A few days ago my todo list was empty. Today I have my window open because my office was getting a bit stuffy. Spring is here! Wey Hey!

I just spent 40 minutes trying to get the Bioinformatics class files working under linux. Pain in the ass. The problem is that Ubuntu has moved from teTeX to TeXLive, so things are all different. Canonical have also screwed around with TeXLive and teTeX a little also, so that they can install either; hence you have /usr/share/texmf-texlive rather than /usr/share/texmf. Under no circumstances could I get it to work; it just would not recognise the class file.

I tried:

• adding it to ~/documents/tex which is my TEXINPUTS. This is my usual technique. Didn't work.
• Adding it to ~/texmf which is, apparently, the recommended technique. Didn't work.
• Adding it to /usr/share/texmf-texlive and running texhash and makelsr. Didn't work.
• Adding it to /var/tex. Didn't work.
• Adding it to the same directory as the .tex file. Didn't work.
• Swearing a lot. Didn't work. Didn't even make me feel better.

LaTeX really irritates me at time; the problem, is been around so long, and much of the documentation that you find on the web is woefully out-of-date. The lack of debugging statements don't help. It's really hard. Sometimes, you feel it must have been written by a bunch of idiots.

After 40 minutes, I fixed it. The file is bioinfo.cls, not bioinf.cls.

My todo list is empty.

Really! Empty! I mean, like, with nothing in it, with nothing immediate, no heavy deadlines hanging over my head. Tomorrow I can do something fun, like some research or think of something new. Wey, Hey.

I'm going home to eat pancakes.

I'm kind of irritated by the response to David Nutt's comments on Ecstasy and horse riding. He's been widely slated by various politicians, desperate to get their "tough on drugs" soundbites.

"There's no comparison", said one. "Horse riding teaches you discipline", he said, making a comparison. Well, yes, maybe it does. But it also rather likely to kill, cripple or maim you.

It's not an issue of choice, of opinion, whether horse riding and ecstasy are as dangerous as each other, it's an issue of evidence, and measurement. We can, potentially, answer the question. What we choose to do about it is a different issue, but, having measured the risk, to argue against ecstacy on the basis of danger is a poor argument if there are many other equivalent activities.