shows how to set it to be what you want. I include it here because I found it so useful. I don’t often reblog.
Source: Changing the language in Word comment boxes
Wordy.