Shawn Lankton Online

LaTeX (pronounced lah-tech) is a powerful tool for creating beautiful documents. This post covers a workshop I gave recently introducing LaTeX to some curious graduate students. The materials here show some of the features and walk new users through the basics of using LaTeX.

This would make a nice tutorial for others trying to teach LaTeX as well as enterprising students trying to find a quick way to jump in and start using it. The workshop I taught was part of a class put on by the Georgia Tech Library. I will teach a second class on Dec. 1, 2008. Much of the work in creating these examples was done by David Reid and adopted (slightly) by me.

I began the class with this presentation:

LaTeX Introduction Presentation

This covers what LaTeX is, why it’s useful, and walks the class through the setup of the integrated TeX editor use used, TeXnicCenter. This talk also introduces the examples covered during the workshop. Below is a link to the example files used.

LaTeX Workshop Files

I walked the class through each of the files, explaining peculiarities and pointing out the differences between commands, environments, etc. The workshop finished with a quick summary of some of the other uses of LaTeX including making slides and posters. I also provided links to these very useful resources:

David’s Slideshow

The Not So Short Guide to LaTeX2e

I may try to tape-record the next class and post the video here for anyone interested in watching.

This year I purchased my first pumpkin. Sure, I’ve had pumpkins before, but I had never bought one until a few weeks ago. Yesterday, I put knife to gord and made my first pumpkin into a jack-o-lantern. This is the first pumpkin I’ve carved in years… Here it is

I recently figured out how to keep a necktie in place. I get really irritated when they don’t cover the buttons on my shirt. In the past, I’ve tried several tricks, but last month I had to dress up a lot, so I did some research and found the best way (in my opinion). Read the rest of this entry »

My father, a well known psychotherapist, uses a personality model known as the Interpersonal Check List (ICL). This model is notoriously hard to administer, score, and graph. I developed a program to do all of these things automatically.

This is a 128 question test where people mark whether or not adjectives describe them. Thus a person might check yes to “Good Leader” and no to “Hard to Impress.” Once all the appropriate answers are marked, each one is weighed and put into an appropriate bin. The size of each bin marks the prominence of that personality trait in the person.

I’ve used this program as my first e-commerce venture. Visit http://www.shawnlankton.com/icl to get information about the program, download the fully-featured demo, or purchase the full program!

Most people have heard about twitter. I don’t really get it, but I’ve heard pundit after pundit extolling on its virtues for networking and getting access to the vast experience and intelligence of your contacts.

Like a good scientist, I’m going to do an experiment. I encourage anyone who knows me (or would like to) to participate. I’ll be ‘tweeting’ over the next few weeks, trying to find followers, and trying to find other people to follow. If you don’t have a twitter account, get one, let me know, and we’ll do the experiment together. If you have an account and want me to follow you then contact me or post a comment and let me know. If you want to follow me, my username is shawnlankton.

Oh the things we do to stay relevant in these turbulent technological times.

Once you get through the process of writing your paper, getting it reviewed, making revisions, and finally getting that ACCEPT email in your inbox, the work isn’t done. You must prepare the figures in the paper so that they can be easily used by the IEEE to make a nice, high-quality, correctly laid-out, final print version of the article. This process could be quite complex and time consuming.

This post will cover some tips, tricks, and scripts to get your journal submission ready to go quickly and easily. The big challenges are:

• Getting all figures into single eps files
• Creating a list of figure captions

The good news is that both of these are delightfully quick if you’ve been using LaTeX to compose your article. Read on to find out how Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend I traveled to Denver, Colorado for a “business consulting summer camp.” All in all, it was a nice way to spend a weekend. I learned a lot, met very quality people, wined and dined, and slept at the Ritz. I could get used to being a consultant! Read the rest of this entry »

A tasty spread is great to have on hand. I use it on sandwiches and wraps or as a dip for veggies and chips. It has a great creamy consistency, but its all vegan and low fat! This is my favorite way to use tofu. Here is a picture of the spread in action on a tasty wrap (instructions for the wrap are included!).

I show one version of this spread, but it’s very versatile and can seasoned any way you like. Read on for the full recipe! Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to work and science, last week I spent some time ascending ice in Alaska! Rome and I rented a car and drove north from Anchorage to the Matanuska Glacier [map]. There we met our guide, got geared up, and headed into the white. It is amazing to see a 26 mile glacier snaking into the huge snow-capped mountains looming all around.

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I return today from a week-long trip to Anchorage, Alaska. I spent the week enjoying the beautiful mountains, and the exciting science being presentented at the Conference for Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR 2008) [here are some links to lots of papers from the conference]. This was my first trip to this conference, and I must say that I was impressed with the quality of the work presented. Below, I list some of my favorite papers and give a (very) brief overview:

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