New Times Reader

I just installed the new Times Reader on my Mac, and it seems to work very nicely. This blog post discusses many of the improvements. For text layout, it uses a new framework implemented on Adobe AIR. Of course, the downside is you have to pay to get the full product; for free, reading the Times on the web with my multi-column Greasemonkey script is a decent substitute :-).

NYMag Top Chef Posts

For those Top Chef fans out there, I created a Yahoo! pipe that has the New York Magazine Grub Street posts on the show: here you go.

Exporting Powerpoint Figures to Latex on Mac

I wanted to quickly write down how to export Powerpoint figures to use within pdflatex on Mac OS X, since a quick Googling didn't turn up a straightforward explanation:

1. Ensure the figure is on its own slide.
2. Print the slide to a PDF.
3. Open the PDF in Skim.
4. Do Tools -> Select Tool.
5. Select the figure and adjust the borders of the selection appropriately.
6. Do Tools -> Crop Page.
7. Do File -> Export..., pick a file name, and choose "PDF with Embedded Notes" as the file format.
8. Include the resulting file in the Latex document, e.g., using graphicx.

The Office has jumped the shark

I found the first four episodes of this season of The Office to be distinctly worse than the best episodes of past seasons. The show is getting too weighed down by several long-running plot lines, none of which are interesting dramatically. (Jim and Pam's story was never interesting, and neither was the equivalent plot in the British Office.) Hopefully this is just a bad streak, but I think it's more likely that the show has just jumped the shark.

Updated version of Multi-column articles

I've updated my multi-column articles Greasemonkey script to coincide with the release of Firefox 3. The coolest new feature is automatic hyphenation (only works in Firefox 3), accomplished via the awesome hyphenator script. In my experience, automatic hyphenation sometimes provides a significant improvement in readability. Also, support for many more sites has been added in the last few releases, along with other bug fixes. If you installed my script a while ago, it's a good time to update (which requires uninstalling the script and then installing the new version; not sure how to do better).

Professor of Conservative Thought at CU

Take a listen to this interview with University of Colorado chancellor Bud Peterson regarding his effort to create an endowed chair for a Professor of Conservative Thought at the university (and read this article for background). I find it extremely disappointing that a university chancellor would make such inane arguments about the need for such a position, e.g., that the current faculty don't have sufficient expertise to teach the relevant topics. If this is really about plugging a hole in faculty expertise, why even bring up the so-called "liberal bias" in the personal political views of CU faculty? Absolutely infuriating. Rice and Keats has more.

David Simon speaks

David Simon answers some questions about the fifth season of The Wire. I think he has some great responses to the bigger criticisms of this season that have been circulating around. Can't believe there are only a couple episodes left...