Well, you must tell me, baby how your head feels under something like that

[austin_dern]

I finally got around to backing up what I should have and thus having the computer reasonably safe to install Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. This was fairly painless, although there was one menu option which I don't think they meant to say old user accounts would be wiped out, but there was enough ambiguity to my mind -- which finds critical ambiguities in E-Z Pass lane signs -- that I used a more complicated installation scheme. But the computer came through intact and critical Mac-type programs were in running order.

It's the Unix side in which I had problems. As always the new operating system wiped out the fortran compiler as well as LaTeX, the powerful and strangely pleasurable typesetting package essential for doing mathematical symbols without going insane. I was fairly sure I kept notes about just what I did last time I went through this, but I don't remember where I put them and in any case the links would probably have rotted away by now. Currently I have a whole new LaTeX distribution installed, and I have at last f77 installed, although none of my old programs quite work with it.

The critical failing in the new system: Photoshop 7.0 stopped working. I thought I was just missing some file somewhere, as Photoshop insists on having files distributed over about 90 percent of the hard drive, but close examination of the installation log indicated I didn't miss anything. It turns out that Photoshop 7.0 just doesn't work at all with Leopard and Adobe's implied response is that you should buy a legitimate copy of the new Photoshop, you cheap software-pirating creep you. Perhaps a fair position for them to take, but the upgrade alone is US$200 and I know I won't get two hundred dollars' use out of it before OS 10.6 Andean Mountain Cat invalidates Photoshop CSX-2.0³₈ FMTX + 2 ¹₈.

Trivia: The American Standards Association first formed a committee to establish uniform containerized cargo container sizes in 1958. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy.

Currently Reading: Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics, Bruce Clarke.

Comments

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this helpful review, sir! Sorry to hear about your woes though...
How do we tell the world that "upgrades" usually means breaking things, learning curves, new purchases, time setbacks and a general assortment of miseries...? ... :/

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, for the most part it's small things, at least. Usually the worst broken stuff just needs patching or sometimes re-installation to work again. It's not really all that different from how when you take all the furniture out of the room to re-paint it and really deep-clean the rugs, it never quite all fits back again the same way.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

I'd love to buy a legitimate copy of InDesign for my publishing work, but at $700... well, it's really hard to meet that when I'm working for a bunch of not-for-profits and one for-profit that can't yet afford to pay wages, let alone buy software. I really haven't anything to upgrade from, either. The last graphics software I purchased legitimately was Corel 6.

As for LaTex, I've learned how to use it for the basics of typesetting, but there don't seem to be any resources out there for how to create the files that tell LaTeX how to format what you've given it. In other words, custom typesetting has been sadly out of my reach.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You really have to suspect that if this professional-grade software weren't priced as more expensive than our fathers' first cars that they'd actually sell copies to people who need them instead of having everybody at the same department borrow the installation disks for their home computers ``for work needs'' and then keep the installation even ten years after they left the company.

I've learned some of the tricks for fancier formatting in LaTeX, although most of what I really want to do is altering typefaces. I've done a bit with adjusting the sizes and setting interesting tables of text for the top of my résumé, but otherwise I really use it because there's no way to put mathematics equations in sensibly.

The trouble with LaTeX is, yeah, nobody seems to bother making any tutorials that go past ``you create a table of contents by using the \tableofcontents command'' and detail the jillions of things that can be tinkered with. What i've relied on for advanced formatting tricks is pulling the .tex files out of things like ésumé files and then trying to take only the good parts out. Most of that has amounted to ways to set the typeface, though, with the occasional attempt to make a better page header or footer for flavor.