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!

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.

The new theme is up and running. Since started Productive Scholar, getting a new theme was on top of my todo list. The old theme looked fine, the main problem was that it is one of the most popular theme for Wordpress blogs (the blog platform I’m using), which means it is used by thousands of other blogs.

The new theme is not a custom one because I’m not good at web design and custom themes are not that cheap. I decided to take a free web template called terrfirma 1.0 by NodeThirtyThree and make a Wordpress theme out of it (adapt it to work with my web platform). Furthermore, I modified it to fit my custom needs (two sidebars, slightly different style). Since this theme is not easily available for other blogs, Productive Scholar should have a fairly distinct look.

The photo on the top right is the view at the end of the Main Mall at the University of British Columbia. It was taken by flickr user sillygwailo.

I’m very pleased with the result and I hope you’ll like it too.

CiteULike is a free online service that lets you manage your scholarly papers. The idea is simple: you create an account and then you can add references in your library. It has a nice features set which includes:

• Export all your references to BibTex and EndNote.
• Integrates nicely with many online database (see here for complete list). This is actually very nice; when you add a paper from one of those database (using the url), CiteULike imports all the bibliographic information plus the abstract. For some databases, it will also add a link to the pdf file of the full article (of course, you need access to the database for that).
• Lets you upload your own pdf files so you can access them from anywhere.
• Create groups so you can share papers with your colleagues or other people interested by a topic.
• Bookmarklet for adding papers quickly (a bookmark that contains javascript). When you are on an article page (like PubMed or JStor), you can just click that bookmark to add the reference to your library.

Those are just the features I find the most useful, there are plenty more. Pretty good for a free site.

It seems like I have a hard time posting as often as I want. I dropped the idea of posting daily links to post on other blogs, I’ll just post some from time to time when I judge them to be relevant and when I have something to add or to comment on them. As for my original articles, I try to continue to post one or two a week.

Spring break UBC is in one week, so I’m pretty busy this week (one exam, lots of assignments due…). However, you can expect a post or two this week (because I’m almost done writing them). If I have time during spring break, I might spend some time updating the blog to a custom theme so it looks nicer.

If you’re in the same situation as me, good luck!

This might seems counterintuitive, but quitting coffee is a way to increase your productivity. While coffee (or the caffeine in it) makes you more alert, too much of it can cause sleep disorders and attention disorder (like when you have difficulty focusing on the task at hand).

Quitting caffeine altogether is perhaps a drastic step, but you should consider it (or at least reducing your consumption) if your average caffeine intake is decreasing your productivity. The maximum recommended daily intake of caffeine is between 400mg and 500mg (depending on the sources), which is about three small coffees (8oz) or two medium (12oz). Since this is a maximum, you should aim at a number lower than that. Most coffee-drinking students I know have, like I did until last year, a caffeine consumption that exceeds this limit and therefore that can cause the adverse effects of caffeine. According to WebMD, caffeine withdrawal can cause the following symptoms:

• headache, fatigue or drowsiness
• depressed, irritable mood
• difficulty concentrating
• flu-like symptoms of nausea and/or vomiting
• muscle pain or stiffness

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve reduced my caffeine consumption from 500-600mg per day to less than 200mg per day (one double latté in the morning and one cup of tea after lunch). Last year, I had to fight sleep every class, now it doesn’t happen anymore. I also don’t get that caffeine crash anymore (you know, the sleepiness you feel when the effect of your last coffee wears off). If you want to go down the same path as I did (or even quit coffee completely), here are some tips for you:

• Don’t quit during your exams: This should be straightforward, but don’t quit coffee during your exams or during any period when you need to be at the top of your game. There is going to be some adaptation period before you reap the benefits (for me it was about two weeks).
• Stop gradually: You could quit caffeine completely today, but it will be easier if you stop gradually over the course of a week or two.
• Find substitutes: Replace that late-night caffeinated coffee with a decaf (while the cheap decaf coffees aren’t usually very good, the more expensive ones are hard to differentiate from the real stuff). Replace that afternoon coffee with a tea, or, even better, a non caffeinated herbal tea.
• Sleep more: Sleeping one hour or even only half an hour more every day can make you feel so much more energized that you won’t need your caffeine boost. You’ll get back the time spent sleeping in increased productivity (as long as you don’t oversleep). If you have trouble sleeping, get some tips from Lifehack.org.
• Exercise: It’s not the first time you hear this, but regular exercise is good for you. It will make you feel more energized and help you sleep at night.
• Cold shower: This probably isn’t for everyone, but starting your day with a cold shower can be as affective as coffee for waking you up. If you don’t feel like taking a 15 minutes cold shower, just one minute of cold water at the end should do the trick.

To help you get started, you can find a table summarizing the caffeine content of many drinks on Health Canada’s web site.

TheUniversityBlog has a nice list of 20 Tips & 20 Links to Eleminate Procrastination.

To me, the obvious missing one is:

1. Just DO IT! Now!

Also, about number 12 (stay energized), you might want to be careful about how you stay energized. Just drinking more coffee might make you feel more energized, however it might also make you less focused. There’s no substitute to sleep and exercise (don’t worry, usually you recover that lost time in increased productivity.)

Read [theuniversityblog.co.uk]

As a grad student, I have to deal with a LOT of pdf files: lecture notes, papers, assignments, ebooks, etc. Fortunately, there are a lot of solutions for managing your pdf files on Mac OS X, and some of them are free. Here is a list of those I know of, depending on the type of solutions

PDF Library Managers

Some software are made for one main goal, which is to manage pdf files:

• Yep (Shareware, 34$): A full fledged pdf manager. This is the one I personally use on a daily basis, well worth 34$ (even better if you got it for cheap like me during the MacUpdate Promo). Features include smart collections (like smart playlist in iTunes), tag support and a nice fullscreen view.
• papers (Shareware, 42$): Another pdf manager with features such as stoplight search, iTunes-like rating system and a strong PubMed integration.
• iPapers (OpenSource): A simple pdf library manager with PubMed integration.

Bibliographic Managers

Bibliographic managers can also be of use to manage your pdf files. These programs are made to manage bibliographic entries, but they allow you to link the files to their bibliographic entries.

• BibDesk (OpenSource): A BibTeX manager. Supports tags, smart groups, online database integration and it keeps your pdf files organized (in a way similar to iTunes). This is the one I use for bibliographic references.
• JabRef (OpenSource): A cross-platform reference manager. Exports to BibTeX and OpenOffice.
• EndNote X1 (Commercial, 110$): The reference for bibliographic management. The feature list is impressive and it is virtually your only choice if you work with Microsoft Word. To me the price was too high compared to BibDesk (free!) especially since I exclusively use LaTeX for writing.

Other solutions

Another quite unusual solution for pdf management is to use iTunes:

• The Best PDF Manager You Don’t Know You Have: Some tips on how to use iTunes for managing pdf files. A little bit outdatted, but most of the stuff is still relevant.
• PDF Adder (Free): AppleScripts for adding pdf files to iTunes.

And what about me?

I use two of those softwares in my setup: Yep and BibDesk. I use Yep for my ebooks, the papers I want to read and everything related to school work (lecture note, assignments, etc). The smart collections of Yep (similar to smart playlists in iTunes) allow me to keep my library ordered with no extra work as long as I put my files in the right folder in Finder. Screenshots:

• Yep 1
• Yep 2

As for BibDesk, I use it exclusively to manage papers that aren’t associated with any specific course or that I might want to cite in a paper or in my thesis. The neat thing about BibDesk is that it generates a BibTeX file for your library that you can include in all your LaTeX documents. Furthermore, you consolidate your library automatically (à la iTunes) so your files are kept in order, which is pretty useful if you want to have a smart collection in Yep for your BibDesk library. Screenshots:

• BibDesk 1
• BibDesk 2

Lifehack.org just published a (pretty impressive) Ultimate Student Resource List. There seemed to be some important stuff missing for the grad students, so here are some of those missing links:

Free Applications

To their list I would add:

• All the LaTeX tools I mentioned in Getting Started with LaTeX.
• A BibTeX reference manager:
  • BibDesk [Mac]
  • JabRef [Java, so all platforms]
• A good PDF reader:
  • Skim [Mac]
  • Foxit [Windows]

Online Tools

I only have one addition here, for those who are learning LaTeX (I should have included it in my previous post):

• MonkeyTeX : Online LaTeX editor (note: for serious work, I recommend always saving a copy to your computer).

Websites

Of course, I would add Productive Scholar ;-). I would also add those search websites that are a must for grad students:

• Google Scholar
• JSTOR
• Science Direct

If you have other ideas, please share in the comments.