Handling references and bibliographic information is an essential part of all research. If you are writing just one article or just your diploma thesis maybe you don't need to use this kind of software because you will not have a lot of references. BUT, if you are writing A LOT of articles, reports, master/diploma/phd thesis then you definitevely will need a good software to manage your bibliographic database.

Here is how a bibliographic manager works. An author creates a document and cites his document with entries form a bibliographic database created earlier. After the author completed writing the paper he passes the document and the database through some application and the application incorporates all the references cited in the document from the database. This produces a final version of the document containing the text, graphics, etc. the author created along with the references he cited in a specific format.

I will not try here a comparison of free and non-free software available, just I would like to point some interesting links which I found when I started to use bibliographic management software. So here are the links:

• Reference management software from Wikipedia
• A comparison of management software
• Comparison of free bibliographic managers
• Finding the right bibliographic/reference tool
• Bibliography Management Software with a Detailed Analysis of Some Packages
• Evaluation of Reference Management Software (comparing Papyrus with ProCite, Reference Manager, Endnote, Citation, GetARef, Biblioscape, Library Master, Bibliographica, Scribe, Refs

I hope that the above links will be useful.

What do I prefer? I am using LaTeX for everything (presentations, posters, reports, letters, ... ) and BibTeX, so I need something which can use plain bibtex file. I am searching and download references from ISI Web of Knowledge. The naming convention for citation key (for the bib-keywords) which I am using (thanks to my supervisor for the suggestion) is the following:

• One author: First four letters AND last two digits of publication year (Prot08)
• Two authors: First two letters of both authors AND last two digits of publication year (TePr05)
• Three or four authors: First letter of each author AND last two digits of publication year (TRPS07)
• More than four authors: First four letters of first author AND last two digits of publication year
• If a key already exists: the next entries get a small letter behind the publication year, starting with b. (RoTe07b, RoTe07c)

I've been using KBibTex and KBib for a while now since I use linux. For me it's quite useful because it has a simple, no bloat GUI that does one thing - let's you add and maintain references. The minor point here is that they are available just for linux/bsd. Now, I played in the last weeks with Jabref (it is writen in Java and it can run on every platform: bsd/linux/mac/win). I still didn't find how to use it in order to search in ISI Web of Knowledge, but I thing I will change to it anyway, to have the same software on all platforms.

That's all and good luck in managing your bibliographic database.

I am using LaTeX (started with LaTeX 2.09, followed by LaTeX 3e) for everything technical and scientific (reports, articles, master/diploma thesis, presentations - yes, I am preparing my presentation with it, posters, letters, ..). In the last year I changed to pdfTeX in order to obtain directly pdf file output without intermediate steps like dvi and ps, and to replace eps files from my computer with pdf files. For Windows I am using MiKTeX with TeXnicCenter which is a great editor.

Of course that I need to include animations in my presentations (for example some simulations movies). I use all the time .avi files so here are just two methods to include them in pdf.

I saw that a lot of people included as well swf, mpeg, wmv, mpg, but in my case doesn't work with the second method, avi worked in both cases. Adobe Acrobat Reader (version 8.1.0) doesn't want to play this kind of movies (file unsuported). I couldn't include gif file. So, here are the methods:

• using "movie15" package:

    %include the package
    \usepackage{movie15}
    ....
    ....
    Click bellow to start the movie:\  
    % we can use also: mpeg wmv mpg swf
    \includemovie[poster]{5cm}{5cm}{movie.avi}

• using "multimedia" package:

    %include the packages
    \usepackage{multimedia}
    \usepackage{hyperref}
    ....
    ....
    Click bellow to start the movie:\  
    \movie[height=5cm,width=5cm,loop]{}{movie.avi}

If you know how to include gif in pdf files and to work in Acroread on Linux, then, please let me know.

Also this year I’ll attend the Linux day (a day dedicated to Gnu/Linux  and FLOSS that occurs every year in Italy) organized by my LUG. Guess what I’ll be talking about… ;)

While organizing the event somebody proposed to setup a local server with some music released under CC license. He suggested to download some albums from Jamendo (due to network issues we won’t be able to provide direct access to the website).

Since nobody wanted to download the albums by hand, last night I wrote a small ruby program that does the dirty job.

Requirements:

Ruby and json gem have to be installed on you machine.

Usage:

Help:[](http://www.flavio.castelli.name/wp- content/uploads/2008/10/jamendo_downloader.rb)

./jamendo_downloader.rb –help

Download the top 10 rock albums:

./jamendo_downloader.rb -g rock -t 10

Have fun

I think there’s nothing more to say… enjoy it!

{% gist 2437530 jamendo_downloader.rb %}

• Use a different color, like "Selected"?


• Only change the text color on hover?


• Both?

In my previous post I discussed how to call Gnuplot from C and Python language. If you are using Perl, then, here is the script:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    # Generate postscript and png plot with GNUplot from Perl
    # Author: Ioan Vancea
    # Usage: Give "data file" as an argument for script

    use strict;
    use warnings;

    my $file = ARGV[0];

    # POSTSCRIPT
    open (GNUPLOT, "|gnuplot");
    print GNUPLOT <

If you are doing a lot of calculations/simulations, like me, using C or/and Python language, you also need to visualize your simulated data. One way to do it is just to generate/write a "data" file and plot it with your plotting preferred package after the simulation is finished. But maybe, sometimes, you want to see the graph in real time, so, here I would like to show a small C and Python program which calls Gnuplot and save the plot in png format.

C Example:

#include
/*
    Author: Ioan Vancea (www.vioan.eu)
    *****************************/
int main()
{
    FILE *pipe = popen("gnuplot -persist","w");
    fprintf(pipe, "set samples 40\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set isosamples 40\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set hidden3d\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set xrange [-8.000:8.000]\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set yrange [-8.000:8.000]\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set zrange [-2.000:2.000]\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set terminal png\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set output 'graph.png'\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set title 'We are plotting from C'\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set xlabel 'Label X'\n");
    fprintf(pipe, "set ylabel 'Label Y'\n");
    /* fprintf(pipe, "plot 'datafile.dat' using 1:2\n");*/
    fprintf(pipe, "splot cos(x)+cos(y)\n");

  close(pipe);
  return 0;
}

The output:

Python Example (I use Gnuplot.py):

#!/usr/bin/env python

'''
    Author: Ioan Vancea (www.vioan.eu)
'''

import math
import Gnuplot
gp = Gnuplot.Gnuplot(persist=1)
x = range(1000)
y = [math.sin(a) + math.cos(a) + math.tan(a) for a in x]
data = Gnuplot.Data(x, y, title='Plotting from Python')
gp('set data style lines')
gp('set xlabel "Label x"')
gp('set ylabel "Label y"')
gp.plot(data);
gp.hardcopy(filename="pyplot.png",terminal="png")

The output:

I probably could make here the longest title just naming everything we have so far as designation for the job

So what is it about?

We want to have an official program to support local communities better. We already have some strong supporters which are doing an awesome job, now we need more of them. You might think of fedora ambassador or Ubuntu LoCo, but for a unique project like openSUSE we also should have a unique name. But of course it’s not all about the name, i posted yesterday a draft with more details and some open questions. We think that this program will help the project, and the people who are doing the job (without a name right now ), a lot.

Join the discussion at openSUSE-marketing!

Ladies and Gents!

Glad to announce the update of unofficial Enlightenment LiveCD based on OpenSUSE-11.0.

Download page
‘Welcome’ notes (PDF)

Please visit the download page to see the details and try the mirror provided by Yandex.ru – a leading Russian internet and technology company. We’ve got this mirror in September’08 because our server was loaded ‘over the top’. Please, read the Welcome.pdf before you pop the disk into the PC/Qemu/etc.

Here’s some download statistics data excluding the mirror and excluding the torrents:

The data is slightly rounded/diminished, but tiny 50k from a single server is the result no one expected. Thank you very much!

All components of this LiveCD are available for the ordinary openSUSE Users. Some of our improvements/modifications are outlined in the ‘Welcome.pdf’. We’re cooking now the simple package to make the Enlightenment LiveCD with a ‘single click’. Anyone could install that package, read instructions, add the drivers/packages/components we had missed and “pull the trigger”. It means that you can add there the beloved NVIDIA drivers, remove OpenOffice, add more themes, wallpapers, games etc.

The brief changelog comparing to the old ‘release’:

• create_xconf service is modified and used instead of ‘traditional’ xdm to launch the GUI. If you decide to install the system to the disk – create_xconf will also help you there. A simple check of your video card/cards is added and ‘Sax2’ will be started on boot if your saved hardware configuration is altered (should we check the Monitor+Video Card configuration? should we modify the xdm service for better compatibility/integration?).
• fonts are displayed with 96.0 ‘standard’ DPI despite on selected/chosen screen resolutions. It’s easy to change this value if 66.0 DPI or 130.0 DPI is your favorite Xft setup but… 96.0 is the value which is used mostly .
• Enlightenment OBS repositories for openSUSE 10.2-11.0/Factory are updated to the current state. E-svn snapshot date is 20080924.
• custom kernel from Jan Engelhardt repository replaced the default one. Thanks!
• OpenOffice suite now uses the default/selected gtk-2.0 theme to display interface elements.
• Tk package is removed and aria2c lost the tk gui. BitTorrent client is added. Anyway aria2c is best when used in CLI.
• English thesaurus is removed from OpenOffice suite along with OpenOffice-Base. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
• 23Oz theme for E17 and ETK is updated. Glowing scrollbars and sliders – useless feature but looks nice.
• sources of ATI fglrx drivers (without precompiled kernel module) are added, instruction for those who is not happy with radeon/ati opensource drivers are on the page 4 of Welcome.pdf
• several .desktop files are improved (thanks to the Ariszló)
• option to select the default login manager on first boot (‘Entrance‘ or ‘gdm‘) is added (though only ‘entrance’ works here).
• a lot of components are added to provide better support of various equipment ‘out-from-the-box’ (like webcams, eeepc and so on)
• other miscellaneous fixes and updates…

We will be glad to receive your feedback.

Acknowledgments:

Enlightenment Development Team and Enlightenment Community
OpenSUSE Build Service Team
OpenSUSE KIWI Team (schaefi, cyberorg, pzb, cgoncalves – THANKS!)
Stalwart, thanks for the hosting!
Packman Team
Novell
Jan Engelhardt
and all the others, who helped to make it (Engineers, Developers, Users, Maintainers…)

Thanks!

Regards,
SOAD team

… to change a flat tire?

The answer: 3

It’s been a while since the 3 oS Members from Nicaragua were planning to take a picture together, but for time, job and other complications we have been unable to do it.

But yesterday, caused perhaps for a bug in our kernels, the 3 of us gathered together outside Alex’s ex-office, after retrieving some promotional material from Novell at Alex’s place.

We started to talk about one of the Projects for Nicaragua and forgot completely about the picture. Moments laters and got into my car and DANG!, noticed the flat tire. Alex and Decks came and helped me to empty my car’s trunk when I noticed my camera. A bell rang inside my head and CLICK! A picture came out.

Not exactly the situation and posse we were thinking about… but it worked. :p