Je Suis Charlie

I am still chocked by the happenings today in Paris. The way a group of animals behaved in the name of their faith is totally repugnant. I make mine the words of Salman Rushdie:

“Religion, a medieval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion’. Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.” — Salman Rushdie














Easy checklist generation in LaTeX with easylist

Checklist are great tools to remind us of things and to organise tasks. There are gazillion ways to generate and use them. When writing a LaTeX document the best way to get a checklist in LateX is by using the easylist1 package.

Latex Easylist checklist example

In the preamble of your document add:

\usepackage[ampersand]{easylist}

Then, in the body of your LaTeX document use something like the following example:

\begin{easylist}[checklist]
& This is Level 1 (Bold) open item
&& This is a level 2 open item
\end{easylist}

This is a great solution to make checklists in a get things done kind of way. It is also great if you don’t have checked items in the list. If your checklist needs to have items in the checked state then there is an alternative method:

Checklists in LaTeX with completed tasks

To have items with both checked and unchecked boxes, the best approach is to redefine the item symbol on the fly inside the itemize environment. For this you’ll need to use the AMS math package2 in the preamble as it will provide the boxtimes symbol.

Latex checkbox in list

\usepackage{amssymb}

There are other AMS packages that also contain the symbol needed and you can use those instead. Next, in the place of document where you want a checklist you write:

\begin{itemize}
\item[$\square$] An open item.
\item[$\boxtimes$] A closed item.
\end{itemize}

If your items are in multiple levels you can create sublists inside this first one. Furthermore, another advantage of the easylist package is that it allows for infinite sublists. Finally, the use of & as the list symbol is very practical.


  1. http://www.ctan.org/pkg/easylist 

  2. you’ll probably have already loaded some of the latexsym, amsfonts, amssymb, txfonts, pxfonts, or wasysym packages, so you might have these square symbols already. 

Quick update

I’ve been back to programming a lot in Java for the past few weeks as part of a paper I’m writing with E. Rodrigues. Coming back to Java after last year’s programming for T174 at the OU was very nice because Java 8 is finally out. It brings lambdas and streams and all that. I am really enjoying it(sic), although I still need to get my head around the “Java Way” of writing code for them. I still like to prototype my ideas in python or R, but it is also nice to go back to Java from time to time.

In the meanwhile I’ve been so busy with work that I haven’t posted much lately. I only managed to do some small changes here in the blog by adding the Trends section on the menu. I’m going to invest some time in this. It is using Storify and if I like it I’ll probably create new streams connected with stuff I’m usually interested in (complexity, chess, &c.). Lets see how it works out.

Justin Reich on MOOCs and the Science of Learning

Millions of learners on platforms like edX and Coursera are generating terabytes of data tracking their activity in real time. Online learning platforms capture extraordinarily detailed records of student behavior, and now the challenge for researchers is to explore how these new datasets can be used to advance the science of learning.In this edX co-sponsored talk Justin Reich — educational researcher, co-founder of EdTechTeacher, and Berkman Fellow — examines current trends and future directions in research into online learning in large-scale settings. via Education Week

As listas que para aí se fazem

Lista Das Pessoas Que Não Estão em Lista Nenhuma

Portugal é o país das listas, de apoio, de censura, para tudo e mais alguma coisa, até para se sair das listas é preciso subscrever outra. Um país de amorfos alistados.

Why I gave up on Evernote

  • Evernote has been bon out of a great idea, but in the end didn’t evolve into anything special. Looks like a last decade application right now. It is dated in some aspects that one would think a modern note taking application should have
  • Space and features. The basic free account limits are pre-historic for modern day standards. The limits were probably right for when Evernote was launched in 2008, but are now just crazy annoying. Yes, they want to buy the Premium accounts but with this Freemium user experience… I wouldn’t recommend it anymore in 2014
  • Bugs, and support. Evernote isn’t perfect.
    • Evernote doesn’t support Markdown with syntax highlight and export features.
    • Evernote is intrusive – There’s a bug in the software since 2009 that makes Evernote lunch the menu bar helper when you start up your computer, even when you explicitly said in the Preferences that you don’t want it. It consumes computer resources and does it against your own will. This is a symptom that the Evernote team is not really interested in fixing this and another reason not to buy into the Premium.
    • Evernote doesn’t have a text based backend. This is a problem when I need to access my notes with other editors.

Evernote Alternatives

  • As I said in a Portuguese post, there are good reasons to use a text file based note taking system. I’ve used nvAlt for most of the past year and Markdown files to take note of everything I need. Synchronisation of the notes across computers is done via Dropbox and this makes them completely accessible everywhere. The notes are not in a proprietary format (they are just text files) and one can edit them with any editor (textmate, emacs, text wrangler, etc.). Simple and functional.
  • The GTD (getting things done) mantra is something that isn’t dependent on the software, it’s up to you. I use a system of analog note taking with pen and paper called Rapid Logging. It is very simple and very powerful (Great things usually are). I’ve implemented the same thing with text files. Don’t know why one should stay attached to the green tame elephant. They are very difficult to move and don’t usually do what we ask of them.