Software nerd
I've been using LaTeX and friends lately for presentations and plan to use it on my thesis. It's a nice typesetting package, but looking at the macros and whatnot can make my head spin. I tried out LyX and had sort of a mixed reaction: nice layout and pretty user friendly, but a little detached from the actual LaTeX for my taste. Today I found out about AUCTeX and preview-latex, which seems pretty much exactly what I want--inline images of equations and graphics and true LaTeX. The only rub is that the system is based on emacs, and I'm a long time vi/vim user. For now I'm using the VIPER package (vi emulation) to make it usable, but maybe I'll actually get around to learning emacs.
I'm also playing around with computer algebra software in hopes of gaining some traction on some homework problems I've been stuck on. I downloaded Maxima and Pysym today. I've used Maxima before but have forgotten the syntax and whatnot. I've never really got comfortable doing symbolic calculations on a computer.
In any case I'm always amazed how much useful free software there is. Recent homeworks have used the GCC compiler, GNU Scientific Library, Sundials/CVODE integrator, Python, Matplotlib, etc. And of course I'm posting this in Firefox running on Ubuntu.
I'm also playing around with computer algebra software in hopes of gaining some traction on some homework problems I've been stuck on. I downloaded Maxima and Pysym today. I've used Maxima before but have forgotten the syntax and whatnot. I've never really got comfortable doing symbolic calculations on a computer.
In any case I'm always amazed how much useful free software there is. Recent homeworks have used the GCC compiler, GNU Scientific Library, Sundials/CVODE integrator, Python, Matplotlib, etc. And of course I'm posting this in Firefox running on Ubuntu.