stuff i love

Tailscale is awesome

Tailscale makes it easy to run a VPN without needing to configure a router or anything else

Cool stuff I'm working on (Jan 2025 edition)

Just a brief update since my last blog post was 2020.

How to disable Pi Hole for specific devices

Pi Hole is awesome for blocking ads on all devices on your local network, but sometimes it gets in the way. Sure, you can log in and disable it temporarily, but for some people that’s too much work. Thankfully, updates in the newest version of Pi Hole allow you

Using Discourse.org for a class discussion board

For the past two semesters I have been using Discourse for my class discussion board. I started using it mainly due to the restricted nature of Canvas’s built-in discussion boards, which are terribly designed for actual discussion. Using Discourse, I’m able to have real conversations with my class,

How Much is that Service in the Window?

About 2 years into grad school I began to realize the importance of paying for the things that you love.  So many of the apps and services that I used offered a free tier that I used and abused as much as possible because I was a student with very

Back in Action

Man, it’s been a while. With the craziness of first trying to finish a dissertation in time, then trying to defend that dissertation, then packing and moving half-way across the country, then staring a new job, teaching a class (I’ve taught it before, but I’m trying to

LaTeX vs Word (again)

A recently published article in PLoS ONE, entitled “An Efficiency Comparison of Document Preparation Systems Used in Academic Research and Development” (link here) lit the world on fire. Okay, not really. In fact, most people, including researchers and even LaTeX enthusiasts have probably not read it. And that’s fine.

LaTeX for Researchers, Part 3: Figures

If you’re just joining us, it’s probably best to start out with my first two posts: * Setting Up * Citations Now that we’ve covered how to do create a document and how to add citations, the next major items we need to be able to put in a

LaTeX for Researchers, Part 2: Citations

Review In Part 1 we covered the very basics of creating a document. With that you have basically everything you need to start writing your paper. Here’s a quick review of the basic commands: 1. \documentclass{article} is the first thing in your document, and it tells LaTeX you

LaTeX for Researchers, Part 1: Setting up

So, I’ve already tried to make it clear that I really hate Word for creating academic documents. The biggest reason is that it frequently screws things up. So I use LaTeX, and I think you should too. Admittedly, it’s not always possible. Some journals, conferences, or other venues

LaTeX ICIS Template

As most everyone who works with me knows, I’m a huge advocate of LaTeX. If not for LaTeX, at least a huge opponent of Word. Word is sometimes okay if you’re doing a simple document without a lot of formatting, but once I start dealing with formatting a

Using Git and Bitbucket for Collaborative Research

I have been trying for a few years to get my coworkers to work on projects together using Git repositories for version control, and usually to varying levels of success. I finally took the time to hammer out a beginner’s guide to collaborating with git, using Github for Windows

Why I left Qiqqa for Mendeley

I love software that makes my life easier. As an academic, I do a lot of reading. I read a lot (I mean a lot) of PDF articles on a huge variety of topics. I have a virtual stack of papers that would probably reach half-way to Phoenix and cost

I have nothing to say

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way sometimes. I just sat down at the computer to write a blog post, and within seconds my mind had gone completely blank. I stared at the “Your Post Title” block at the top of the page, and

The Problem with Trolleys

What is it about the Trolley Problem that is so compelling? What is the trolley problem you ask. It goes a little like this: Imagine you are the driver of a trolley that has gone out of control. Ahead of you is a split in the tracks, and you can

On Perfectionism

"If your fidelity to perfection is too high, you never do anything." Those words hit me hard when I read them last week. This is a constant struggle I've had for the last couple years. In my head I have a perfect vision of a completed

Lift and Writing

I got an invite to the web version of Lift, which is an amazingly simple application designed to help you get started and stick with daily habits. It is most beautiful in its simplicity. There is no failure. You simply stop by the website every day and check in with

evernote

Beginning GTD

As a student, my plate is always full. There are so many things I could be doing at any given time of the day. I fully believe that for the first part of my doctoral program I let that get the better of me. Since there was no way I

how to

Create a new Evernote note from Launchy

I love Evernote. And I love Launchy. But it turns out that combining the two was more difficult than I expected. All I wanted was a way to add a new note to Evernote from Launchy without having to open up Evernote's whole interface and do all sorts

stuff i love

Apps I love - Focus@Will edition

I spend a lot of time at my computer. As a student, I write papers and do programming assignments. As a researcher, I read papers, write more, and try to keep on top of what’s going on in the world and especially in my field. As a nerd, I

Why I no longer blog with Google+

I'm not a frequent blogger. I've given blogging a go several times in the past five or so years, and it's never really stuck with me. Or rather, I've never really stuck with it. I've done self-hosted Wordpress, Drupal, and

stuff i love

Apps I love - BeyondPod edition

Not so very long ago, I used an iPad for a lot of things. One of those things was listen to podcasts. Now, the Apple podcast app came out about that time, and it was a train wreck. Nothing started, there was no way to manage a playlist, and half

stuff i love

Apps I love - Pocket edition

This is a ridiculous question, but have you ever found an article online that you wanted to read later? Bookmarks just don’t seem to fit the bill for me in that situation. A bookmark is a commitment. It means I want to keep this site around for reference into

stuff i love

Apps I love - F.lux edition

I’m a computer person. As a computer person, I’m often using my computer late into the evening, and it’s often one of the last things I look at before I head to bed. Sadly, staring at bright computer screens just before trying to sleep is not the

stuff i love

Apps I love - Anki edition

Memorization is a tricky beast. It comes in handy when learning a new programming language, a new computer program, a new set of papers with authors and dates, and lots of other places. When learning something you'll use every day, memorization comes naturally. I can pretty quickly learn