Exporting Powerpoint Figures to Latex on Mac

I wanted to quickly write down how to export Powerpoint figures to use within pdflatex on Mac OS X, since a quick Googling didn't turn up a straightforward explanation:

1. Ensure the figure is on its own slide.
2. Print the slide to a PDF.
3. Open the PDF in Skim.
4. Do Tools -> Select Tool.
5. Select the figure and adjust the borders of the selection appropriately.
6. Do Tools -> Crop Page.
7. Do File -> Export..., pick a file name, and choose "PDF with Embedded Notes" as the file format.
8. Include the resulting file in the Latex document, e.g., using graphicx.

The Office has jumped the shark

I found the first four episodes of this season of The Office to be distinctly worse than the best episodes of past seasons. The show is getting too weighed down by several long-running plot lines, none of which are interesting dramatically. (Jim and Pam's story was never interesting, and neither was the equivalent plot in the British Office.) Hopefully this is just a bad streak, but I think it's more likely that the show has just jumped the shark.

Updated version of Multi-column articles

I've updated my multi-column articles Greasemonkey script to coincide with the release of Firefox 3. The coolest new feature is automatic hyphenation (only works in Firefox 3), accomplished via the awesome hyphenator script. In my experience, automatic hyphenation sometimes provides a significant improvement in readability. Also, support for many more sites has been added in the last few releases, along with other bug fixes. If you installed my script a while ago, it's a good time to update (which requires uninstalling the script and then installing the new version; not sure how to do better).

Professor of Conservative Thought at CU

Take a listen to this interview with University of Colorado chancellor Bud Peterson regarding his effort to create an endowed chair for a Professor of Conservative Thought at the university (and read this article for background). I find it extremely disappointing that a university chancellor would make such inane arguments about the need for such a position, e.g., that the current faculty don't have sufficient expertise to teach the relevant topics. If this is really about plugging a hole in faculty expertise, why even bring up the so-called "liberal bias" in the personal political views of CU faculty? Absolutely infuriating. Rice and Keats has more.

David Simon speaks

David Simon answers some questions about the fifth season of The Wire. I think he has some great responses to the bigger criticisms of this season that have been circulating around. Can't believe there are only a couple episodes left...

HBO Online No Good

I was so excited when I saw the headline "HBO Putting Shows Online, at No Additional Charge." Then I read the article:

The free service will allow access to about 400 hours of movies and original programming each month. It will be made available only to people already subscribing to HBO, and it will be marketed and delivered through cable operators.

“There are a lot of people, particularly young people, who are watching TV through the PC. We wanted to create a product for them,” said Eric Kessler, a co-president of HBO.

Most major television networks already make much of their programming available free on the Internet. But as a channel with 29 million subscribers, HBO cannot afford to bypass its cable partners.

That really sucks. If HBO wants to reduce downloads of their shows through other channels, they need to address the needs of people who want to pay HBO for their shows but not buy digital cable and 500 other channels.