Earlier today, I went to a local copy shop and had my diploma thesis printed. This afternoon, I will hand it in. The title is
Loop subgroups of Fr and the images of their stabilizer subgroups in GLr( ) and discusses a group-theoretical result. I assume that very few readers care about the content of the thesis, but maybe some are interested in a few assorted LaTeX hints. I m also publishing the
full TeX source code, maybe someone can make use of it.
Less chatty varioref
I m using the
varioref package, in conjunction with the
cleveref package. This provides a command
\vref fig:S3S4l which will expand to, for example, to Figure 1 on page 11 . But if the referenced figure is actually on the current page, the next page, the previous page or the facing page (in two-side layouts), it will say so: Figure 1 on this page.
This is very nice, but I assume that the reader of my thesis is able to find Figure 1 when it is visible, i.e. on the current or facing page. One can remove the referencing texts with the commands
\def\reftextfaceafter ,
\def\reftextfacebefore and
\def\reftextcurrent . But because
varioref puts a space between Figure 1 and this text, we will get a superfluous space even before punctuation.
The remedy is the command
\unskip, which removes this space again. So I use in my preamble:
\def\reftextfaceafter \unskip %
\def\reftextfacebefore \unskip %
\def\reftextcurrent \unskip %
Palatino and extra leading
I chose the Palatino font for my thesis, using the
mathpazo package. Various sources (such as the
KOMA-Script manual) suggest to use 5% extra leading:
\linespread 1.05
Counting figures independently from chapters
I don t have too many figures and tables in my thesis, and I want them to be numbered simple 1, 2, ... By default, LaTeX would say 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, ... This can be fixed using the
remreset package and these commands:
\makeatletter
\@removefromreset figure chapter
\renewcommand \thefigure \arabic figure
\@removefromreset table chapter
\renewcommand \thetable \arabic table
\makeatother
No widows and club lines
LaTeX already avoids these, but I wanted to get rid of them completely. This can be done with:
% Disable single lines at the start of a paragraph (Schusterjungen)
\clubpenalty = 10000
% Disable single lines at the end of a paragraph (Hurenkinder)
\widowpenalty = 10000 \displaywidowpenalty = 1000
Struck table lines
I had to typeset tables with some lines struck, and I could not find a ready command for that. I used the following definition, based on the code for
\hline. Note that it probably does not adjust well to other font sizes and needs to be adjusted manually:
\makeatletter
\def\stline %
\noalign \vskip-.7em\vskip-\arrayrulewidth\hrule \@height \arrayrulewidth\vskip.7em
\makeatother
Title page in one-sided layout
According to the KOMA manual, the title page as set by LaTeX is not meant to be the cover of a publication, and therefore has to be set with the margins of a right page i.e. a larger right margin and a smaller left margin. But when printing cheaply, one often just put a transparent sheet on top of the print, so the title page
is the cover. You can convince KOMA that you are right by using
\KOMAoptions twoside=false
\begin titlepage
...
\end titlepage
\KOMAoptions twoside=true
Not flushing the page for chapter heads
LaTeX would put the list of algorithms on a new right page. I found this a waste of paper for my few algorithms, and preferred to put the list right after the table of contents. You can override the LaTeX behavior using:
\tableofcontents
\let\cleardoublepage\relax % book
\let\clearpage\relax % report
\let\chapter\section
\listofalgorithms
This code also reduces the size of the heading to that of a section. The same trick also works with
\chapter.
Math in headings vs. PDF bookmarks
LaTeX with the
hyperref package creates nice PDF bookmarks from your chapter and section titles. Unfortunately, PDF bookmark names can only be plain strings, while the titles in the document might contain some math symbols. You can make both happy with
\texorpdfstring:
\section Stabilizer subgroups in \texorpdfstring $\GL_r(\Z/2\Z)$ GL\_r(Z/2Z)
Setting lines for the signature
The diploma thesis contains a small note which I have to sign, saying that I created it on my own etc. Below that, I put two labeled lines for date and signature, using the tabbing environment:
\begin tabbing
\rule 4cm .4pt \hspace 1cm \= \rule 7cm .4pt \\
Ort, Datum \> Unterschrift
\end tabbing
If you re using KDE and upgraded to Thunderbird 3 lately you might have the problem that links in emails don t open in a browser anymore. For my case that happened even without a user visible error message.
If that sounds familiar for you, check the error console (Tools/Error-Console). If there is an error like:
(you were awaiting this one, weren't you?)
Ron Murray reported the Debian 
So, one of the things I get to do during work hours for 
Another attempt to shorten my list of movies where not having seen them makes me an absolute philistine, according to various friends: 
by Jared Diamond has a really interesting analysis of how human history was determined by geography and the availability of plants and animals suitable for domestication. Part of the explanation for the apparent lack of intelligent aliens could be planets where the dominant species was stuck in a situation like that of the people of New Guinea, the lack of plants and animals suitable for domestication prevented their society from developing. A stone-age human civilisation could potentially be stable for millions of years.
The article says Extra-terrestrials might not only resemble us but have our foibles, such as greed, violence and a tendency to exploit others resources . Well for starters a species that can displace all other contenders to become the dominant species in their planet would have to be capable of greed and violence. So that is probably correct but is not really going out on a limb.
by Stephen Baxter (and more briefly in the sequels).
Probability
The universe is a large place. Making a specific prediction about the first alien species that we might encounter might make some sense. But given the potentially billions of species that might be out there we should assume that some of the more improbable forms are represented. Claiming that anything in particular is impossible seems very rash.
Also anyone who makes claims about what evolution should do seems to have missed the point. What evolution does is to give rise to species that tend to be a better fit for the environment. Different environments result in different creatures. We can try and predict what creatures might evolve, but we don t get to say that things should happen.
Should universities switch away from hosting their own email and join the Google bandwagon?
Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting and broken behaviour of Django: Running 
The main reason for me to go to FOSDEM this year was to meet with other
I got involved with open-source software before I learnt about
software development in a university course. Naturally, when my
profs tried to teach the 
We finished off moving everything from the old place last weekend. Our new
home number can be determined by adding 59115 to the old one (or calling the
old one in the next 60 days).
The great unpacking is continuing. We're reluctant to unpack much in the
kitchen because it's all going to have to come back out again in a couple of
weeks.
The cats have settled in well. Lily is still spending most of her time under
the bed, but she comes out to explore from time to time.
We had a bunch of fun with various bits of cable. I had some CAT-6 cabling
installed throughout, and also some new RG-6 cabling was installed at the
same time. The contractor ran a new line into our place and also a line to
the patch panel he installed for the phone.
When Comcast came out to activate our cable TV service, the poor guy had all
sorts of problems, until I realised there was an air gap between the line
coming into the condo and the cables outside. Then the next problem was my
contractor had run the new line out to the wrong location. The bunch of
cables where he ran the line to was some old out of commission stuff. The
Comcast guy was really great. We located where the current cable came in
(via the attic) and he spliced that into the new internal cabling, and the
net outcome was close to what was supposed to have happened in the first
place. The funniest thing was the Comcast cable guy left in such a rush
because he ran over time on the job, that he left the cable cabinet wide
open, including the box with all of the building's cable connections. If I
new how to crimp RG-6, and was feeling lucky, I could remove the filter
that's restricting the channels we receive.
The next fun was getting the phone line sorted out. Again, my contractor had
run a new CAT-6 line to the patch panel for the purposes of giving me a few
jacks in the one place, so I could plug in my DSL modem, and a line into my
Asterisk box. The only problem was he wasn't sure which pair was the phone
line (and the phone wasn't active at the time) so there was an air gap
between the end of the CAT-6 and the phone line. AT&T came out and
sorted that out. I suspect the AT&T guy also left in a hurry, because he
left a tone generator jumpered into the phone line.
Once the phone was working we had to wait a couple of days for the DSL
service to get moved to the new number. It turns out that I got new static
IP addresses with the move, so it wasn't just a case of plugging everything
back in and it working, unfortunately.
But that's all behind us now. We're fully here, online again, and settling
in. I think this weekend we'll bang in some picture hooks and hang up our
paintings, and try to unpack a few more boxes.
On Wednesday I got DAM approval and since Saturday late evening 
New guidelines for periodic publications' websites at my University favor the different journals we have to use a standardized system And it makes quite a bit of sense. It is quite hard to explain to the people I work with that the content is not only meant to be consumed by humans, but also by other systems; the reasons behind rich content tagging and deep hierarchies for what they would just see as a list of words (think list of authors for an article, list of keywords, and so on). After all, aggregator databases such as 
So, it is quite possible I will be uploading this into Debian in a couple of weeks (hopefully in time to be considered for Squeeze). The reasons I am making it available in my personal repository now is: