Beyond the Misty Mountains

Posts Tagged ‘Open Source’

So back when I was still in college I went hunting around the internet for a OpenOffice.org resume template. I eventually found one that I liked and started using it for my resume. Fast forward 4 years and I was still using this same template. Now I liked the look of this template but I always hated editing it. It was full of tables and different formatting, the template was originally for OpenOffice 1 and 3 is the current version. Needless to say I never really updated it unless I had to and even then only like a word here and there.

That’s when I discovered LaTeX. Well not really discovered, I’ve known about LaTeX for awhile, just have never looked at doing anything with it. But one day I was surfing the internet and came across a LaTeX resume class file. I loved the look of it and figured if I could get it to work it would be so much nicer than the OpenOffice file.

Lets take a step back for a sec so I can explain what LaTeX is for those who don’t know. LaTeX is an extension of the TeX document markup and typesetting program. Basically you write up a document in plain text with some extra LaTeX markup that describes the documents look. This allows you to focus more on the content of your document while LaTeX handles the typesetting. You can then generate the final look using that plain text. Usually creating a PDF. LaTeX is used most by mathematicians and scientists for writing formulas and by book writers. Here’s an example taken from wikipedia.

Here’s the LaTeX markup:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\title{\LaTeX}
\date{}
\begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \LaTeX{} is a document preparation system for the \TeX{}
  typesetting program. It offers programmable desktop publishing
  features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of
  typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and
  cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout, bibliographies,
  and much more. \LaTeX{} was originally written in 1984 by Leslie
  Lamport and has become the dominant method for using \TeX; few
  people write in plain \TeX{} anymore. The current version is
  \LaTeXe.

  % This is a comment, it is not shown in the final output.
  % The following shows a little of the typesetting power of LaTeX
  \begin{align}
    E &= mc^2                              \\
    m &= \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}
  \end{align}
\end{document}

This generates to look like this:

Pretty sweet. That’s something I can get on board with, writing the document in plain text and then generating the final look. So much easier than fighting a word processor to attempt to get what I want. So I downloaded the class file and set out trying to figure out the LaTeX markup. Now as you can see from the example above the markup can be a little confusing at first. Starting out I mostly just copied the markup from the example from the class file, using the LaTeX book on wikibooks to look thing up as I came to them. After this I found The Not So Short Introduction To LaTeX, a relatively short (about 125 page) free ebook. Highly recommended.

So now I have my resume as a plain text file, that is under version control using git. This makes it much easier to go in and make changes whenever I want without having to worry. If I change something that I later don’t like I can just look at the history. Then after I’m done making my changes all I have to do is a “pdflatex resume.tex” to generate a pdf copy to look at. Also because LaTeX is a typesetting system the final output looks amazing.

So there you have it, my conversion to LaTex. Unfortionately the only thing I’ve used it for so far is my resume. It’s too bad I wasn’t enlightened when I was still in college, I would have written every paper in it. So now I keep thinking about what I could use it for. I recently discovered Beamer, a LaTeX class for creating presentations. Tho I don’t usually create slides for my presentations. Maybe I should write a book….

So here we are at the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference. I’ve been excited for this over the past few weeks. Got some really nice swag. Got a nice new messenger bag, several t-shirts, a cool little penguin, and other small things. Presentations were been good. Hit up a python one to begin with. Learned some nice beginner python stuff. Then went to a wordpress performance one. Joseph Scott did a good job presenting ideas to speed up a wordpress site. I then went to a SSH Tips and Tricks presentation. Learned some cool stuff about secure tunnels. After that I got roped into the Guru Labs Trouble Shooting Challenge. Only managed to figure out 2 of the 6 questions. Still glad I didn’t go down the sysadmin route. The first day ended with keynotes by Mac Newbold of Code Greene and Paul Frields of Fedora. Mac talked about the benefits of using open source in a business. Paul talked about the Fedora community.

Day 2 started with Chad and I missing the first round of presentations, cause neither of us can get up that early. The first presentation I made it to was Linux Media, Security and Automation which was an interesting talk about setting up your house with security cameras and motion sensors and light dimmers, all controlled by Linux. Unfortunately I thought he spent too much time talking about the costs and the interoperability of the different items, than talking about the hardware and how to set it up and stuff. Next I went to HOWTO: Start an open-source radio station presented by Michael Place of utah.fm. This was a cool talk about what it takes to create an online radio station. It was a surprisingly relatively inexpensive project.

There was then a lunch break followed by that days keynotes. Friday’s keynotes were by Michael Place and Joe Brockmeier. Michael Place is the author of Schlock Mercenary and talked about how he’s making money off of a free comic. He was a great presenter and I’m going to have to add Schlock Mercenary to my reading list. Joe Brockmeier is the project manager for openSUSE and talked about where openSUSE is today and where its going.

Things at the conference got a little out of whack after the keynotes and presentations ended up getting pushed back or something so I spent the next presentation slot hanging out in the exhibiters hall talking to people like mindjuju, fungus, and John Taber. Next I went to the Vim and Python presentation which the presenter didn’t show up for so Kevin Kubasik tried to fill in and was able to talk a little bit about vim but unfortunately I didn’t learn anything new.

After the presentation there was a geek dinner over at Tucanos in The Gateway. There were like 50 some odd geeks and geekettes there. The food was great and the conversations with all the other geeks were interesting. UTOS payed for Brazilian Lemonades for everyone, which were delicious. After the dinner Erik and I managed to catch the last train of the night.

Saturday I started off the day with an Ubuntu keynote. Christer Edwards talked about using Ubuntu in the enterprise. Next up I went to a presentation by Kevin Kubasik on Writing Web Crawlers. The way he was doing web crawlers was quite advanced and way better than the way I used to do it. Then I went to Tools for Video and Images which talked about the various programs for dealing with images and video on Linux. After this we had lunch provided by The Smokehouse.

After lunch there wasn’t any particular presentation that I was intent on going to see and I was quite tired so I called it quits. I went home and promptly crashed on the couch for about 3 hours.

Overall I had a great time at UTOSC this year. Got some nice swag. Learned some new things. I’m looking forward to next years.