Productive Scholar

Photo: Moriza

I chose to live in downtown Vancouver instead of on campus for many reasons and I’m really happy with my decision. However, there is one big drawback to living off campus: the time spent commuting. I take the bus every day and my commute takes me about 1h30 (45 min each way). I use the bus for three main reasons:

1. At UBC, a bus pass is included with your tuition (you pay for it, but you can’t opt out). Therefore, commuting by bus is virtually free (no extra cost).
2. I don’t own a car. I just find it cheaper to rent one every time I need it. Car sharing services like Zipcar are very convenient for those in my situation.
3. My daily bus ride is a great time to be productive and get things done.

Indeed, there are many things you can get done while on the bus (or in the subway):

• Read: The most obvious and the one I do the most often. I try to bring on the bus reading material that isn’t to bulky, like magazines, academic papers, lecture notes or small books. My favorite bookmark is the post it note. With a sticky note, you can mark not only a page but also a line on the page. Since it is cheap and disposable, you can also use it to take notes or to keep a list of sections to read in a book.
• Listen to audiobooks: Some people don’t like to read on the bus, and that’s fine. Listening to audiobooks is one alternative to reading. There are a lot of books available for purchase from Audible and iTMS or you can make your own using text to speech software (some have a text to mp3 function). One of my favorite magazine, The Economist, offers an audio version for free to its subscribers.
• Clear your inbox: If you’re lucky enough to have a Blackberry or an iPhone (not yet available in Canda… one day maybe), your commute can be a good time to clear your inbox and respond to all your emails/facebook mails/other forms of electronic communications.
• Brainstorm: Let’s be realistic, you won’t get any real work done like writing a paper on the bus. However, with a pen and a small piece of paper, it can be a good place to start brainstorming or organizing your ideas.

One thing I consider a must-have if you want to do anything productive in public transportation are headphones (preferrably attached to something like an iPod). I personnaly use some cheap “noise cancelling” earbuds from Skullcandy, but with a bigger budget I would definitely go for the Bose ones.

In academia, LaTeX is a popular alternative to PowerPoint for presentations. In this how-to, I’ll introduce you by example to the beamer class for creating presentation in LaTex. Using LaTex for this purpose has many advantages:

• Present great-looking equations.
• If you use LaTeX for your papers, you can easily reuse your equations and tables.
• A more “professionnal” overall look.
• Avoid compatibility problems when using computers other than your own. While you don’t always know which PowerPoint version is going to be available (if any), you’re almost sure to find a PDF reader. Just to be on the safe side, you can carry with you a standalone PDF reader like Sumatra PDF portable.

However, using LaTeX has limitations such as the lack of a user-friendly graphical interface and the impossibility to add media elements such as videos and animations. Furthermore, you have to say goodbye all those great transitions (just kidding, I hate transitions).

Before we start, if you are new to LaTeX I suggest you first have a look at Getting Started with LaTex.

To introduce you to the use of the beamer class, I will go throught a sample presentation:

• Beamer Example (LaTeX)
• Beamer Example (PDF)

\documentclass{beamer}

\usetheme[secheader]{Boadilla}
\usecolortheme{seahorse}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}

These commands tell the TeX engine that the document is going to be a beamer presentation. To see what other themes and colorthemes are available, check out the beamer class user guide [PDF].

\title{My Nice Presentation}
\author{Productive Scholar}
\date{March 12, 2008}
\institute[2008]{ECON 101}

\begin{document}

\frame{\titlepage}

Sets up the title frame. The author and the institute (here I put 2008, but it could be your university) appear on the bottom left corner of every frame.

\section[Outline]{}
\frame{\tableofcontents}

\section{Introduction}

\frame {
	\frametitle{First Frame}
	\begin{itemize}
		\item<1->One good argument
		\item<2->Another good argument, after one click
		\item<3->Last one, after another click
	\end{itemize}
}

The first two lines make the outline frame. The rest create a frame with three bullet points. This frame consists of three actual PDF pages. The first bullet point will appear on all three, the second one on the last two pages and the last one on the last page only. This way, when you “click” (advance one page), a new element appears. To control the page on which the item first appears, change the number in the \item<1-> tag.

\section{Next Section}

\subsection{First Sub Section}

\frame {
	\frametitle{Second Frame}
	This text will stay on all pages.
	\only<1>{
		\begin{itemize}
			\item<1->This will only appear on the first page
			\item<1->This is also only for the first page
		\end{itemize}
	}
	\only<2>{
		\begin{itemize}
			\item<2->This will only appear on the second page
		\item<2->This is also only for the second page
		\end{itemize}
      }
}

In this case the first two bullet point elements appear on the first page of the frame, and only on that one. The other two elements only appear on the second page. To limit a part of the frame to a specific page, put your LaTeX code inside brackets after a \only<#> tag, where # is the page number.

\subsection{Second Sub Section}

\frame {
	\frametitle{Last Frame}
	This is the last frame
}

\end{document}

One last frame and the document is complete.

This short example is only meant to get you started. To learn more advanced stuff, like creating hand-outs or designing your own themes, check out the beamer class user guide [PDF].

On Windows most people use Acrobat Reader for presentation, which is ok (except when an Auto-Update pops-up at the beginning of your prensentation). The free Foxit Reader is another alternative.

On Mac OS X my favorite PDF reader for presentations is Skim. It works great and even allows you to add nice (for those who like transitions) Keynote-like transitions to your presentations (it has to be the same transition for all frames though). I also use the free iRed Lite to control Skim with my Apple remote.

Please share your beamer tips and tricks in the comments!

Photo: laffy4k

Portable Apps are free, open source applications for Windows that have been repackaged so that they do not need to be installed. They can therefore be copied to and used from a USB key (thumb drive), a portable hard drive or even an iPod (mounted as a disk).

If you work in a context similar to my school, these can be very useful. I usually bring my laptop to school, but when I don’t I have to work on one of the shared computers. Since only the PhD students have access to them, we share one account with admin privileges. Basically, it means that we can install anything we want so you can imagine that all kinds of toolbars are installed in every browser. It also means that there’s no point in setting your preferences since somebody is probably going to change them the next time.

Portable Apps offer a great solution for this situation or for a situation where you are not allowed to install anything on the computer. Many portable apps are available, here are the ones that might be the most useful for students:

• Firefox: Keep your browser, your extensions and your bookmarks with you. I recommend installing the Google Browser Sync to keep your bookmarks in sync with your home computer.
• Thunderbird: Sure, you probably can access your emails over the web, but if you prefer to use an email software, Thunderbird is the way to go.
• Miranda IM: For those addicted to instant messaging, Miranda IM is a client compatible with most networks (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google Talk).
• Pidgin: Another cross-network IM client.
• OpenOffice.org: Take a full office suite with you wherever you go.
• Abiword: Another word processor compatible with Microsoft Word.
• Sumatra PDF: A lightweight pdf viewer.
• Notepad++: A text editor with syntax highlighting support for many languages, including LaTeX.
• 7-Zip: A compression utility with support for Zip, Tar, Rar, 7z and more.
• Clamwin: An antivirus.
• PuTTY: A Ssh and Telnet client.
• Filezilla: An FTP client for your file transfer needs.