It is a beautifully warm day in Chicago. The sun is shining and the crazy orange lady bugs that seem more present than Cubs fans are flying erratically outside of my window. Thick and round they fly as if they were little alien spaceships buzzing round and round.. And yes, they sting. Despite the pull to be outdoors, today I have made progress is setting up what I will call my “dissertation environment.” Although I first balked at the idea of writing on CVS(Concurrent Versions System) which is what programmers use to produce code collaboratively (or just keep track of versions), I am convinced it is the way to go. Thanks to the help of my friend and sometime collaborator, Mako Hill (who is sort of like those lady bugs, full of quirky energy), I have learned some of the ins and outs of CVS (on past projects) and now we have a directory set up for my dissertation.

Now, I have to find the right style sheets (or I guess create them) for TeX which is a typsetting program, not unlike html or XML, that I will use to write my dissertation. Once you have it set up, it is actually quite easy to use and then with the change of a few commands you can completely change the layout. I hear this is a good guide and then there is this nice online guide. One of the things that I am learning is how to use BibTex which is the tex program for writing and formatting bibliographies. It is really snazzy, yes snazzy is the word to describe it although I have to play with it more. I am also afraid that there is no “anthro style” but I think the chicago style is close and can me modified to make it match.

So geeky, no? I mean I might as well match the content of my project (geeks) with the form of producing it (geek tools)… I remember years ago that someone told me I should write my dissertation in TeX and I laughed… Right. I was wrong.