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%%%% Document Information %%%%%
\author{Kenneth John Odle}
\title{
 {\Huge the codex} \\
 {\footnotesize Life with Linux — A Zine \\
 \bigskip
 Typeset in \LaTeX{} \\
 Issue \#004}
}
\date{\begin{small}\today{}\end{small}}

% Change the name of the TOC
\renewcommand*\contentsname{In This Issue…}

\begin{document}
\maketitle

\section*{Impressum}
All contents  \copyright2023 Kenneth John Odle

Although this is now in your hands, and it's also on the web, so if you really wanted to steal this, I've made it pretty darn easy. I can't imagine why anyone would want to, though. However, you don't need to, because this is licenced under a CC BY-NA-SA 4.0 Creative Commons license. More information is at

\kref{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/}{https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/} \includegraphics[scale=0.30]{ncsa4-0}

\medskip

FYI, this is made in \LaTeX \,using the report document class. It then gets exported to a letterhalf (5.5 in x 8.5 in) pdf, which then gets made into a booklet using PDF Booklet, which you can find at

\kref{https://pdfbooklet.sourceforge.io/wordpress/}{https://pdfbooklet.sourceforge.io/wordpress/}

\medskip

The image of Linus Torvalds on the front cover is courtesy JericoDelayah from the WikiMedia Commons. The image is from \kref{https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:4_RETAT_04_Linus_Torvalds.jpg}{https://commons.wi\\kimedia.org/wiki/File:4\_RETAT\_04\_Linus\_Torvalds.jpg} where you can also find a link to the Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0 license there, as well.

I'm pushing this to my own git server as I write this. You can find it \href{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/the-codex}{here}: \kref{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/the-codex}{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/the-codex}. New issues will be pushed after they are complete.

You can just skip over all the diversions in here if you want. It's just how my mind works. (And yes, there will be politics in this. \textit{You have been warned.}) Also, I use a lot of em-dashes, parentheses, and footnotes because that is also how my mind works. It's just one big long stream of consciousness up in here most days.

\medskip

\noindent \textbf{Errata:} To err is human, to document those errors is divine. A list of errata can be found at

\kref{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/the-codex/wiki/Errata}{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/the-codex/wiki/Errata}.

\medskip

\noindent \textbf{Credit where credit is due:} A lot of people have come forth (mostly from Reddit) to help me out in various ways. See the preamble to this document in the source code to see them. One aspect of our society is that nobody \textit{has} to help you. It is wonderful when it happens, and I am grateful for their help.


\tableofcontents

\chapter{The Final Salad Days}

\section{College, 2008}

Bush II decided to tank the economy for ordinary people so that rich people could get richer.\footnote{This is the second of three "once in a lifetime" recessions I have lived through. Yay, capitalism!} I decided to go back into teaching (which, thanks to current conservative political policies\footnote{Along with the asshole behavior of parents who approve of those policies.} there will always be a demand for), which meant I needed to go back to college to renew my teaching license. But this is a whole other story for which I have run out of space, so it will have to go in a future issue.

\section{Today}

\chapter{Math in \LaTeX{} with \texttt{align} and \texttt{array}}

\chapter{Searching your Bash History}

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-shell-history-search-command/

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-bash-history-commands-and-expansions-on-a-linux-vps

https://superuser.com/questions/7414/how-can-i-search-the-bash-history-and-rerun-a-command

https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/bash/manual/bash.html\#Bindable-Readline-Commands

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7131670/make-a-bash-alias-that-takes-a-parameter

https://tecadmin.net/how-to-create-bash-aliases-with-parameters/

\chapter{Other Flavors of Linux}

I admit, I am pretty invested in Ubuntu. But I don't have to be that way. There are \textit{lots} of ways to swim in the Linux pool. Just doing a quick search for ``linux flavors'' yields a lot of options:

\begin{center}
\fbox{\includegraphics[scale=0.35]{flavours}}
\end{center}

This also omits Edubuntu which, as a former teacher, I am very interested in.

\chapter{What's to Like About Linux}



\section{bash Aliases for \texttt{git}}



\chapter{The Right Ways vs The Wrong Ways}

A lot of grew up hearing that ``there's a right way to do things and a wrong way to do things.'' I don't disagree that there is always a \textit{wrong} way to do things, but like house maintenance, working on computers quickly teaches you that there are a lot of wrong ways to do things. 

Experience has shown me that not all wrong ways are wrong in the same way or to the same degree, and that the same is true of right ways. There may be multiple right ways to get something done, but some require less work and some require more work. It is not just a black-and-white issue. 

In the past few years, I've started things less in terms of a particular ``right way'' opposed to a particular ``wrong way'', and started thinking in terms of a spectrum of choices, some of which are obviously wrong (but wrong to varying degrees) and some of which are right because they work, but you have to take different roads to get there. 

What I have tried to do here is to create a hierarchy of ``rightness'' and ``wrongness'' as a way to organize my thinking on this subject; I can then jump in and discuss why things fall the way they do. No doubt, other people might have more distinctions or fewer in their hierarchy, or might have things in a separate order, or might have different reasons. 

And, as we shall see, sometimes it's beneficial to do something the wrong way.

\newpage % Move this list to a new page.

\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
\item \textbf{Very Wrong}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It doesn't work and it breaks things in weird places.
	\item It doesn't work and it breaks almost everything. 
	\item It doesn't work but it only breaks a few local things.
	\end{itemize}
\item \textbf{Wrong}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It works, but it breaks things in weird places.
	\item It works, but it breaks almost everything else.
	\item It works, but it still manages to break a few local things.
	\end{itemize}
\item \textbf{Wrong\textit{ish}}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It works in this specific instance, but not in all instances.
	\item It works, but it's far more work than it should be.
	\end{itemize}
\item \textbf{Right\textit{ish}}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It works, but you have no idea why.
	\item It works, but it requires you to rework some other pieces.
	\item It works, but it's a bit of a kludge.
	\end{itemize}
\item \textbf{Right}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It works, and is considered a best practice.
	\end{itemize}
\item \textbf{Genius}
	\begin{itemize}[noitemsep]
	\item It's a true hack.
	\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}

\section*{Very Wrong Ways}

Very wrongs ways are very wrong because not only do they not work, they take other things down with them. 

\paragraph{It doesn't work and it breaks things in weird places.} You may wonder why this is worse than ``It doesn't work and it breaks almost everything else'' but for me the answer is simple: it can be terribly difficult to find those weird places. When I say ``weird'' I mean that they may be obscure places that nobody looks, they may be distant from the current situation and apparently unconnected,\footnote{But nothing is \textit{truly} disconnected from anything else.}, or they may be things that you don't have to rely on very often, so you may not discover that they are broken until days, weeks, or even months later.

\paragraph{It doesn't work and it breaks almost everything else.} This is bad, but it is not bad as the previous example, because it has two advantages. First, because almost everything is breaking, those breaks are pretty obvious. Second, because almost everything is breaking, this provides you an opportunity to look at the overall structure of your project and examine how all the different parts are connected. There may be connections that you weren't aware of. You may realize that some things are connected that shouldn't be or that some things aren't connected that should be. Sometimes it takes a real disaster to point out the strengths and weaknesses of your system.

\paragraph{It doesn't work and it still manages to break a few local things.} No complaints here. You have to undo what you did and maybe fix a few things, but you probably don't have a whole lot more to think about here. 

\section*{Wrong Ways}

Wrong ways may work, but they break other things along the way. As we shall see, this is not always a bad thing. 

\paragraph{It works, but it breaks things in weird places.} Again, the main issue here is that those weird places may not be obvious at first. You might use this technique, and it looks like it's working fine, but suddenly there is a person in Germany whose toilet no longer flushes properly. Or it works fine for you now, but in ten months \textit{your} toilet no longer flushes properly. And because these two things are so separated in place (in the former case) or time (in the latter case) it can be difficult to connect the two things, and we might end up spending a lot of time going down rabbit holes when the real solution is right in front of us the entire time. We waste time and effort. 

\paragraph{It works, but it breaks almost everything else.} This is almost exactly like ``It doesn't work and it breaks almost everything else'' except that your solution \textit{does} work. You just need to look at your overall system and figure out why everything else is going into meltdown mode.

\paragraph{It works, but it still manages to break a few local things.} Even though this is listed as a wrong way---you are still breaking things, after all---this is not always a bad outcome to experience. It's possible that those few things that are breaking are breaking because they are weak. If you strengthen those items and then apply this technique, it turns out that this isn't actually wrong after all, it only seemed wrong at the time. In the end, you have a much project that is much less fragile overall. 

\section*{Wrong\textit{ish} Ways}

\paragraph{It works in this specific instance, but not in all instances.} It works, so why is this way still wrong? Because it's not \textit{universal} for all similar situations. If it works in \textit{this one particular instance} but not similar instances, and you don't know why, then there is something about this particular instance that you are not aware of. This is not a bad thing if you're willing to chase down that unknown thing; it's potentially disastrous if you are not. 

\paragraph{It works, but it's far more work than it should be.} This is often a case of not having the right tools, or having the right tools but not knowing how to use them. If you need to dig a ditch, a shovel will work, but a backhoe works much better. All that time you spent working with a shovel is time you could have spent doing something else.

\section*{Right\textit{ish} Ways}

\paragraph{It works, but you have no idea why.} I was very tempted to put this in the wrong\textit{ish} section, and in some cases it may certainly belong there. Quite frankly, you should know why a technique works. Not knowing why can be dangerous, because you assume too much about this particular technique. That may cause you to be a bit overconfident with it, and use it in a situation that doesn't really warrant its use.

\paragraph{It works, but it requires you to rework some other parts of the project.} I admit, I was at a lost as to where to put this one. And I guess it depends if you are using a kludge or a best practice, so I'm going to assume you are using a best practice. In which case, this shows you places that you were possibly \textit{not} using something which is a best practice, and now you need to make those things better.

\paragraph{It works, but it's a bit of a kludge.} A kludge is not always a bad thing (sometimes you have to work with what you have) but they are at best, inelegant, and at worst weighty and ugly. But they work for now, they don't break things, and they will last until you learn or can afford a better way. (I created a bit of a kludge when I couldn't figure out how to indent a bibliography entry. \footnote{You can see it in action in this commit for a different project: \kref{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/Notes-on-Python/commit/d4f93ec00f1e1078b1cfcb3aacd3481eb82bb0cd}{https://git.kjodle.net/kjodle/Notes-on-Python/commit/d4f93ec00f1e1078b1cfcb3a\\acd3481eb82bb0cd}.} Does it work? Yes. Am I happy with it? Not entirely. I'm 75\% there is a better way to do this, but I haven't found it yet. But it works for now, and I've marked it as a kludge, so I know this is something that I can come back to later. At least I made this less weighty and hid its heft and inelegance by turning it into a macro.)

\section*{Right Ways}

\paragraph{It works, and is considered a best practice.} A best practice is one that has generally been accepted as the best way to do things not because it is perfect, but because it produces results that are better than the results achieved by other methods. This is a good thing. A best practice is a best practice because it's proven itself. It's not perfect (hence it's a ``best practice'' not a ``perfect practice''), but you can count on it to get the job done. And because it is a best practice, when things go pear-shaped, it's probably because of something you've done, but if it isn't, there will most likely be a lot of people who are \textit{very} interested in helping you.

Unfortunately, sometimes a best practice is arrived at that for no other reason than ``that's how we've always done it and nothing has exploded yet.'' That's not great, but still, have a fire extinguisher handy.

\section*{Genius Ways}

\paragraph{It's a true hack.}

As I said way back in the first issue, I define a hack as ``an appropriate application of ingenuity''\footnote{See \kref{http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html}{http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/meaning-of-hack.html} for more information.}. These are rare, often false (it only resembles a hack; like the wizard in \textit{The Wizard of Oz}, it's based on smoke and mirrors), and even more often small.\footnote{You can usually identify a false hack by how large it is.} If you find one, enjoy it, preserve, and help to disseminate it.

\chapter{Not Another PDF Scanner}

Way back in issue \#1 of this zine\footnote{Which is only three issues ago, but considering that I published it in 2021, it seems \textit{like} a long time ago. I really need to get my act together and get these out on a more regular basis.} I talked about a workflow for scanning documents because I am trying to be as digital as possible.

In that article ``A Scanner Darkly, but with a workflow'' I mentioned that I used one piece of commercial software (VueScan) because it did what no FOSS\footnote{Free and Open Source} software could do: work with my printer and also sort pages effectively when my scanner's ADF\footnote{Automatic Document Feeder} does not duplex (i.e., it does not flip pages over to scan the other side). And while it is great software, and I did not mind paying the \$100 for a one-year subscription to it (the software company behind it is pretty much a father and son team), I didn't like being dependent on it. 

The reasoning is simple. If a company decides to stop producing a product, that's it; you're done. I used to have a great plugin on my WordPress sites that added social media sharing icons to each post. The company that made it got bought out by Oracle. You might think this is a great thing, because Oracle is a big huge company with a lot of resources. But often, when big huge companies buy small independent companies, they are only interested in one or two of their products, and let the rest go. And this is exactly what happened. Oracle suddenly decided they weren't going to support this plugin and it just stopped working. The company's webpage for the plugin redirected to an Oracle page that basically said ``fuck off'' and little more. No explanation, no recommendations of similar plugins, nothing.

At least when FOSS software projects get abandoned or the original developers get better paying jobs delivering pizza, there is always the chance that someone else will take over the project. Better yet, you—yes, \textit{you}—can donate money to the project to help support it.

I first found out about NAPS2\footnote{\kref{https://www.naps2.com/}{https://www.naps2.com/}} because I had downloaded a book from the Internet Archive\footnote{\textit{Inherit the Stars} by James P. Hogan, which you can read at \kref{https://archive.org/details/inheritstars00jame}{https://archive.org/deta\\ils/inheritstars00jame}} and the pages were very, very yellowed. (It had been scanned from a pulp paperback printed on cheap paper with a high acid content. How seldom we plan for the future!) 

I was looking for a way to lighten the background of the pages so that it would be easier to read. My usual solution for this would be to open the pdf in GIMP, opening each page as a separate layer. I could then figure out the settings for one page, convert that into a script (GIMP is scriptable!), apply that script to every single layer, and export the entire thing as a pdf, remembering to tick the box that says to export layers as pages, and also to do it in reverse order.

That's not a huge amount of work, but it's still—work. Surely, there has to be a more automated way to do this, no?

I searched and I searched, and I was rewarded for that search. Someone mentioned that a program called NAPS2 had this very feature. The name didn't hurt at all—at this point in my life, I am very much in favor of naps, unlike the five year old version of me.

Even better, NAPS2 had an ``interleave'' feature, which meant that I didn't need to use \texttt{pdftk} to do that.\footnote{To be fair, this is a feature which VueScan also eventually added at some point.} So scanning longer two-sided documents suddenly became a lot easier.

The only problem was that NAPS2 offered \textit{four} versions of this command: interleave, deinterleave, alternate interleave, and alternate deinterleave. (These are very neatly contained under the ``Reorder'' icon in the main menu.) I knew one of those was what I needed; I just needed to figure out which.


\begin{figure}[h]
\caption{The document as originally drawn}
\centering
\kpage{1}\kpage{2}\kpage{3}\kpage{4}\kpage{5}\kpage{6}\kpage{7}\kpage{8}\kpage{9}\kpage{10}
\end{figure}


\begin{figure}[h]
\caption{The document as originally scanned}
\centering
\kpage{1}\kpage{3}\kpage{5}\kpage{7}\kpage{9}\kpage{10}\kpage{8}\kpage{6}\kpage{4}\kpage{2}
\end{figure}


\begin{figure}[h]
\caption{The document after applying ``Alternate Interleave''}
\centering
\kpage{1}\kpage{2}\kpage{3}\kpage{4}\kpage{5}\kpage{6}\kpage{7}\kpage{8}\kpage{9}\kpage{10}
\end{figure}


\chapter{Chemistry in \LaTeX{}}

\section{Package \texttt{hmchem}}

For typesetting chemical equations:

\ce{CO2 + C -> 2 CO}

\ce{Hg^2+ ->[I-] HgI2 ->[I-] [Hg^{II}I4]^2-}

\ce{1/2H2O}

\section{Package \texttt{chemformula}}

For typesetting chemical compounds and reactions:

\ch{KCr(SO4)2 * 12 H2O}

\ch{[Cu(NH3)4]^2+}

\ch{$2n$ Na + $n$ Cl2 -> $2n$ NaCl} \par

\ch{\{[CH2=CH-CH2]- <-> {}[CH2-CH=CH2]- \}} \par

\section{Package \texttt{chemfig}}

For drawing molecules:

Glucose:

\chemfig{?(-[:190]OH)-[:-50](-[:170]OH)-[:10](-[:-55,0.7]OH)
-[:-10](-[6,0.7]OH)-[:130]O-[:190]?(-[:150,0.7]-[2,0.7]OH)}


\chapter{A \texttt{git} Workflow}



\chapter{More about those folders in \texttt{root}}



\chapter{Coda}

\section{What I Learned About \LaTeX{} While Creating This Issue}

\subsection{Page Count using \texttt{detex}}

\subsection{How to Create Macros}

\section{What I learned About \LaTeX{} While Creating Something Else}

\end{document}
