Problem: The world has gone to the dogs and I can’t lay my hands on the Granta Diary for this year.
Briefly: Create my own, in LaTeX.
Solution: Life trained me to be a planning freak, and Granta gave me a diary that I could actually use. In this space I’ll put down the next installment of the glorious customized LaTeX journal that evolved from my calendars.
Problem When do I give up on a problem to seek an alternative solution, or a new problem? For example, I spent two days thinking through a math problem. A week or so for an information theory problem. A few weeks at a programming puzzle. A few years at my research topic. The sheer exultation at a solution makes it pointless to account for the time invested, but it needs to be subjected to kaizen. When should a light go off demanding a system reset?
Opinion A problem is solved. Persist at it. An error needs to be eliminated. Spotting the difference is challenging, and some questions that may help are:
Problem I run MATLAB as “matlab -nodesktop -nojvm” inside an xterm which is minimalist and SO RAD! but doesn’t wrap lines while line-editing, no matter what I set TERM to. What can I do?
Solution I can vouch for line-editing working properly in MATLAB inside aterm, so use it. (It supports transparent backgrounds — and you got it — you can randomize the hue to get a new colored aterm every time you run it!)
There’s an obscure problem with the configuration I am running: every now and then, when I copy MATLAB code from vim (in an aterm window) into a MATLAB session (inside another aterm), carriage returns disappear from end of lines. It seems to be an aterm (or vim or screen) bug, and the solution is to simply refresh the window (ctrl+R in the command mode if you’re working with vim).
Olivia Judson’s post about asexually reproducing animals suggests that sexual reproduction leads to more robust evolution because the genetic permutations introduced are not entirely random. This shifts the balance toward vitality in the vitality-creativity tradeoff: less random permutations i.e. less creativity but robust characteristics are reinforced. Two thoughts –