If you know me at all you know that I love LaTeX. It let’s you specify the content and logical structure of your document and takes care of making it look nice, including tricky mathematical expressions, yadda yadda yadda.
One thing that LaTeX is really bad at, though, is font support. This isn’t a problem for the most part, and I’ve actually come to prefer the look of Computer Modern (the only real font ever created using Knuth’s Metafont language, and instantly recognizable to LaTeX geeks the world over). But if you need to, say, typeset something in Arial (shudder), there isn’t exactly an easy way to do it, and god forbid that you might want to use a font that’s not freely available (like, just an arbitrary example, Times New Roman).
Enter our hero, XeTeX (and it’s big sibling, XeLaTeX). XeLaTeX extends the low-level typesetting engine of TeX to use modern font/typography technology. This includes support for Unicode, and super-slick typography conventions like OpenType and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT), which allow the typesetting of scripts with complicated rules for combining symbols (like Tibetan) and different writing directions (e.g. right-to-left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew).
The really great thing about XeTeX, for my current purposes, is that it allows you to typeset almost anything using any font installed natively on your computer. That is, XeTeX essentially adds that drop-down font-selection menu that every other text editor has.
As an example, I will show you how stupid-easy it is to typeset a document in 12 pt. Times New Roman (with 1-inch edges, not that it matters)
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont[Mapping=tex-text]{Times New Roman}
Yes, folks, it really is that easy: just two lines of code (above and beyond the usual documentclass/geometry combo), and nothing whatsoever that needs to be converted using FontForge, etc. The only trick is that, instead of running latex, you run xelatex (which is easy to automate using emacs and AUCTeX).
As you can probably tell from the snippet above, the package you want to use is fontspec, which is the LaTeX interface for XeTeX’s font-specification system, and its documentation has lots of good examples.
It’s funny how a set of fenders, a tool bag, a couple of lights, and a water bottle can take a bike from almost-cool to completely dorky.
Look out for updates on living in Rochester, grad school, etc. in the near future. Or just read my tweets.
What better to do when snowed in than make thick, delicious barley soup? This recipe is from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook and is really hearty. You can use just about any vegetables you want as long as you end up with 6-7 cups—I used Kale, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peppers, and carrots.
Ingredients
- 1/2 c unhulled raw barley (rinsed and picked over)
- 7 c water
- 3 T olive oil
- 2 c chopped onions
- 1/4 t salt
- 1 1/2 c cubed white potato
- 1/2 c diced celery
- 1 c diced red or yellow bell peppers
- 1 c peeled and diced carrots
- 1 c cut green beans (1-ing pieces)
- 1 c cubed yellow or green summer squash
- 1 c chopped mushrooms
- 1/4 t dried marjoram
- 1/2 t dried thyme
- 2 T dry sherry
- 3 T barley miso (I just used regular miso)
- ground black pepper to taste
- 1/3 c chopped fresh parsley
- chopped scallions (for garnish)
Rinse the barley and boil it in 3 c of the water until it’s tender, which should be about 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours. When it’s done, drain the barley. About a half hour before it’s done, start the rest of the stuff going:
Heat the oil in your soup pot and cook the onions and salt until tender and just beginning to brown (eight-ish minutes). While the onions cook, heat the other four cups water to a simmer in another pot.
Stir all the veggies into the onions until everything’s good and covered with oil. Add the herbs and sherry and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring.
Pour the simmering water into the veggies. Mix 1/2 c of the hot water with the miso in a small bowl until you have a smooth paste, and then pour the paste into the soup pot. Add pepper to taste, cover, and simmer until the veggies are tender (about 15 minutes). Add the (drained) barley and parsley, and cook for about 5 minutes more. Top with scallions and serve.
In case you’ve been living under a rock (or, you know, don’t obsessively follow weather-related news), DC got absolutely clobbered with about two feet of snow this weekend. Well, okay, maybe more like 18″ (at National), but that’s enough to rank something like the fourth or fifth biggest snow storms in recorded history down here.
Fun fact, the last time I heard the phrase “potentially historically significant” being tossed around regarding a snow storm, they were forecasting six to eight feet. But that’s New England.
Anyway, I’ve been absolutely over the moon, what with all the shoveling and tromping around and midnight snow-biking (see below). This weather seems to bring out all the Northerners in DC, and to whip them into a little bit of a giddy frenzy. You can identify them by their goofy grins and non-beleaguered looks, or, you know, by the fact that they’re jogging down 13th St carrying a pair of cross-country skis (and exclaiming “good choice” over the six-pack of Bell’s you’re carrying). My downstairs neighbor (an Alaskan) and I bonded over how much we love shoveling out our three-house-long stretch sidewalk for our building (which he did in December, when we got 16″).
I do have to admit, DC weather is pretty nice. Right now it’s spring, as far as I can tell: the sun is warm, temperatures hover around freezing, and there are occasional snow storms. I’ve even started to see robins here and there. Having an actual spring (instead of the muddy mess that passes for spring in New England) will be great, too.
But nothing compares to getting absolutely walloped by a couple of feet of snow and all of the shoveling, trudging (biking?) fun that ensues. Part of the fun is undeniably seeing the absolute panic that this weather sends people from less snowy climates into. There are literally runs on the supermarkets around here at the threat of snow, with people—I shit you not—buying up toilet paper, milk, and canned food. As one Wisconsonite on NPR put it, this kind of weather brings out the survivalist tenancies in people who don’t have to deal with it on a regular basis, which is pretty entertaining for people who know that life will go on, a little messier and a little more fun.
Last night I went snow-biking. I finally got my hands on the requisite tools to crack open the bottom bracket on my fixie and get it cleaned out, repacked, and beautifully adjusted. I was anxious to take it out for a spin, and was feeling undeterred by the late hour and the two feet of snow on the roads. Hard-packed snow—courtesy of the lack of plowing and stubborn DC drivers—is actually pretty good riding—not too slippery, no slushy sliding around, not too rough when it’s fresh—and riding a fixie in the snow is quite nice, since you can feel exactly how much traction you have at any given moment, and adjust your speed intuitively.
I cruised down Georgia Ave/7th St NW, soaking up the snowed-in-Saturday-night Chinatown scene, and then rolled down to the mall to gawk at the empty streets, snowy trees, and impressive obelisks. By the time I made it to the Lincoln Memorial I was pretty cold and my mittens had actually frozen, being still wet from the afternoon’s shoveling extravaganza. On the way home I got stuck behind a convoy of snow plows (one usually does the trick, guys), got stuck in too-much-snow on Vermont Ave, and got stuck behind homeward bound revelers on U St. All in all, an absolutely fantastic night.
Biking today was slightly less pleasant but still awesome. A little bit of sun, a little bit of traffic, and a lot of salt produced a bumpy, slushy, slippery mess on Georgia Ave, but I was out of coffee and determined to make it to Qualia. A couple of cops in an SUV asked me if I had snow tires “on that thing” after seeing me plowing through a pile of slushy snow. Had I been thinking a little more quickly I might have made a crack about only having one-wheel-drive, which I guess is all you really need.
This isn’t about Washington, per se. What it is is a non-exhaustive list of things that I love that I’ve discovered or re-discovered (etc.) since moving here. Consider it a sort of belated New Year’s retrospective/thank-you.
- Learning. In particular, language, sounds, and computers. Also, brains.
- Bikes, especially my fixie, now that I am finally strong enough to ride it.
- Biking. Note that loving biking is actually different from loving your bike, although they are of course related. Being able to hop on my bike and get to work, or get coffee, or go to the store, or go anywhere, really, is quite exciting.
- Public transit. Because, let’s face it, sometimes the weather is shitty, and sometimes there is awesome people-watching to be done on the 90/92.
- Ruth.
- A good, sharp knife.
- Beer, wine, coffee, food.
- Having more than one place to go for all of the above.
- Having people to do all of these things with.
- Live music.
- A medium-sized city. At least this one, anyway. Especially when they have both Civil War-era row-houses and all of the, you know, things that come with being the national capitol.
That is to say, I’m having a great time in DC, and this whole “being a Real Person” thing has worked out a lot better and a lot more easily than I could have hoped.
A couple of firsts today: the first real, rainy test of my fenders reveals that they do indeed keep the water off of you, as advertised. They do not, however, appear to magically ward off flats, resulting in my first flat as a Bicycle Commuter. The aforementioned tire event occurred in the middle of the fucking woods, but at least now I live in a place with public transportation, unlike that time in Indiana with the big rusty nail.
Things worked out okay in the end. I made home in no time, thanks to the apathy of the West Hyattsville Metro station employees who, mercifully, didn’t say anything as I slunk through the turnstiles a full hour into the evening rush hour bike-free block. City Bikes, where I went to get a tube and fix my flat (having forgotten my pump at home), was playing an all-The Mountain Goats playlist, and to my immense delight I discovered that there is a Safeway right across the street.
There I purchased the makings of mac ‘n cheese, which I am now eating (yes,right now) accompanied by delicious, delicious Dogfish Head Chicory Stout, which cost fully four dollars less than I anticipated at D’vines. So, all in all, not a bad end to the day.
I think that now, dear reader, you may have some idea of how thoroughly domestic my life has become. I apologize for once again dropping off the face of the blogo-earth, but I suspect that there is a limit to how many times one can be entertained by descriptions of someone else’s bikes, food, and beer du jour. Alas for you, these (along with Important People In My Life and some Big Things that I’m not quite ready to blather on about in so public a forum) are the things that occupy me lately, so that’s what you’re going to get, at least until I man up and talk about science or grad school or stuff.
Oh, one more thing: GHOSTFACE BUDDHA IS ABSOLUTELY MANDATORY READING.
(Link to photo, by The Gelman Library on flickr)
From this morning’s Post, a delightfully breathless story about how cold it was this weekend:
Many Washingtonians exulted in a sunny Saturday, but their delight came on a day that could also be described as the coldest since March.
…
But about eight hours earlier, the mercury had dipped to 35 degrees. It had not fallen so low since March 25, when it was 34. The 35-degree reading was seven degrees below normal and eight degrees above the record for the date, 27 degrees, which was set in 1930.
While I do enjoy a good chilly New England fall day as much as anyone, I also enjoy that reasonably temperate (aka bikeable) weather like this lasts until the middle of November, and I’m especially stoked for spring, which from what I’ve heard is actually a Real Season here, not some godforsaken mud/snow/rain event that happens sometime between April and June.
There are more concrete benefits, too. The combination of temperate weather and our row house apartment which has all of two dozen feet of walls exposed to the outside air also means that we haven’t had the heat or AC on for a couple of months and are basically paying nothing in utilities. Win all around.
The downside, of course, of the mercury never dipping below freezing for fully half of the year, is that there will be very little real, snowy winter weather. You can’t have everything weather-wise, I suppose, so I’ll just have to wait until the holidays to get a dose of Maine winter.
This is mostly for my darling sister, but these are so delicious that everyone should try them. The recipe is from An Invitation to Indian Cooking by Madhur Jaffrey, which is full of delicious, delicious Delhi-area food that can be made with stuff readily available in the supermarket (for the most part). My favorite part of the book is the section on Dals, where there are a million variations on spiced legumes. The basic pattern is always the same though, and the recipes fall into three parts: cook the dal with some seasonings until its tender, then add the delicate stuff, and finally “give a tarka” of whole spices (or onions or ginger or anything, really) toasted briefly in hot oil.
This recipe (for brown lentils like you buy at the supermarket) has you first cook the lentils with cinnamon, bay leaf, garlic, ginger, and turmeric, then add lemon for a little bit, and finally add the tarka of whole cumin seeds. See the full recipe after the jump.
This dispatch comes to you in the midst of the ceremonial first procrastination of the new academic year, since I am responsible for presenting a paper at tomorrow morning’s lab meeting and have put off making slides for about as long as possible. Even though the slides aren’t done yet, I did bake some de-abso-fucking-lutely-licious sweet and savory cookies (thanks, Mark Bittman!)
- Preheat the oven to 375 F.
- Combine 2 c flour, 1 t baking powder, a pinch of salt, 1 t minced fresh rosemary (or 1/2 t dried), and 1/4 t freshly ground black pepper in a bowl.
- Cream 1/2 c sugar together with one stick of softened butter with a fork, and beat until nice and fluffy.
- Add half the dry ingredients to the sugar and butter mixture, and beat for about a minute.
- Add 1/4 c red wine, and beat for about 10 seconds (just long enough to combine).
- Add the rest of the dry ingredients, and stir, only as much as necessary to make a soft dough that holds together reasonably well (you may need to add a bit more wine to get it wet enough).
- Bake for 10-ish minutes, until just starting to brown. Let ‘em cool for about 2 minutes on the sheet, and then move them to a cooling rack and dust with confectioners sugar.
Let me tell you: these things are delicious. They are, as advertised, both sweet and savory, and now I’m not even upset that there is no chocolate in my apartment and it is way too late to go to the store.
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