DragonDictate for iPhone had better learn not to write “Martian” when I say “Marshallian”. Just saying.

It’s not often you see a case where the jokes literally write themselves.

There’s also a quick screencast of it in action:

Pretty handy. I’ve incorporated this into the Emacs Starter Kit.

Found 0 errors, and 0 warnings in 0 runs

bibtex exited with status 2


Biblatex works in part by generating an additional bibfile called file-blx.bib in the same directory as the file.tex being processed. This is in addition to whatever main.bib file is being used to store actual citations and located in the BIBINPUTS directory. The problem is that that TextMate can’t find this file during its compilation sequence:

The solution is to explicitly append the current directory to BIBINPUTS in Preferences > Advanced > Shell Variables, so that instead of , say,

/Users/kjhealy/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib


you have,

/Users/kjhealy/Library/texmf/bibtex/bib:.

Note the period at the end there. That way Textmate will search the current directory for bibtex files in addition to looking wherever your .bib files are. This has been your weekend bit of Textmate nerdery.

MacBook New Feature from COREANOMAC on Vimeo.

Some people familiar with R describe it as a supercharged version of Microsoft’s Excel spreadsheet software that can help illuminate data trends more clearly than is possible by entering information into rows and columns.

On second thoughts, though, I imagine no tea was spilled. It would take rather more than that. There is the required bit of stuffy huffiness from a spokesperson for the SAS Institute, too:

SAS says it has noticed R’s rising popularity at universities, despite educational discounts on its own software, but it dismisses the technology as being of interest to a limited set of people working on very hard tasks. “I think it addresses a niche market for high-end data analysts that want free, readily available code,” said Anne H. Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS. She adds, “We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet.”

R also gets some stick (though not in the article) from the computer science side of things for being fairly slow in comparison to some potential competitors. But it’s an exemplary open-source project and is now the lingua franca of academic statistics, for good reason. In day-to-day use for its designed purpose it’s hard to beat. The commitment of many of the core project contributors is really remarkable. In the social sciences R’s main competitor is Stata, which also has many virtues (including a strong user community) but costs money to own. I like R because it helps keep your data analysis honest, it has very strong graphical capabilities, it’s a gateway to understanding new work in statistics, and it’s free. Just take my advice and be sure to read the Posting Guide before you start asking any questions on r-help.

Emacs 23 from CVS + ESS + Auctex, + a custom color theme. Brought back from the dead because while TextMate has many virtues, Emacs still, unfortunately, beats all-comers for coding with R.

Pride and Prejudice, the FaceBook feed.

And so forth.

The Cupertino, Calif., computer maker said Joel Podolny, the dean of the Yale School of Management, will join Apple as vice president and dean of Apple University. The company declined to provide details about the university or the position. Mr. Podolny will be stepping down as dean on Nov. 1, but will stay at Yale until year end, a spokeswoman for Yale said. She said Mr. Podolny will take up his new position in early 2009.

I wonder what the backstory is here. Maybe some of our OrgTheory readers (or contributors, ahem) know more about Apple’s plans. But it’s interesting to see Podolny get hired by a company that knows a great deal about the importance of status in establishing and maintaining a good position in the market. Consider just the back-cover summary of Podolny’s excellent Status Signals in light of Apple’s position in the market:

Why are elite jewelers reluctant to sell turquoise, despite strong demand? Why did leading investment bankers shun junk bonds for years, despite potential profits? Status Signals is the first major sociological examination of how concerns about status affect market competition. Starting from the basic premise that status pervades the ties producers form in the marketplace, Joel Podolny shows how anxieties about status influence whom a producer does (or does not) accept as a partner, the price a producer can charge, the ease with which a producer enters a market, how the producer’s inventions are received, and, ultimately, the market segments the producer can (and should) enter. To achieve desired status, firms must offer more than strong past performance and product quality—they must also send out and manage social and cultural signals. Through detailed analyses of market competition across a broad array of industries—including investment banking, wine, semiconductors, shipping, and venture capital—Podolny demonstrates the pervasive impact of status. Along the way, he shows how corporate strategists, tempted by the profits of a market that would negatively affect their status, consider not only whether to enter the market but also whether they can alter the public’s perception of the market.

Of course, I don’t know what Joel will be doing in his new job, but it’s hard to think of someone better-positioned intellectually to understand what Apple’s strategy in the market is all about. You can’t follow developments in the computer industry at all closely without being surprised by the persistently boneheaded advice that analysts and commentators push about Apple, almost all of which involves recommendations that the company do things that would eliminate its ability to differentiate itself from its competitors or compete in segments of the market that would preclude it from being seen as distinctive in any way.