B.Sc. Thesis Almost Finished!

During the last couple of weeks, I've been busy working on my B.Sc. thesis in economics. After some initial hesitation I wrote the thesis using a text only Debian system on my iBook. I first planned to write the thesis using Google Docs which I could have used in the several locations I divided my time during the working week.

After some experimentation with Google Docs I finally took the bull by the horns and decided to write the paper using the tools installed in my Debian laptop. For writing the paper, I used Emacs with AUCTeX using the longlines-mode. I typeset it using LaTeX and KOMA script. Unfortunately, I still have some problems with the bibliography style defined by my school. I just can't figure out e.g. how to remove the full stop after year in the bibliography provided by chicago.bst.

I just hope I'll get the bibliography style fixed as soon as possible. If I succeed in hacking the .bst file there will be no reason not to write my M.Sc. thesis with this combination of very stable software. Of course, there remains the possibility of exporting the paper to rtf, format it with the official Word style provided by the school and format the bibliography by hand.

But being so close to finishing the thesis I would rather not cheat like that...

My Emacs configuration

I'm by no means an expert in using Emacs, but it has been my favorite editor for some time if I need to write anything more than a short note or a simple one-line script. Unfortunately, I will probably never have time to learn Lisp, which means I'll never be able to write my own functions or modify the existing modes or functions written for the Emacs. Luckily, with some googling one can usually find a ready solution for just about any problem one encounters using Emacs.

The following code contains some of the tweaks I have added to the configuration of Emacs on most of my boxes. Just copy and paste the code (or parts of it) to ~./emacs. If you don't have .emacs file in your home directory, you can create it with any editor you like (you might even like to use vi for the task!). In openSUSE the tweaks can also be included in ~/.gnu-emacs-custom.

Please suggest some more tweaks in the comment box!


;; == disable splash screen & toolbar to save screen space ==
(setq inhibit-splash-screen t)
(tool-bar-mode -1)

;; == disable menu bar as well ==
;; (menu-bar-mode -1)

;; == use text mode as default mode and use longlines-mode with text files ==
(setq default-major-mode 'text-mode)
(add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'longlines-mode)

;;; == use org-mode for .org files ==
(add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/git/org-mode/lisp"))
(add-to-list 'auto-mode-alist '("\\.\\(org\\)$" . org-mode))
(require 'org-install)

;; == enable mouse wheel ==
(mouse-wheel-mode t)

;; == save backup files in ~/.emacs-backups
(setq make-backup-files t)
(setq version-control t)
(setq backup-directory-alist (quote ((".*" . "~/.emacs-backups/"))))

;; === pretty colors on blackground ==
(set-background-color "black")
(set-foreground-color "green")
(set-cursor-color "yellow")

;;== count words with Esc x wc
(defun wc ()
(interactive)
(message "Word count: %s" (how-many "\\w+" (point-min) (point-max))))


Play Tetris in Emacs!

One finds every now and then something surprising in any installed Linux system. For several years I have known that with Emacs one can do just about everything one really needs to do with a computer. Well, at least if you don't want to edit video clips or compose music with it.

Today I realized that it is possible to play Tetris using the XEmacs of my Debian box. Just type ESC x tetris and you are ready to forget coding or writing your next article for the top journal of your field!