Serious Post: LaTeX Tomboy!

Well not really I thought I would put up a post that is actually useful to someone. Possibly.

Anyway this post is going to be the first on useful bits and pieces I've found for Linux.

so here goes: LaTeX for tomboy notes.

reasonably obscure I know, and probably only useful to the very very small number of people who use tomboy for more than just very basic notes but it is useful (and once I fully get to grips with latex it will, no doubt be even more useful).

Firstly you have to have to have version 0.12 of tomboy notes as a minimum. If you need help with this on ubuntu I suggest you look here http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=928585 otherwise I suggest giving it a google if it isn't part of your package manager.

Next you need to make sure you have a latex render so go to your package manager and search for LaTeX and make sure that you have enough to get a fully working version going (for me I used texlive which needed a '-base'; '-base-bin'; '-latex-base' and '-latex-recommended' as well as '-fonts-recommended') Once this was installed another quick search for 'image-magick' and another install (just so you know the latex packages are for latex - duf and image-magick allows the text to be rendered as code).

With these installed you just need to go here http://www.reitwiessner.de/programs/tomboy-latex.html and download the .tar.gz a simple:

$ tar -zxvf tomboy-latex-0.5.tar.gz
$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

this should add a "LaTeX Math Addin" to Preferences>>add-ins>>Tools clicking enable will give you full access to LaTeX rendered text within your notes when enclosed between \[...\]

Pah I should start

Well, I've got one (rejoice you know you want to) yes I've joined the blogsphere; which no matter how many times I hear still sounds like a cult...

This is supposed to be about me but I'm too tired for the joyous rubbish that all personal statements tend to be so I'm going to be even more boring and tell you about what I've been up today.

Firstly I was inspired which is pretty cool - really good idea for a short story which I will post more on (and maybe even it) later.

Secondly I set up what has to be the most serendipitous solution ever - it in fact solves two problems (possibly three) that I've been trying to resolve to do with my computers ('lil asus eee laptop and a custom desktop). Mainly I wanted cake to eat in the form of source control for my master's project (deep sea neutrino detector arrays, modelling of) and synchronised notes etc. This is not easy I have discovered; unless you use dropbox (www.getdropbox.com) which will sync any files that are placed in its sync folder with the net - and then with any other computer that you give access to your online area. Not only does it allow this wonderful syncing it also has basic version control in that you can revert to previous saves of files and access them on any OS (well windows mac and 'nix)

hmmm anything else? slaving away over the longest install process ever - installing the highly useful (if you do high energy or particle physics) geant4 toolkit on my lil asus eee - now done after a mere 4 hours (estimate).

well it wasn't quite a personal statement but it seems to be most of one anyway... I'm off to test drop box some more. I also highly recommend to all you 'nix users a nice lil app called tasque which syncs up task lists with your desktop and rememberthemilk.com as well as allowing integration with tomboy notes