Seems Texlive 2012 is in Ubuntu 12.10/Linux Mint 14

najmi@mint:~$ dpkg -l|grep texlive
ii  texlive                                     2012.20120611-4                           all          TeX Live: A decent selection of the TeX Live packages

Been stuck on 2009 version ever since. 

Good news.

Drawing xkcd-style Plots and Diagrams with LaTeX

The title says it all! This was asked recently on TeX.SX, and this answer from percusse has the scoop.  The main idea is to use decorations for the lines in TikZ. Here’s his output (requires LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX to use the font):

Updates for mmuthesis and umalayathesis

Just a quick note that updated classes of mmuthesis and umalayathesis has been uploaded at my website.

mmuthesis

Based on feedback from a MMU student who submitted her thesis recently, IPS now requires that the Publications List be categorised in to Journal Articles and Conference Proceedings, and that text in the appendices should be 10pt. Please read the updated user manual on how to prepare the Publication List under the new scheme.

umalayathesis

Bug fixes of some spacing of appendices entries in the ToC, as well as adjusting the overall line spacing to conform with the expected output by IPS. Font of the cover page now uses Arial Narrow look-alike.

New uumthesis LaTeX Class and LyX Layout

On request, I have created a L^aT_eX class and LyX layout for writing Universiti Utara Malaysia theses. Credit goes to Dr. Mohd. Hasbullah bin Omar for getting the output endorsed by UUM’s Graduate Office.

The uumthesis L^aT_eX class, LyX layout, sample files and user manual can be downloaded from my website. Happy L^aT_eXing to UUMians!

Giraffe Chapter uses Beamer too

My research area is on malware detection, so I usually follow the Giraffe Chapter talks and their slides.

Slides #1 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia[PDF]
Slides #2, dated 2012 for CCC [PDF]

I personally met the speaker when he came to KL in 2009, but of course the discussion was not whether he's using Beamer or not. It's just a tool :)

Putting Dates in Watermarks

It’s been rather a long time sine I last posted anything as I’ve been working on my thesis and article… sorry!

Theses and articles typically go through many versions, ding-dong to-and-fro between supervisors and co-authors. Some people keep track of the version number (or date-last-modified) by giving each draft a different file name. Personally, though, I tend to get inconsistent with the file naming, especially when it's 2:30am. So I figured it might work better for me if the date-last-modified was printed in the PDF of the thesis/article draft itself.

One could always put the date in the header or footer, but there might already be some content in those regions. Besides, it's probably not a good idea to mess with the formattings for a journal article. Instead, I put \today in a watermark, so the date would get updated I compile my draft:

\usepackage{draftwatermark}
\usepackage{datetime}
\ddmmyydate
\SetWatermarkLightness{.9}
\SetWatermarkText{Draft\string@\today}
\SetWatermarkScale{.6}

The colour, lightness, font and other attributes of the watermark are configurable. I also used the datetime package to configure the date formatting. Here’s how the output looks like (a page from my thesis draft):

Off topic : Congratulations Dr Joey/Rizal Nor!

One of our bloggers (he was actually the one who encouraged me to use LaTeX for writing) recently successfully defended his PhD dissertation at the Kent State University, Ohio, United States. And he'll be coming back to Malaysia soon!!! (to my office, we're in the same department).

Here is his thesis.. enjoy.

Congratulations again, Joey!

As far as I understood his thesis was written with LaTeX and use tikz package.. need him to verify this.