The Endeavour

The Decision Science News blog has an article highlighting a tool to illustrate how often experiments with significant p-values draw false conclusions. Here’s the web site they refer to.

See also Most published research results are false.

I ran across this post from Aaron Toponce explaining how to enter Unicode characters in Linux applications. Hold down the shift and control keys while typing “u” and the hex values of the Unicode character you wish to enter. I tried this and it worked in Firefox, GEdit, and Gnome Terminal, but not in OpenOffice. I was running Ubuntu 7.10.

See also  Three ways to enter Unicode characters in Windows.

Here are three approaches to entering Unicode characters in Windows. See the next post for entering Unicode characters in Linux.

(1) In Microsoft Word you can insert Unicode characters by typing the hex value of the character then typing Alt-x. You can also see the Unicode value of a character by placing the cursor immediately after the character and pressing Alt-x. This also works in applications that use the Windows rich edit control such as WordPad and Outlook.

Pros: Nothing to install or configure. You can see the numeric value before you turn it into a symbol. It’s handy to be able to go the opposite direction, looking up Unicode values for characters.

Cons: Does not work with many applications.

(2) Another approach which works with more applications is as follows. First create a registry key under HKEY_CURRENT_USER of type REG_SZ called EnableHexNumpad, set its value to 1, and reboot. Then you can enter Unicode symbols by holding down the Alt key and typing the plus sign on the numeric keypad followed by the character value. When you release the Alt key, the symbol will appear. This approach worked with most applications I tried, including Firefox and Safari, but did not with Internet Explorer.

Pros: Works with many applications. No software to install.

Cons: Requires a registry edit and a reboot. It’s awkward to hold down the Alt key while typing several other keys. You cannot see the numbers you’re typing. Doesn’t work with every application.

(3) Another option is to install the UnicodeInput utility. This worked with every application I tried, including Internet Explorer. Once installed, the window below pops up whenever you hold down the Alt key and type the plus sign on the numeric keypad. Type the numeric value of the character in the box, click the Send button, and the character will be inserted into the window that had focus when you clicked Alt-plus.

Pros: Works everywhere (as far as I’ve tried). The software is free. Easy to use.

Cons: Requires installing software.

A while back I wrote a post on how to customize your PowerShell prompt. Last week Tomas Restrepo posted an article on a PowerShell prompt that adds color and shortens the path in a more subtle way. I haven’t tried it out yet, but his prompt looks much better than what I’ve been using.

If you’re a long-time Windows user you might be worried that all this PowerShell stuff is starting to look a lot like Unix. Well, it is. Some of the folks on the PowerShell team have a Unix background and they’re bringing some of the best of Unix to Windows. The Unix world has more experience operating from the command line and so it’s wise to learn from them.

On the other hand, PowerShell is emphatically not bash for Windows. PowerShell is thoroughly object oriented and in that respect unlike any Unix shell. Also, PowerShell is strongly tied to Microsoft libraries, particularly .NET but also COM and WMI.

Scientific American’s 60 Second Science has a podcast Google-style rankings for ecosystems reporting on a presentation by Stefano Allesino suggesting applying a Google-like algorithm to determine conservation priorities. Just as web pages rank higher when many other pages link to them, and organism would be a higher priority for conservation efforts if it is part of the food chain for many other organisms.

Basic tasks are simple in CSS, but even slightly harder tasks can be incredibly difficult. Controlling fonts, margins, and so forth is a piece of cake. But controlling page layout is another matter. In his book Refactoring HTML, Elliotte Rusty Harold describes a technique as

so tricky that it took any smart people quite a few years of experimentation to develop the technique show here.  In fact, so many people searched for this while believing that it didn’t actually exist that this technique goes under the name “The Holy Grail.”

What is the incredibly difficult task that took so many years to discover? Teaching a web browser to play chess using only style sheets? No, three column layout. I kid you not. He goes on to say

The goal is simple: two fixed-width columns on the left and the right and a liquid center for the content in the middle.  (That something so frequently needed was so hard to invent doesn’t speak well of CSS as a language, but it s the language we have to work with.)

You can read more about the Holy Grail of CSS in an article by Matthew Levine.

I appreciate the advantages of CSS, though I do wish it didn’t have such a hockey stick learning curve. I’ve heard people say not to bother learning overly difficult technologies because if you find it too difficult, so will everyone else and it will die off. But CSS seems to be firmly established with no competitor.