Rob's Useful Stuff

Linux and LaTeX Tips and Tricks

I have a plain text unix tip of the day file, which you may find useful. I've also written a few LaTeX packages.

Cambridge and Nottingham Applied Maths Journals

Whilst at Cambridge I kept a list of Cambridge applied maths journals I often wish to consult, with links to online versions and details of where they're to be be found in Cambridge. This is now maintained by Dominic Vella.

I've just started doing the same at my new university. Hence the list of Nottingham applied maths and mathematical medicine journals.

The Oxford English Dictionary

The University Library kindly subscribes to the OED online, so if you're using a computer on the CUDN you can access the the dictionary for free. Just visit http://dictionary.oed.com.

If you're a member of the University, but using a computer outside Cambridge, then you won't be able to access the the site automatically via the university's subscription. To get round this, you can either tunnel your web traffic through a shell account inside Cambridge (which requires a shell account and some technical knowledge), or you can get yourself an Athens account. These give you access to various academic resources (via a user-name and password) including Web of Science (for inverse citation searches), and the OED. Members of Cambridge University should be able to get an Athens account by asking at their departmental library, or failing the, the UL.

Pine Configuration Settings

If you use Pine to read your email, there are many settings you can play with to enable advanced features, and change the behaviour of the client. Here is a list of some of the things that I've changed from my default setup (on hermes.cam.ac.uk).

user-domain: For Hermes users, this can be altered from hermes.cam.ac.uk to just cam.ac.uk to user the latter domain with your user identifier.
literal-signature: Enter a string ('\n' for a newline) to be used as a signature at the bottom of your emails.
signature-at-bottom: When replying puts your signature below the quoted text.
enable-aggregate-command-set: Allows better searching for messages in folder indexes, and allows commands to be applied to more than one message at once.
enable-bounce-cmd: Allows the use of 'B' to bounce a message to another email address. This is similar to forwarding, but (apart form some extra header lines) the message will look to the new recipient as it did when you received it - i.e. from the original sender.
enable-full-header-cmd: When selected, 'H' will toggle between the normal message view, and displaying the full text (including headers) of messages.
enable-tab-completion: Enables (Unix-like) tab completion for folder names when saving messages or changing folders using 'G'. Just type the first few characters, then press 'tab' and the rest will be completed for you!
pruning-rule=: This setting controls those annoying messages asking you if you want to move old messages into another folder each month. To turn this function off completely, set the pruning rule to 'don't rename, don't delete'.
alt-addresses: Enter a list of all the email addresses you have forwarding to this account. Then messages with one of these addresses in the 'to' field, will be marked with a '+' in the index view, and more importantly, Pine will recognise that if you're replying to all recipients, these addresses should not be included. In particular for a message sent just to one of these addresses, you will no longer be asked if you want to 'reply to all recipients'.

To make any of these changes, choose 'setup' from the Pine main menu, then hit 'C' for config. To jump to a particular setting, press 'W', then type a suitable search string and hit enter. For more information about these and other settings, Pine has an excellent online help facility. Just press '?' when you've got one of the options highlighted.

Cambridge University Library Catalogues

If you're having trouble using the new 'all-singing-all-dancing' Newton catalogue for searching for books and journals in Cambridge, then help is at hand. The old (in-house) versions of the catalogues are being maintained as backup, and are still accessible via the web, and can be found at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/Catalogues/OPAC/. The old 'union list of serials' can also be accessed from this address, though it hasn't been updated for some time.