Just a guy, bout to get my PhD in experimental particle physics. I like hockey, basketball, DND, science, and audio equipment.

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  • 9 Posts
  • 18 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • It was funky and felt distinctly un-LaTeX with the pdf cropping and graphic declarations, but was super fun. Way different from academic writing or even hobby typesetting with normal, pre-made classes (the DnD 5e LaTeX Template by rpgtex is a gamechanger for homebrewed dnd content and was the catalyst for this). The standalone document class is really weird to work with, and using tcolorboxes as the main document content feels like I am fitting a square peg into a non-euclidean hole, but it is still working!

    I am just glad I decided to use LaTeX and not python for this.



  • LaTeX is a typeset that is written in plain text with Markup language. Word, docs, acrobat are all WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors, so you type the words and use toolbars to edit formatting. In markup, what you write is what you get: you type everything, including the commands for alignment, spacing, etc. It makes control and customization of your document easier. If you ever have tried to use MS Word to make a good looking equation and wanted to die when it messed up your images and spacing 10 pages back, markup typesetting is the solution.

    My tip would be to find a few templates on overleaf that you might find useful and just mess around and try to come up with what you want to see. Could be for work documents, could be for a hobby, whatever. Overleaf, the website I shared this project on, is great because it handles the backend stuff like compiling, software installs, etc. and allows you to easily copy templates over from premade projects in the gallery.

    I learned to use it for writing scientific publications, but eventually I used it for all my homework, making ‘official’ looking DnD content, keeping a log of my work; basically most documents that are longer than 1 page. It is particularly good for science and math writing, but is almost as versatile as HTML for whatever you want to make.






  • Sometimes, mainly when it is stuff that isn’t rooted in true or false. If I am factually wrong, it isn’t usually concious and I tend realize my mistake after the fact. If I am in the wrong in an emotional/moral way, I tend to realize my mistake while I am still emotionally charged, so I am not always ready to acknowledge it or effectively communicate my apology, though I still try to either admit fault or tell the other person I’d like to discuss it after I have calmed down.

    Either way, I usually allow some amount of time for self reflection, which I think is better for me. It allows me to formulate my reasoning for apologizing/admitting my mistake, calm down, and let go of the ego. I have found that even if there is a long pause, the other person almost always will take the follow up discussion with kindness and respect, and appreciates the emotional/intellectual honesty and vulnerability. Nobody has ever rubbed it in my face. Which helps encourage the practice going forward.

    It also, in general, facilitates better real-time admission of incorrectness to practice in this way.


  • I have struggled against this for a long time. I tend to be a pretty prideful person and the urge to shift blame when I fuck up and deflect when faced with being wrong is something that has I have to actively work to correct. The difference for me came when I was younger in dealing with my parents: My dad was far from perfect and there were plenty of times he was in the wrong, but always made sure to sit down with me and apologize if he fucked up. My mom, for the most part, was better at avoiding being in the wrong in the first place, but when she was, I never once got her to apologize or admit her mistake. Of the two, I was hurt far more by the latter, and make it a point to be willing to admit my shortcomings.

    The most difficult part after I identified it as an issue is to not let my willingness to apologize/admit my mistake become a carte blanche for continuing the behavior. If I fuck up, apologizing only means something if I work on the mistake. If I am wrong about somethimg, I should learn about both the thing and where my misconceptions came from.

    For a lot of people, realizing it is an issue is difficult, because you first have to let go of the pride by acknowledging it. Shame isn’t a good motivator, as it makes most people double down on pride.