the leto chronicles

As root type:
cd /usr/ports/textproc/ispell; make install clean

Then use
ispell -t my_badly_speld_thesis.tex

And it will even spellcheck your LaTeX comments! Why not add the vim commands:
map ,st :w!<CR>:! ispell -t % <CR>
map! ,st <ESC>:w!<CR>:! ispell -t % <CR>
so that you don’t even have to shell out to spellcheck ? Now you can spellcheck the current document in LaTeX mode by typing “,st” in command mode in vim. Zang!

Don’t get demoralized when BibTex gives you trouble. If you’re references need to be ordered by when they are first cited, not alphabetically, then use the unsrt BibTex style.

% ref numbers in order of appearance
\bibliographystyle{unsrt}

You may need to search for a file called unsrt.bst on your filesystem and put it in the same directory as your LaTex file.

For a great introduction to bibliography styles I suggest
this FAQ.

To view of a bunch of bibliography styles on one page check out
BibTeX Style Examples and for general tips and guidelines for writing bibliographies in LaTex, this is a good starting point as well.

I just used minicpan to install a mirror of the latest perl modules on CPAN onto my laptop, it ’s an oldie but goodie .

As simple as
minicpan -r http://www.cpan.org -l /usr/minicpan
on the command line to start the mirror process and type these commands in your CPAN shell
to use the local minicpan:
o conf urllist unshift file:///usr/minicpan
o conf commit
reload index
Yes, that is three forward slashes, the first two are for the “file” protocol, because CPAN is expecting a URL.

Sweet.

How much space you ask?
# du -sh /usr/minicpan/
738M /usr/minicpan/
This is perfect for mobile offgrid perl hackathons and easily fits on a thumbdrive. What more could you want?

PS: Create a one line bash script with the same minicpan command and put it in your /etc/daily.local or /etc/weekly.local directories on FreeBSD to have it automatically updated. Minicpan only pulls down changes, so I have it updated daily. Happy hacking.

Here are some links to all the projects that I work on which I am switching over to subversion:

I finally got my Qwest DSL light to go solid green, after 11 days of maddening blinking green. A really hardworking Network Technician climbed up the pole and sent a high voltage through the line to clear out corrosion. It seems to max out at 0.5 Mb down instead of 1.5 Mb, but as my old math professor used to say “Something is better than nothing.”