I am not certain whether I will keep the Politblog. Maybe one of the reasons why I didn’t feel like posting anymore was that it started feeling too much like work. What do you think? Should I keep it?

So, this was one of my first “dear diary” blog posts in this blog. Back to more interesting more random subjects again soon

If you notice any issues, I’d be glad about a comment here. The FTP upload had some hickups and corrupt files that I fixed, and might well have had some that I didn’t.

(Oh, and nope, the diploma thesis is not done yet )

I’ll get back to blogging after that. So the blog is not quite dead yet

In unrelated news, I’m sure you know this video.

But I’ll take things slow

Oh – never, never ever snowboard or ski without helmet or back protector. I was wearing them, and I wouldn’t want to know where I’d be now without.

Also, may I present, today’s dinner for two:

Roast Beef

I made roast beef with mashed potatoes, arucola and sauce vegetables, on a red wine sauce. I have no clue if that translation just was correct, as more red wine (a 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon) went with it, the German counterpart: Rindsbraten mit Kartoffelstock, Rucola und Saucengemüse, an eigener Rotwein-Bratensauce.

If I may say so myself, it was rather delicious.

Although, there is one thing, maybe I’ll post that soon – maybe my self-imposed requirement to write original content puts too much pressure on me and I should not stop myself from doing the odd silly link post from time to time? Input appreciated!

Anyway, I’ll be back

The mixes I made so far (you can order them as well, or expand upon them, by entering their codes here – unfortunately, there’s no way to link directly to a mix – Edit: Links added, see comments!):

• Schoggifrucht (Mix 54802): My first try, tasted too much like Mango I found, but maybe that was just due to bad mixing. The approach was right, but I didn’t find enough nuts in there.
• Schoggifrucht II (Mix 55349): More nuts, awesome, and my favourites (Pecan and Cashew), too. But suddenly, the “Frucht” bits were too sparse, I needed those Mango back.
  
• Schoggifrucht III (Mix 55510): The perfect mix! Fruity and chocolatey and corny, no raisins or other stuff I don’t like.
  

mymuesli

I hear that the mymuesli site makers were on TV and all over traditional media as well meanwhile, so this might be old news already. For me, it was a revelation: I never started eating Müesli for breakfast (and often, didn’t eat breakfast at all), because I just hadn’t found one that I liked, and eating through all of them just to find that there’s yet another one I don’t like didn’t sound all too appealing to me.

So my personal alternative to mymuesli isn’t really “eat local Biomüesli”, but “eat refined Kellogs stuff or even nothing at all” – and suddenly, it’s way more biological (all the contents adhere bio guidelines and have certifications and whatnot, too), and makes a lot of sense from a health and nourishment point of view as well.

Anyway, a thorough recommendation: If you live in Switzerland, Germany or Austria, and feel like trying the user-friendly web2.0 interface and tinkering your own (rather expensive, but worth it) Müesli, there isn’t really much that should stop you

Now, looking for reasonable GUIs (because I’m just too old to hack anything without a comfortable environment) I stumbled upon LyX, which seems to be reasonably comfy. It runs now, after an afternoon of shouting and crying, so I decided I’d make a little tutorial as to how exactly you’ll have to install it.

My Windows Vista Business (32-Bit) is German, so bear with me regarding the screenshot texts.

Update 2009-03-25 13:41: There is a Windows Installer now, which still takes some time to install and requires various steps, but has some message boxes guiding you through the process. It’s still in beta, but worked a treat on my Windows XP machine.

Which LyX? And What Else?

Now, first off, there are two installation packages for LyX (which you find on the Wiki). At the time of this writing, do not download the one linked on the download page. The installer you want is (currently) this one:

LyX-1.5.6-1-Installer-Bundle.exe (95 MB)

(There might be a newer version on the Wiki, so check back there if you access this post later than September 2008.)

The non-bundle installer tries to download MiKTeX during the installation, which is nice, but it obviously does so with an outdated URL, yielding a 404 (not found) error:

404 Error

The installation will complete despite this error, but you won’t have a LaTeX frontend, but just … a standalone editor without any exporting functionality, basically worth nil.

Keep in mind that despite the LyX setup telling you it can use an existing MiKTeX installation, that’s simply not true, as it looks for a tex.exe file, which the current distribution of MiKTeX just doesn’t include. So don’t download MiKTeX individually either, unless you don’t plan to use the LyX frontend.

So just install the bundle from the start.

Installation

OK, now that you have the proper file, it’s time to install it. You will need to install it as administrator, as the installation process will otherwise abort after 30 minutes (more in this later). So right-click the file, “Run as Administrator”.

Run as Admin

OK, enter your credentials if you use UAC, and off you go. Select “Install MiKTeX”, UI language and dictionaries, select a directory and start. You’ll probably want to install it for all users. The LyX installation itself will be over rather quick, although you’ll have to agree to each dictionary’s terms of use individually.

After a minute or so, the MiKTeX license agreement will pop up, tick “I accept” and off goes the long part. First, select whether you want to install MiKTeX for all users or just yourself – choosing the same here as for LyX is wise – and a directory.

Now, the next question for settings seems rather innocent, but I strongly suggest switching “install missing packages” to “yes” (I’ll write about why yes and not “ask every time” a bit below, selecting “no” doesn’t make much sense since you want a working program):

Install Missing Packages

Good, start. You will see the following screen for quite some time now:

LyX installing MiKTeX

After about 15 minutes on my mobile Core2 with 2GHz, you will need to push “Next >” after the completion of the MiKTeX setup, to continue the LyX setup. Now, if you didn’t select “Yes” above, a plethora of package installation dialogs will pop up – and grab focus, so if you happen to install happily, and do something else while the computer is milling, you might screw up your installation with a careless key press.

Just imagine, you happily type a blog post, and then you cancel the running installation because that blog post would’ve contained a “C” next when the popup grabs focus. Yes, experience speaking (although, OK, it must’ve been me panicking and pushing “Escape” instead).

Package Installation

OK, so you haven’t screwed up. Another 20 minutes, and you will be greeted with an inviting image. If you started as administrator, that is, otherwise the installation routine will abort right here with an error and leave you with half a program installed.

LyX Driver Error

Don’t worry, it’s just Vista being paranoid about the Metafile to EPS Converter, a printer driver that’s installed in the course of this setup. “Install anyway” is the way to go.

Now, you’re nearly done. Close the setup (without checking the “run LyX immediately” box, unless you want to run it as administrator, too), and start LyX from the start menu. You will need to provide your UAC credentials yet again upon running LyX for the first time, since it does some further installation stuff for your standard user.

LyX Installed!

Conclusion

In all honesty, I didn’t expect to spend an entire afternoon (well into the evening) installing a working LaTeX environment. It works now it seems, and I’m looking forward to writing things in a WYSIWYM typesetting system instead of a WYSIWYG word processor (where you don’t quite get what you see after all, and it’s easy to focus on presentation over content or structure). But the way there could have been less annoying.

Disclaimer: This isn’t the first time I’m writing something with LaTeX, the last time I wrote in a text editor with just basic highlighting. But that’s over five years ago – I do hear though that templating hasn’t gotten a lot easier since. I’ll now write a “test” 15 page paper with this first, before I fully delve into my diploma thesis. If this test doesn’t prove successful by my yet to be determined standards, which may include those dreaded custom styles (anybody has good documentation on .sty files?), off I am to OpenOffice with TinyPDF again.

So, here’s a little something to sweeten up your weekend as well: The ninja cat.

In all honesty, I forgot where I saw it first

By the way, if you like that one, you’ll love Cute Overload.

Well, good plan really, and so I’m in – after some last beers yesterday, that is

hosä has the full participants list, let’s see who gives in to the temptation first!