Dan Drake / Department of Mathematical Sciences / KAIST

Sage

I use and contribute to Sage, an open-source mathematics computing system whose mission is to create a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab. Read about why you should use Sage and download it today!

I’ve set up a public Sage server here at KAIST: you can access it at http://sagenb.kaist.ac.kr.

Zotero

Zotero is a web service that is a great tool for helping research. It keeps track of your references, makes it super easy to capture information, search and sort that information, and then put references into your documents. It has synchronization features that make it super easy to have access to all your data everywhere you go.

Zotero works mostly as a Firefox plugin, but is now available as a standalone program. When it was only a Firefox plugin, I initially thought putting a citation manager into your browser was not a great idea, but think about it: if you are using a computer to look up information about a reference, what kind of software are you using? You’re using a web browser — so put the citation manager where the action is. Zotero is open source and works very well. I recommend it.

Get Zotero

CiteULike

CiteULike is a great service for keeping track of all your references. It stores PDFs, lets you add notes, and is moving towards some useful social networking features. Have a look at the things I’ve bookmarked. I’ve mostly abandoned CiteULike in favor of Zotero, but it’s still a nice service.

Ubuntu Linux

South Korea is still firmly gripped by a Windows monopoly (although it’s getting better), but if you’d like to get away from ActiveX plugins whose only reliable function is to BSOD your computer, I recommend installing Ubuntu (or another Linux distribution). It works really well, doesn’t crash, and is easy to install. Get it today!

Get Ubuntu

Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference

I was one of the organizers of the inaugural Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference at the University of Minnesota in April 2005. I’m delighted to see that the conference is continuing, and even getting NSF funding!