h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think three are bad enough (two for my conversations and one to be doing the front page stuff) I have been known to have more open - especially in slack times at work.
Talking of work Joanna, I'm trying to do something to get a set of glyphs (oh look he know's some proper fancy words he does, thinks he's some kind of a professor does he ) of the greek symbols together to be used on here. When I get some more time to do a load of cutting and pasting of picture files I might get it finished. I blame all the talking , in here, down the pub and the rest.

I did some to
But they're very iffey, and at http://www.geocities.com/joannastarr/greek.html (me? too much free time?) I showed Peta; and I put a couple in the footnotes of the photoelectric effect. I meant to tell you too, but it slipped my mind, sorry. Peta said it was something that they were going to have to deal with, show her yours too.

They look good they do! What did you use to produce them? I'm currently working on a cut and paste job from having used latex to write out the (lower case) greek alphabet and then converted it into png, gif and jpg picture formats with yet more software.

Anyway you shouldn't have too much free time, you're not an arts student

Paint shop pro & a symbol font... probably a breech of copyright. Unfortunately the cropping's not good at all... they look pretty, they don't go in text too well. I couldn't be bothered with different file types...
What is latex? it was on the message of the day at uni a couple of weeks ago, but they didn't say what it was!

Latex is a set of macros for Tex. Tex (pronounced tech - the x should be a chi symbol) is a markup language for producing computer typeset stuff. It was brought into being by Donald Knuth when he found the proofs he got back of his second volume of The Art Of Computer Programming weren't up to his high standards. He went away and researched typesetting and in particular maths stuff and the wrote a program to do it
More on Donald Knuth here http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/
More on Latex and Tex here http://www.tug.org/

Thanks for those links. I've glanced at them, and will take a closer look when I don't have to go to a lecture in 5 mins. Seems like a good idea.

It is, most people I know who did science and engineering stuff beyond a first degree level have used it to write dissertations and theses.
There are a lot of tutorial documents on how to use LaTex on the web, I'm sure doing a search of yahoo* will get you lots of links to documents and the like.

One of the interesting things about Tex, is that given it was developed before the era of mass high resolution monitors it produces output in its own format, dvi, which then is processed for the output device (printers, screens) it's to be viewed on. It also means that the output you get in one format is the same as another.

*There are other search engines availiable

Having it work cross platform seems a great thing. I'll do that search....
PS LOL at that footnote

How come no-one ever interviews me? I have a very interesting life story.

Hi there VFT (sorry to be informal, but typing out your name all the time can get to be hard work ). I've not been interviewed either so don't feel that you're the only one left out.
We could always interview each other..

So Venus FT how did you come to be a guide researcher?
Do you enjoy H2G2?
What do you feel that you contribute to the community?
What do you feel that you recieve from the community?

There that should be a good start.

Hi Phil! Yes, you can call me VFT, or just V's fine.
How did I get to be a guide researcher? That's quite a story - I'm not really sure - I kind of just appeared, really.SOundssilly, but it's true!
The main thing I contribute to the community is jokes. Have you seen the Joke Directory? I've put all the jokes I know on it. Go to my homepage and click the link from there!
What I've recieved from the community - not that much yet.
And the same questions to you!

How did I get to be a guide researcher? I found link from /. ( http://slashdot.org/ ). Looked at what I found and thought it was good. Stayed a while lurking then started to talk to people. Now I don't stop
The main thing I contribute? Difficult, I try and answer questions that are in my fields of expertise (see the home page to find out what I do/did) and I talk about things I think should be talked about in fora, making additions based on my experiences and general ability to talk about subjects I have nothing more than a passing knowledge of and make it sound as if I do know the answer
What have I recieved from the community? A huge phone bill, a royally aproved title.

Anyone else want to take the alternative H2G2 five minute interview?

I also read about h2g2 in slashdot, but did nothing until I saw it mentioned in The Guardian, then also lurked for quite a while before taking the plunge.
I want to contribute more to the h2g2 community. My phone company has just introduced £10 a month surfing.
h2g2 addiction has rescued me from a previous web cam habit, which is now under control. (honest)
Techie question for you Phil, or anyone else. I expect the £10 deal will see me on line more from home. I've been to: http://privacy.net/analyze and had my ports probed at http://www.grc.com
Should I be concerned at this?

I don't really know
Isn't anyone addicted anymore?

Yes, but this thread is taking *ages* to load!

I still am!

Could we move it?
(Isn't there some way to do that???)

New thread:
http://www.h2g2.com/forumframe.cgi?forum=26623&thread=41925

Stay addicted. Its much more fun.

Ok I'm working on something, I'll try and get it done this weekend if I can get Dial-Up networking working on the win9X setup I've got at home (It was much easier using Linux to get connected )