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Category: web

bib2html

Published April 16, 2008 by lievenlb

One computer and one system-upgrade ago, I tried to convince people to set up their own MOPP (My Online Publications Page).

The essence of such pages is that they need an update, once in a while… I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but, I failed to re-install the package, following my own instructions.

Fortunately, there are plenty of good alternatives around, today. After playing a bit with bibtex2html, Ive settled for the bib2html perl script by Patrick Riley.

Included are well documented directions. The most important being that you have to do a

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/perl5 (( thank you Rupert, via the comments ))

and change the user-specific entries in the bib2html.conf configuration file (if you have already key.pdf files around, you can just drop them in the output-directory and set . as the paperfiledirlist, and they will be found and linked to automatically. If not, you can always include links in the bib-file). Further, if you want to link to web-pages of your coauthors, remember that the script expects you to use : LastName, FirstName | http://webpage even if you used a different convention in your bib-file.

The result can be seen here. For ebook-download-junks : Ive included again full PDF-files of all versions of my book (starting with version 1 from 1999 to the final published version of last year). They can best be found using the sort-by-type page.

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Decryptable, only on fridays

Published February 29, 2008 by lievenlb

The mini-post Bill Gates’ favourite prime number, encrypted below, can only be read on a friday. Here’s why.

[BEGIN URLCRYPT decode at lce.xamai.ca/urlcrypt.php]

cScSYXdhkQUWRwVOMHzMMFdHwVdCU3VU5LcSNgXc
1VB2plVn7jPqxmJD51UWFETGVWUTR2XNNmH89EBH
M3EYxUAKcxOPoEVwcjJgUCGX4Bdd0xTkAFW2YVGi
YoEqs1FulUWaZRQCalJRd0Ix0iNq4BnAdERckxfE
VEMYpRGwM1MUIlJSN0Sd2VVXETUdFTZwUDq6IEVe
Z1EZFDFVlUIDx0Y+ZRYXQyWCREGWs0RIVzPItGGh
MDLSZFEXZFWqAWXFpSVUN2VjU1R4FGVCdlFdlVLM
VUl8czJlZCWDBRXc9jFhoFRrYVGmAFZhplViMRXd
x0SOFTGVoVM10zNgAhUYl1RTglKUIEKZh1N8dFIU
sVLGZnM1ITz6UnXBcXc1FncGwQBJYgACQ3BJUHC1
tweDMnBAcnBEsQ3KkwBk0VUmcSJ8N9eQoAEDlzOP
ljQF3CELZCUpEUWhZlKdFlSIdRZLBVMkA4Al9CXe
J3EW5VMvRRHoEFVqEVIQZ115YFWYYVc98kM4c9Zr
12drRURBB0EJL1KVFBaZl0YeECjUQUNdFFTLZFWh
gNGZRSMqAiLRNlXrZUVWMyWRcDRQRC5bBCFSlyRQ
sUWYM/Wu0lQlZTJl9GXQbVXaB1UhUVShglWZYiWw
QRWoMxVWBZUMl1NXZVZ2ESIpbDXU5lWTIELUsgyo
EFVqEVIQZVOWJIWYYVUXATXXhCMgoSZwk1XE5FQe
9iF6lmYukXYklmcmxHdpNXauc3d39yLmrDc0RHaA
5FQTYV5TZDFEtSSZ0yVss0QXkCVZBFGL5lYMtEQp
ADIq4CESh1BHNBUqQxEoEFXzAvQlQxUzYlXagRX5
8lFa8DSPlEIuk1rFB0EUUEIAB1AQIbT20lJVdBOS
NEGTdFTXETUdFTZ3QSVrABWYR0EfgCQZNladt0Jf
cTWYYSQo+lFdVFW2gET3YiprpWeANERbtxaitkRU
lSUcFTUXQhU+3iUVpnGjdxOaVRXhAyLmICWXMkUE
dqFoEVR3kkSjdFLkD0FtJAAIoAGR1ymYkVKkISZm
g1QQkYXaZxKRlFMQ0kNjBnT50DTCUQAA4w5CoXAB
IXd2NneDAJAJsQBCEXDJMHBOAQdEM3BFM3CIoQyM
EAAxpQB0Znc8NrdIAAET4gF14DPF4UPRdzWzQha5
YlOEdxYIh2P+50JnEDLxISXr12SWJkHwQxQhYkVj
ZVIa5VmnYFVY0lTFdzWV0NJlNyKqMkQQw1RbZEPG
JFZV9UMHdyEUQFKHBUUURlUidlVaVWIhYjISdxQ+
IFRWASWUxyUqNW5GpSUaRCVRZVW1p1FxwUXiwiFl
9SUfNUWUplcldkFwYlqWBTX2clXMkTPy8aNFowfF
gAe4lHeH4XDK0gDOsAeJwQq51AB+9QeJoAfOkUDF
UQBKgUNHByJjmCMtAhUdpVQGVmGRVULCxELEViUX
EsZAVFTZ93FuQFXdcgC

[END URLCRYPT]

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Writing & Blogging

Published February 27, 2008 by lievenlb

Terry Tao is reworking some of his better blogposts into a book, to be published by the AMS (here’s a preliminary version of the book “What’s New?”)

After some thought, I decided not to transcribe all of my posts from last year (there are 93 of them!), but instead to restrict attention to those articles which (a) have significant mathematical content, (b) are not announcements of material that will be published elsewhere, and (c) are not primarily based on a talk given by someone else. As it turns out, this still leaves about 33 articles from 2007, leading to a decent-sized book of a couple hundred pages in length.

If you have a blog and want to turn it into a LaTeX-book, there’s no need to transcribe or copy every single post, thanks to the WPTeX tool. Note that this is NOT a WP-plugin, but a (simple at that) php-program which turns all posts into a bookcontent.tex file. This file can then be edited further into a proper book.

Unfortunately, the present version chokes on LaTeXrender-code (which is easy enough to solve doing a global ‘find-and-replace’ of the tex-tags by dollar-signs) but worse, on Markdown-code… But then, someone fluent in php-regex will have no problems extending the libs/functions.php file (I hope…).

At the moment I’m considering turning the Mathieu-games-posts into a booklet. A possible title might be Mathieumatical Games. Rereading them (and other posts) I regret to be such an impatient blogger. Often I’m interested in something and start writing posts about it without knowing where or when I’ll land. This makes my posts a lot harder to get through than they might have been, if I would blog only after having digested the material myself… Typical recent examples are the tori-crypto-posts and the Bost-Connes algebra posts.

So, I still have a lot to learn from other bloggers I admire, such as Jennifer Ouellette who maintains the Coctail Party Physics blog. At the moment, Jennifer is resident blogger-journalist at the Kavli Institute where she is running a “Journal Club” workshop giving ideas on how to write better about science.

But the KITP is also committed to fostering scientific communication. That’s where I come in. Each Friday through April 26th, I’ll be presiding over a “Journal Club” meeting focusing on some aspect of communicating science.

Her most recent talk was entitled To Blog or Not to Blog? That is the Question and you can find the slides as well as a QuickTime movie of her talk. They even plan to set up a blog for the participants of the workshop. I will surely follow the rest of her course with keen interest!

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iTouch as network sniffer

Published February 22, 2008 by lievenlb

In the iTouch warwalking post I was considering trying to gain access to closed networks for innocent purposes such as checking mail, rather than stealing secret passwords from people allowing you free access to their wireless network, but still, I should have thought of the following possibility

Here’s a walk-through :

  • type the following command into your iTouch Terminal.app (assuming you’ve installed the BSD subsystem) :

tcpdump -v -s 65535 -w log.txt

  • once you’ve collected enough packets, cancel the command (ctrl c), AFPd the file from the iTouch to your Mac and open it with Wireshark (this is the most convenient way to install binaries under Leopard as well as an updated version of X11. For other platforms, or source code, see here)

  • do whatever black magic you feel you have to perform using Wireshark (the new name for Ethereal) or other password crackers

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Blackle

Published February 11, 2008 by lievenlb

There seems to be a slight chance that the next US-administration may (finally) be joining the rest of the civilized world and sign the Kyoto-treaty. Here’s an appeal to Flock and other webbrowsers : please add blackle.com to our Search Engine Preferences!

The idea is simple : you Google as you’d do anyway but … you save a lot of energy. Via PD2 (for Pseudonymous Daughter 2).

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i’ll take rerun requests

Published February 8, 2008 by lievenlb

If you write a comment-provoking post (such as that one), you’d better deal with the reactions.

As often, the bluntest comment came from the Granada-Antwerp commuter (aka “mewt” for ‘memories of a weird traveler’…)

Javier :

Concerning the participation on the math-related posts, it is true that what you write has become more readable along the years, but yet, being able to read one of your math posts and catch the idea of what is going on (which I think is a great thing to do) is one thing. Actually understanding the details is a completely different one. And possibly most people thinks that commenting around when you only got the general idea (if any) of some math topic would be rather bold.

Personally, with your 2 last posts concerning Connes-Bost systems I am interested on understanding the story in full detail, so I printed your first post, took it home, read it carefully, made all the computations on my own (not that I dont trust yours, but you never know!) and before I had finished getting a sound impression of what was going on, the second part was already online, so had to go through the same process (in top of usual duties) just to keep your rythm. If things go as usual, by the time I am ready to make any sensible comments, you’ll be already bored of the topic and have switched to something else, so it won’t make much sense commenting at all!If its comments what you’re lasting for, write short, one-idea posts, rather than long, technically detailed ones.

The good news is that my posts become slightly more understandable. But all things can be improved… so, here’s a request :

If there is this one post you’d love to understand if only you knew already the material I subconsciously assumed, tell me or leave a comment!

and I’ll try to improve on it…

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block google analytics cookies

Published January 31, 2008 by lievenlb

When more than 200.000 websites are using google analytics, a one-man action proposed last time to de-activate GA on neverendingbooks is pretty useless. Perhaps a better alternative is :

When you use google analytics on your site, announce this and add a link to CustomizeGoogle BLOCK GOOGLE ANALYTICS COOKIES. Your visitors can then decide whether or not to block google analytics cookies only.

Or link to this post, as I’ll give a detailed step-by-step instruction so that even web-newbies can protect themselves agains google analytics stalking cookies.

1. Surf using a Firefox-clone Because CustomizeGoogle “is a Firefox extension that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam)” it only works on Firefox-like browsers. Screenshots below use Flock, the mac “social web browser”.

2. Go to CustomizeGoogle BLOCK GOOGLE ANALYTICS COOKIES and click on the Install Now! link (upper right)

3. A warning message will appear saying “Flock prevented this site from asking you to install software on your computer”. As we do want to install, click on the Edit Options button (on the left).

4. A pop-up window appears and click on the allow-button.

5. Click again on the Install Now! link from CustomizeGoogle. A pop-up will appear asking you to confirm installation of the extension. Click on the install-buttom (right below).

6. Installation complete! But you have to restart before you can use it. Click on the restart button and Flock will do it.

7. Select under Flock/Tools CustomizeGoogle Options.

8. A pane pops up with plenty of configurable options.

9. Select “Privacy” and mark the ‘Don’t send any cookies to GoogleAnalytics’ option.

10. Done! You can now surf to any of the 200.000+ google-analytics-powered sites without being stalked!

Using this feature makes you more anonymous. But your visit on a single webpage can still be logged. This way, both Google and the owner of the website knows that someone visited a webpage, but it’s difficult to track all pages you’re visiting. And it’s really really hard for Google to track that you visited both Website A and Website B.

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top 5 analytics tips

Published January 25, 2008 by lievenlb

Google analytics is collecting data on this site for over a month now. Perhaps it is time to share a few lessons Ive learned over this period.

UPDATE : I have de-activated all google analytics plugins on this site. I may re-activate them for short periods later but ONLY to detect problems or to check on plugin performance. I will announce this in the sidebar with a ‘this site contains google analytics script code’-sticker. I encourage people using google analytics stalking code to do the same.

1. Aim at the generic visitor, not the specific

Analytics offers an amazing amount of data, in debatable detail. For example, via the map-overlay one can zoom in to specific towns and communities. When combined with other data, such as new/returning visitors etc., this quickly becomes borderline stalking. So, repress that urge to check-out whether someone you know is reading your blog, and how often, and how long, and how deep, and … Use analytics only to get an idea of what the generic visitor does with your site.

2. There is a world outside your blog

Don’t get obsessed by analytics-data and, certainly, do not feel that you have to react to it, all the time! For example, below the evolution of the number of visitors coming here over the last month

The dramatic fall in attendance from last friday until this monday might have worried me (when obsessed). However, a quick check gave a similar drop for the number of new visitors and the number of search-engine referrals. Probably, people were, at that time, more interested in the stock-market-crisis than in this blog… Besides, most people visiting here come from the US and I learned that they had a Luther King vacation day, so perhaps lots of them enjoyed a prolonged week-end, away from their computer.

3. Detect & correct major, lasting changes

So, forget about temporary blips. However, when a certain trend has every indication of becoming permanent, it might be the moment to check out what is going on. Below the bounce rate-evolution over the last month

This is what you might call a lasting drop! Fortunately this time I knew what was going on, because of the actions described in the bounce rate post. But, when you detect a similar drop in certain stats it is time to figure out the causes. Perhaps you de-activated by mistake a certain plugin (see below), or something is wrong with your server, or…

4. Check-out plugin performance

There are tons of WordPress plugins, some useful, some less. So it is best to check whether activating a plugin has the desired effect. For example, you should be able to detect installation of an SEO-plugin (for, Search Engine Optimalization) in the Traffic Sources/Search Engines graph, installing and using a tagging-plugin should give you more referrals from Technorati and look-a-likes, etc.

5. Don’t take it too seriously

You can use analytics data just for fun! For example, do a quiz, show visitor-data and ask for global events explaining the graph (as above). Or notice quirks in your data. For example, here the time-on-site graph over the last month

My generic visitor seems to have a cyclic attention-span…

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yahoo pipes on iTouch

Published January 24, 2008 by lievenlb

The next thing on my tech-to-do-list : learn all about Yahoo Pipes :

Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs. Here are a few popular ways the service can be used:
– create your ultimate custom feed by combining many feeds into one, then sorting, filtering and translating them.
– geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
– remix your favorite data sources and use the Pipe to power a new application.
– build custom vertical search pages that are impossible with ordinary search engines.
– power widgets/badges on your web site.
– consume the output of any Pipe in RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

I’ve posted before on setting up your own lifestream, or your own planet, or scraping feeds, or subscribing to my brain, or … whatever. The good news is : all these ideas are now superseded by Pipes!

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code. You make a Pipe by dragging pre-configured modules onto a canvas and wiring them together in the Pipes Editor. Once you’ve built a Pipe, you’ll be able save it on our server and then call it like you would any other feed. Pipes offers output in RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 (RDF), JSON and Atom formats for maximum flexibility. You can also choose to publish your Pipe and share it with the world, allowing other users to clone it, add their own improvements, or use it as a subcomponent in their own creations.

This is the essential message to get : yahoo-pipes allows you to remix the web, filtering out all noise! And the good news is

  1. There are plenty of public pipes around to get you going, and
  2. Pipes has an iTouch-friendly interface (see above left). All you have to do is to Safari to iphone.pipes.yahoo.com and use them.

Here are a few public-pipes you can use out of the box!

  • iPhone / iPod Touch: The Most Comprehensive Feed Ever!, doing what it promises : giving you the best iTouch-posts without having to roam for them.
  • JSON Geocoder, returning lat/lon/address info from the the given address.
  • Uber Blog Search, Search all the blogosphere with one query. Hits Google, Ask, Technorati, and icerocket then returns the unique results. Below the web-interface giving the results for ‘noncommutative’…

and finally, one of my favorites, implementing to some extend the Lifestream-idea (iTouch-interface above left)

  • lifefeed – virable, Easily Aggregate your social whereabouts great for blogs profiles and more! Aggregates Your Feeds From: -Digg -Last.fm -Twitter -Flickr -Del.icio.us and your very own blog Adopt and Improve, enjoy!

I’ll promise to spend some time soon to set up my very own pipes and make them available…

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