• Remote sound: play music that is stored on the harddrive of another machine
      I only know how to this with the "esd" sound server. If the default server, artsd, runs on your local machine, kill it first (run ps -ef | grep artsd, note its process number (pid), and kill it with kill pid).
    • Then run on your local machine: esd -nobeeps -tcp -public
    • And then start xmms remote, e.g. if the remote machine is dypsis: xon dypsis.science.uva.nl xmms &
  • Making handout from pdf-slides; if "psnup" doesn't produce the desired results, often you can get it this way:
    • Open the pdf in acrobat, and print to file, e.g. to /tmp/slides.ps
    • Run mpage -8 -R /tmp/slides.ps > /tmp/handout.ps, and:
      ps2pdf /tmp/handout.ps
  • Working with latex in (x)emacs is made a hell of a lot easier with auctex and reftex, installed only for xemacs. So use xemacs, and create a .xemacs directory with a file init.el that looks like this one, which includes the following lines :

    (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook 'turn-on-reftex)
    (setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t)

    Many useful functions are now available (click on the mouse menu, or type ALT-x reftex TAB), but these are the most important to learn by heart:

    CNTR-c CNTR-c: run Latex, Bibtex, Latex-PDF, View etc.
    CNTR-c CNTR-s: create a new section, subsection etc.
    CNTR-c CNTR-e: create a new environment (enumerate etc.)
    CNTR-c CNTR-[: refer to and find an item in your BIB-file
    CNTR-c CNTR-): refer to and find a figure, section etc. in your document

  • sensible settings (unlike the defaults) for your shell manager (i.e. terminal). If you use cshell (csh), replace your .cshrc file with this one, and perhaps also your .aliases with this one. If you use bash, try replacing .bashrc with this one (but check and edit that one first).
  • switch on sound:
    copy this file to /scratch/ (or some other location)
    run this command in a shell:
    /usr/sbin/alsactl -f /scratch/asound.state restore
    if you get error messages, edit the file (e.g. change "state.ICH5" to "state.ICH7" if you have a newer sound card than I have).
  • burning cd's:
    use k3b
    for audio cd's, configure k3b to use a newer version of cdrdao (i.e. ~jzuidema/bin/cdrdao)
  • djvu format:
    use ~/jzuidema/bin/djview to view, or djvups to convert to postscript.
  • latex2rtf:
    ssh bacchus
    cd /scratch/jzuidema/bin/
    ./latex2rtf -P cfg PATH/filename.tex
  • dvips combined with ps2pdf
    dvips -Ppdf -t a4 filename.tex -o filename.ps
    ps2pdf filename.ps
  • grip (rip & compress cd's) & xmms
    - add %t to filename template (include track number in filename)
    - sort on filename in xmms' playlist editor (keeps tracks in original order)
  • realplayer and mp3 player
    - use artsdsp to make non-KDE programs work with its sound system:
    artsdsp ~/bin/mpg123 filename.mp3
    artsdsp ~/bin/RealPlayer8/realplayer
  • installed but optional software, such as OpenOffice, matlab etc.
    - include a line "OpenOffice-latest" in your .pkgrc file
    - include a line "matlab" in your .pkgrc file
  • Mozilla tricks
    - To make mozilla open word-documents in OpenOffice, let it execute the following command:
    /opt/linux/bin/soffice
  • Keep remote processes alive after logging off. I found this useful trick on the web:
      As you have likely figured out by now, using SSH to log in to a remote machine is convenient, but not entirely what we are looking for, because we need to be logged into the remote machine for an application to stay alive. Enter screen to solve this problem. Login to the remote machine, and start screen. It will clear the screen and give you the same prompt you just saw. Ho-hum. Start an app that never ends until we tell it to, such as top. Nothing special here, but try entering this: CTRL-a d. You're back at the prompt, but now do ps -A and note that screen and top are still running! Log out, and log back in. Yep, still running. So how do we get them back? screen -r (-r for "reattach"). There's top, just as we left it. Now we can keep applications alive on the remote machine even if we aren't logged in.
  • Use of matlab
    • For using matlab, you need to first make the software available, by opening the file .pkgrc in your home directory, and adding a line matlab at the bottom;
    • Then create a matlab directory, i.e. type mkdir ~/matlab in a shell;
    • Put the ".m" files you want to use in that directory;
    • Finally, start a new shell for the new .pkgrc-settings to take effect, and run matlab.