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· 24 February 2013 ·

Why do journals provide broken BibTeX files?

I have already written about my love for BibTeX and BibDesk for referencing. One of the best things about it is that you can often fetch bibliographic information straight from the journal’s websites, Google Scholar or other sources.

However, whilst this is great most of the time, there are many cases where journals are delivering broken BibTeX that BibDesk cannot parse, or that are just not well formed. What’s following is a brief rant on journal’s low quality BibTeX download and a few general observations.

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· 12 April 2012 ·

Easing the pain of referencing, part II: Gathering bibliographical information

In part I of this brief guide to academic referencing software, I introduced BibDesk and Mendeley as two examples of full-featured referencing software. In part II, I will briefly hint at different means of extracting bibliographical data from Google Scholar and journal websites, that can be used by BibDesk and other BibTex based software. Some of these hints also work with other reference managers. This article is more advanced than the previous one. You should be reasonably confident in your usage of BibDesk or Bibtex.

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· 19 March 2012 ·

Batch conversion of HTML5 compatible video

Recently I had to develop a website that is using html5’s new <video> element excessively. I had to convert at least 10 videos from the original mov to webm, theora, and x264. If this was audio, I would simply be using the extremely handy MAX Unfortunately, I did not find a similar programme for video files, whereas I created a short bash script that does the job.

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· 30 November 2011 ·

Easing the pain of referencing, Part I: Reference Managers

When you’re writing an academic article, one of the most annoying parts of the process is getting your references right. It’s an annoying but necessary task, that requires a large chunk of time that would be better spent on getting the content right. However, with the help of a referencing software you can reduce this hassle significantly.

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· 20 June 2010 ·

The Sun is rising...

Since my bike got stolen over Easter, I need a new one. I decided to go back to the Common Wheel Project, a Glasgow-based charity that employs people with mental illness to build and repair bikes. It’s a brilliant project and they do a very good job at building bikes, too. Plus, they are a bit geeky.

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