Awesome cool software stuff things

I've been meaning to try out Qfsm for a little while now, which meant I had to install the Mac Qt libraries.

I grabbed them from the ATG page, which also has a surprisingly interesting collection of Mac Qt apps. A number of them are chemical or celestial in nature, but there's also the amazing Ipe, a PDF native drawing program that supports LaTeX text (!), HippoDraw for data visualisation, qmatplot for matrix plots, and a fascinating program called Engauge that apparently can convert an image of a graph (e.g. a scan) into raw data!

I love stumbling across this stuff! Ipe looks like a really excellent way to construct figures, particularly combined with pdflatex for document output. I must remember next time I'm putting together a paper!

Continuing in the software bent, I'm also looking with interest at darcs, and GNU arch. I currently don't have much need for revision control, but I think it's a good practice to get into (even if Xcode's support extends only to the archaic CVS).

And finally: a better way to do email address obfuscation. Awesome.

Posted at 2004-05-23 15:08:25 by Richard • Link to Awesome cool softw…
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Bad English

I took great pleasure today in reading Between You and I: a little book of bad English (£9.99, James Cochrane, 1-84046-483-6).

This is an absolutely priceless book for anyone who's interested in the English or the English language — not too big, with a smattering of social commentary, some etymology, notes on usage, quotes, good advice, and a dollop of humour. Clearly the author is frequently annoyed by the manglings of radio presenters, politicians, and journalists — quite fairly, given the examples he manages to give!

Examples:

safe haven

A haven is by definition a safe place for a ship to shelter in. An unsafe haven would be a contradiction in terms.

throes of, in the

This is how the expression should be spelt. When seen in the form “in the throws of” it should be treated with ridicule and contempt.

Worth a read if you're the kind of person who enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves, or ever dons the cap of the Grammar Police.

Posted at 2004-05-23 15:05:57 by Richard • Link to Bad English
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