Happy end of the world! Yay!

@PauloCereda Well, did it really start?

@egreg Hold on, let me check. :)

@PauloCereda It seems like the starship self-destruction scene in Spaceballs

@egreg: my cat is hunting mice, so apparently nothing is happening at the moment. :)

@egreg ooh true! :P

@PauloCereda Have you got mice in your house?

@egreg Wow, finally found something I am ahead of egreg: number of visited days. :-)Ok, so it seems I slacked off a bit (that must have been before I knew about the 100 day consecutive badge):

@PauloCereda A dog we had several years ago, a cocker spaniel, was very good in mice hunting.

@PeterGrill Yes, I'm at 639. But you can't miss a day, now.

@egreg Thankfully no, but I need to keep an eye in my cat. At least two times this year Fubá caught a mouse in the neighbourhood and brought it home to play with it.

@egreg Obviously I won't now. Gotta stay ahead in something :-)

@egreg Some dogs are really good at mice hunting. :)

dang the world didn't end. I need to write the thesis

I guess that means that I found TeX.SE just one day before you.

@percusse Wait.. It's not midnight everywhere.. The Mayans may not have been aware of the timezone issues, so might be best to wait a bit just to be sure. :-)

@percusse You will need to delete that draft email you wrote telling your advisor to GTFO. :)

@PauloCereda :-)

@PeterGrill Wait a minute, Mayans can predict the end of the world, but not timezones? Amateurs. :P

@PauloCereda Details in those days were considered: EFTS (exercise fro the student).

@PeterGrill ooh! :)

@percusse LOL

@PauloCereda Yes, they could predict the doomsday centuries in advance, but didn't predict their own disappearance.

@egreg :)

@tohecz btw, it turned out I had an old version of truncate.sty lying around.

@tohecz I'm using \clipbox* from the adjbox bundle now, which works perfectly.

A question for the TikZ experts

I have the following figure:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \node (M)  at (0,0) {M};
  \node (P)  at (0,1) {P};
  \node (R1) at (-0.86603,1.5) {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{1}}};
  \node (R2) at (0,2) {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{2}}};
  \node (R3) at (0.86603,1.5) {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{3}}};
  \draw (M) -- (P);
  \draw (P) -- (R1);
  \draw (P) -- (R2);
  \draw (P) -- (R3);
  \draw (R1) circle (0.5);
  \draw (R2) circle (0.5);
  \draw (R3) circle (0.5);
  \draw[red] (M) -- (43:2.5);

This all looks OK, but I've done all of the positioning by hand. What should I change to make it more 'automated'?

(Context: I want to illustrate the idea of Tolman's cone angle)

Hello! What do you think of adding a Name Index in a dissertation?

@Costi Names of what/who? It's like saying what do you think of adding the word Elephant to a dissertation, it might be good if the dissertation is about animals, less so otherwise.

@DavidCarlisle :) totally right. Sorry. I meant a list of names of linguists that I used in the main text. My dissertation is in linguistics.

there's a list of figures, a list of tables and maybe there could be a name index. Although I don't know how to practically make it.

@Costi It depends how distinguished the names are in realtion to other index items. I included names in the main index written in small caps. Also, the bibliography is usually sorted by name, so if you have page references there, it's also some sort of index.

I don't know if it is a good idea to mix bibliography and references from the dissertation text

I don't have other index items.

How do you create that with latex?

@Costi Depends on your subject area

@Costi I find this a splendid idea. It's very interesting to see where a specific piece of literature is cited.

@JasperLoy Yes

@JasperLoy Not unexpected by me :-)

50 seconds!

20 seconds!

Yay!

@egreg: Now it's officially the end of the world! :)

@JasperLoy Nothing, apparently.

Perhaps I'm already dead.

@Costi well if you think it would be useful then add it (unless your dissertation is constrained to a number of pages and it could be seen as padding) making it is easy enough, as you presumably want it sorted into alphabetical order rather than in order of occurrence you could just use \index with a suitable makeindex style. If you already have an index you need a package that allows more than one.

@Costi I have seen that in comprehensive graduate books, where it can be helpful. For a dissertation, it is overkill. You usually need a citation anyway when mentioning someone, so the bibliography is enough.

@PauloCereda have you noticed that we're just past a large round number of comments?

@tohecz hm?

@PauloCereda This one is 7370000. ;)

anyways, coffee time (yet 2nd today)

@tohecz ooh!

@PauloCereda Yes, one of my courses ended just short of noon (11:00 UTC).

@JosephWright Is it always three circles that should be placed in between?

@percusse Yes: the circles represent the size of the three groups called 'R1', 'R2' and 'R3'

Phosphorus can only have three of these (well, it can have 5 but not in this context)

@JosephWright I guess you want to automate it because you have different circle sizes. Is that right or something else?

yeh a new output routine and I just squeezed past Jake on to the second row:-)

@percusse No, it's the intersections, etc., that bother me. For example, I've placed the two sloping lines by eye, but there must be an analytical solution. Same with the arc for the angle

@DavidCarlisle xor?

@JosephWright I phrased it that way to get you all excited but no:-)

@DavidCarlisle Smaller task: read the galley stuff over and make sure it makes sense :-)

@JosephWright broken up for christmas now, so it's always possible I might have time to look at that

@DavidCarlisle :-)

@DavidCarlisle Next stage is sorting out display material, then integrating RTL stuff

@JosephWright It'll all be over by Christmas then.

:7369365 Little improvement:

        \node (M)  at (0,0) {M};
        \node (P)  at (0,1) {P};
        \path (P) +(150:1) node (R1)  {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{1}}};
        \path (P) +(90:1)  node (R2)  {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{2}}};
        \path (P) +(30:1)  node (R3)  {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{3}}};

:7370477 You have to do all-or-nothing, so the code is normally separate from any reply

@JLDiaz Ah right: I've been trying to work out how one named a position on a path!

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \node (M)  at (0,0) {M};
  \node (P)  at (0,1) {P};
	\draw (M) -- (P);
\foreach \x in {1,2,3}{%30,90,150
  \node[circle,minimum size=1cm,draw]
	(R\x) at ({cos(-30+60*\x)},{1+sin(-30+60*\x)}) {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{\x}}};
	\draw[shorten >=-2mm] (P) -- (R\x);
}

  \draw[red] (M) -- ($(M)!1.5!(R1.south east)$) (M) -- ($(M)!1.5!(R3.south west)$);
  \draw[red] ($(M)!0.4!(R1.south east)$) let
	                          \p1=($(R1.south east)-(M)$),

@JosephWright I have this but it's not that automated :)

Wow indentation is messed up.

@percusse More automated than my version: I will spend a few minutes studying!

It relies on the fact that tangents are close to south east, south west heh

@percusse You can also use tangent cs:, I'm trying that

@JLDiaz Indeed but then it will be a monster compared to the original code heheh. If the positions are fixed I think it's close enough.

\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\tikzset{
  cir/.style = {draw, circle, minimum width=1cm, minimum height=1cm}
}
\begin{tikzpicture}
  \node (M)  at (0,0) {M};
  \node (P)  at (0,1) {P};
  \draw (M) -- (P);
  \foreach \i/\angle in {1/150,2/90,3/30} {
    \path (P) +(\angle:1) node[cir] (R\i)  {R\rlap{\textsuperscript{\i}}};
    \draw (P) -- (R\i);
  }
 \draw[red] (M) -- ($(M)!1.5!(tangent cs:node=R3,point={(M)},solution=1)$);
 \draw[red] (M) -- ($(M)!1.5!(tangent cs:node=R1,point={(M)},solution=2)$);
 \draw[red] (0.515,0.5) arc (43:137:0.7);

Still the arc is "hardcoded"

@JLDiaz Sweet. combine it with the arc above and it's completely automated.

@JLDiaz, @percusse OK, so I see that you can draw two paths in one statement without a join, and that x!<value>!y refers to a coordinate along a vector

Not clear on the let business just yet!

@JosephWright let allows you to compute some numbers based in coordinates (vector lengths, angles between vectors), and then use those numbers as part of the path to draw

@JosephWright Nevermind that. It stops the path construction for a while defines some points, makes some calculations and continues path construction with the computed new numbers

I think @JLDiaz' version is better to build up on. You can just name those tangent points and do the arc thing instead of south west, south east.

@JLDiaz, @percusse Great: I'm much happier with something where I know that the intersections 'just work' rather than me doing it by hand

General question: do people use the UK-TUG FAQ?

@JosephWright I do.

@egreg Though so: so do I

@egreg We may need to find a new approach to storing the information soon-ish

I'm intrigued by the DANTE FAQ work on this (@topskip, etc.)

@JosephWright I occasionally do but don't you have some sort of a server statistics page ?

@JosephWright Is Robin retiring?

@percusse I have some

@egreg 2014

@egreg (From his job)

I have various worries related to Robin's retirement: the FAQ, CTAN and 'tex.ac.uk' all feature

@egreg He's indicated that when he finishes paid work that's it from him for the FAQ

@JosephWright So finding a new maintainer is rather urgent.

@JosephWright Maybe a collaborative FAQ infrastructure can help.

@egreg Well yes

@PauloCereda Hence looking at what DANTE are up to

@JLDiaz, @percusse I'm minded to take the figure and after a few tweaks send it to TeXample (chemistry a bit thin on the ground): is that OK?

@JosephWright No problem. It's my pleasure.

@JosephWright We need more Germans. :)

Someday I'll add a br.ctan.org :)

@JosephWright It's great to have more Chemistry examples

@StefanKottwitz Quite. I'll tidy it up a bit more, now I have the idea, and send it along later

@StefanKottwitz I might also send a version of 'ligand field stabilisation', based on the modiagram package but with some modification

My paper for the xmlprague conference was accepted. I'll present (a bit of) LuaTeX there.

xmlprague.cz

The joys of sorting out third year core lecture notes :-)

@topskip Cool

@JosephWright I am quite happy about that

@JosephWright Regarding possible FAQ hosting and alike: I have server capacity and always do like online TeX stuff. Just in the case hosting or maintenance might be needed at some time or in some years, or a new CMS

@StephanLehmke Thank you.

or if @topskip needs a root server with database and such ;-)

@StefanKottwitz Hosting not so much of an issue: UK-TUG has money, etc.

@StefanKottwitz Advice on CMS systems more to the point, but as I said I wonder about a model similar to texfragen.de

@mafp Yeah, that is what I was thinking and trying to check it with you guys.

First, though, need to see what Robin says

@StefanKottwitz I have serveral of these (2 at the moment)

@topskip Great! Then I should think about adding a CTAN mirror. I just wonder what's the load to be expected, i.e. making a virtual server with huge file system or better dedicated hardware.

@StefanKottwitz Bandwidth is usually the concern

@StefanKottwitz Or rather data transfer per month

@JosephWright Are there numbers, terabytes each month?

@StefanKottwitz Hard to pin down!

@StefanKottwitz The core server at Cambridge gets through at least 5Tb/month. DANTE used to be limited to around there by cost issues, but I think now have more to play with.

@JosephWright My hoster lets me transfer 10.000 Gigabyte per month before reducing bandwidth

@StefanKottwitz Mirrors have much less traffic

@StefanKottwitz Pretty good

@StefanKottwitz that's a lot!

@StefanKottwitz Who do you use?

We do need to more the Cambridge server, so I have a reason to be interested

@JosephWright I don't use much yet, my peak was 30 Gig in August

only traffic going to extern, to the Internet, counted

@StefanKottwitz No, who, as it 'What' the name of your host?'

Ah, ok :-) It's Hetzner.

You can get 10 TB / month and a server with terabytes hard disk space, 16 GB RAM, Quadcore, for 49 Euro / month

and more, of course, for some more money

no minimum contract time, 30 days to cancel, so pretty flexible

@StefanKottwitz I think that's the same 've got.

@JosephWright no problem at all, you're welcome

Breaking time: I need a chemist to confirm whether or not the last statement in mechanics.stackexchange.com/a/4961/1252 is correct. The statement is "Additionally, if the current drawn is too high you can start to cause chemical changes in the battery which may also shorten its life."

@GarbageCollector I'm not so sure about it. Every battery has a shorting current, which is usually between 400 A and 1000 A and it is the current that flows when you short-circuit the battery. The starter current is usually lower, but still 100's A, which is so much that the other electrictal devices are almost negligible

but it's been 5 years since I was doing any rela physics ;)

@tohecz Agree.

On the other hand, if the battery is in a bad condition, it is a good idea to start with as low consumption by other devices as possible

@tohecz Of course. :-)

So I'm somehow tempted to go there and downvote it only for Critic to be my first badge there

(of course, I would have to remove some info from my profile first to not obtain Autobiographer immediately)

We are still alive, aren't we?

@PauloCereda I am. This end of the world was a mess

@JLDiaz I wish there were meteors. :)

@PauloCereda No sign of doomsday, here.

The Brazilian Computer Society (SBC) sent me a virtual X-mas card in my mail, marked as a spam. Thank you SBC, you are a gentleman and a scholar. :)

@egreg :)

@PauloCereda I'm 45 ahead of DPC for the week, as it should be. At 17:45 (your time) Juve plays at Cagliari.

@egreg Oh! I'm gonna watch the game! :)

Well I had a little doomsday time, here. I was celebrating an exam, an a buldozzer began to demolish the neighbour building, causing a hell of noises and rumbles

@JLDiaz Oh! :(

@PauloCereda It was kind of funny, nevertheless

Hello guys!!

@Paulo Did you follow the meta book-win question? :)

@kan Yes?

@PauloCereda :) Well, I'll keep quiet, adding that you'll see good answers from me soon. :)

@kan Hm?

@PauloCereda Well, nothing! I am very happy that I won a book! :)

Bye!

@kan ooh! I had no idea you changed your username. :)

Congrats!

News from Brazil: no doom so far. :)

@PauloCereda It seemed so in the first half of the match. :) All's well that ends well. ;-)

@egreg Vidal scared me. :)

Poor Chiellini. :(

@PauloCereda Yes, a bad injury.