Sunday, August 10, 2008

Fact: svn server version

Fact: It is not possible for a client to get the server version number in Subversion.

It took me awhile to find the answer to this because googling for
"subversion version server" is not terribly helpful, considering subversion
is version control software.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Mathematica Undo

Mathematica is generally a good program. The programming language may be primitive, but the symbolic and graphics functionality are excellent. However, I just can't believe that it only has one level of undo. I just lost 20 minutes of work because of this. If you must use Mathematica notebooks as opposed to text edited files, save often!

Thursday, August 07, 2008

*nix command of the day: texdoc

texdoc looks up tex documentation, e.g.

texdoc amsthdoc

opens a pdf of the documentation for the AMS theomem package.

Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Quote

“Every kid is always talking about what his parents have been through, and no kid has any clue what he’s talking about.” - Charles Rangel

1984

I'm reading George Orwell's novel "1984". It occurred to me
yesterday that, while it adds critically to his message, and mirrors
both the Soviet and Chinese postwar situations, the emphasis on the
scarcity of goods is almost counterproductive to his aims. It seems
to me that the message would be more poignant if there was plentiful
food and goods. For it is to an authoritarian plenty, rather than the
poverty of 1984, where countries like China are heading in the era
of globalization. It is this model that will compete with liberal
democracy in the coming years. Nicholas Kristof's "China Wakes"
describes some of 1984's horrors in modern China.

Update:
Now that I've read further, it seems the story wouldn't work
if there were plentiful goods. I'm finding it hard to take this book
seriously. Animal Farm is a much better satire.