Learn One Thing A Day

On Windows, WinEdt is a great program for editing latex file, but in my opinion the procedure to install new dictionaries is quite poor. In this post I'm gonna fix this in 10 easy steps! This procedure applies to WinEdt 5.x but probably it works for 6.x too. Download the dictionary for the language you are interested in (for example German) from the website http://www.winedt.org/Dict/ Unzip your file: You will see two files with extensions .txt and .dic . The most important is the second one. Locate within your WinEdt installation folder the subfolder " dict " .Usually it should be somewhere like: C:\Programs\WinEdt\dict Inside "dict" create another folder named after the language you want to install, in my case German. Copy the file .dic into the freshly created folder. Now it's time to tell WinEdt to load this dictionary. Launch WinEdt and select: Options-> Dictionary Manager Select " Insert " and give a meaningful name... for examp...

One of the things really annoying on Windows is the impossibility to rename/move a folder or a file despite, apparently, no program is using it. The dummy solution is to close ALL the program or even restart Windows! I do not want to do that! Well when this problem occurs,  there is probably a program using your file ... but how to find it? The solution is to install this very simply and * FREE * utility called Unlocker available here . Once installed, it will autostart by default (icon  in the systray) the program will prompt whenever there is a file o folder you cannot move, delete or rename. Once click and it's done! Pretty cool eh? Just a short note. This utility comes free of charge (however you can always donate!) but you have to know that the default installation installs also f*cking toolbar in your browsers and I hate toolbars! Solution? Just tell the installer you are not interested by unchecking the proper checkbox.   Another short no...

Yesterday I was watching Anne Hall (1977) by Woody Allen and I was fascinated by these words, expressing something I deeply agree with. “It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs .”  I think this is a very good way to descr ibe relationship s ... so metimes we act tota lly cra zy but nevertheless we still need each other !

Carl Edward Sagan (1934-1996) American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science communicator. What can I say? I strongly agree.

"All generalizations are dangerous, including this one" Alexandre Dumas (son) (27 July 1824 – 27 November 1895) (image from wikipedia ) Apparently , this is the first and original version of the most cited "All generalizations are wrong, including this one" or "All generalizations are false, including this one" vaguely attributed to George Denis Patrick Carlin (May 12, 1937 – June 22, 2008) or to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (August 29, 1809 – October 7, 1894)or even to Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910) better known as Mark Twain .

Did you know that methane and propane are actually odorless gases?! If this is the case, what is that awful odor of rotten eggs you smell in your kitchen if you accidentally leave the gas open? It is an odorant (usually tetrahydrothiophene) having the only purpose to make detectable the flammable gases it is mixed with, whenever a leak occurs! The same trick applies for natural gas that is mostly methane or  GPL (or LPG or liquified petroleoum gas) that is mostly propane or butane. (image source ) References http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/eh/chemfs/fs/Methane.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefied_petroleum_gas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrothiophene