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"goals: ... replace the second page with a scanned copy ...after it was signed by the examiners... reproducibly." Oh man, purist side quests like this are exac

"goals: ... replace the second page with a scanned copy ...after it was signed by the examiners... reproducibly." Oh man, purist side quests like this are exactly how I would procrastinate a philosophy dissertation. But building a complex process for _reproducibly_ handling the once-in-a-lifetime event of accepting your dissertation examiners' signatures is taking it to a whole other level.

anonymouskimmer 3y ago
For my M.S. I just looked up the relevant PDF merge utility for Linux online. I can't even remember what it was now, but it took the first x pages from the unsigned thesis, intercollated the signed signing page, and then took the remaining pages from the unsigned thesis, and output a single PDF. Edit: .zsh_history had it: > pdftk A=thesis.pdf B=approval.pdf cat A1-5 B1 A7-end output signed_thesis.pdf
- heyoni 3y ago
  How have you never cleared out your history? Or do you rarely use your terminal? /edit not cleared but filled up so that it gets rotated out
  - stevekemp 3y ago
    Not the parent, but I always tried to keep an "infinite" bash shell history, on each of my machines. Nowadays I run a mac at work, and I use "atuin" which stores zsh history in an SQLite database. No fear of losing anything, and it really can save you in a lot of ways.
    - sitkack 3y ago
      Have you thought of recording everything with space ASCII cinema?
- cinntaile 3y ago
  This doesn't really work as intended when I tried to do something similar. Pdftk produces pdfs that were much bigger than the ones generated by LaTeX and you might end up outside of the allowed size range.
earthboundkid 3y ago
I spent my whole grad school procrastinating by working on a system for publishing my papers, which turned out to be the only marketable skill I got from my PhD, so I wouldn’t knock procrastinating.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  For anyone who cares: https://github.com/earthboundkid/Watsuji-and-Aesthetics/blob/master/buildpdf.sh https://github.com/earthboundkid/Watsuji-and-Aesthetics/blob...

anonymouskimmer 3y ago

For my M.S. I just looked up the relevant PDF merge utility for Linux online. I can't even remember what it was now, but it took the first x pages from the unsigned thesis, intercollated the signed signing page, and then took the remaining pages from the unsigned thesis, and output a single PDF. Edit: .zsh_history had it: > pdftk A=thesis.pdf B=approval.pdf cat A1-5 B1 A7-end output signed_thesis.pdf

heyoni 3y ago
How have you never cleared out your history? Or do you rarely use your terminal? /edit not cleared but filled up so that it gets rotated out
- stevekemp 3y ago
  Not the parent, but I always tried to keep an "infinite" bash shell history, on each of my machines. Nowadays I run a mac at work, and I use "atuin" which stores zsh history in an SQLite database. No fear of losing anything, and it really can save you in a lot of ways.
  - sitkack 3y ago
    Have you thought of recording everything with space ASCII cinema?
cinntaile 3y ago
This doesn't really work as intended when I tried to do something similar. Pdftk produces pdfs that were much bigger than the ones generated by LaTeX and you might end up outside of the allowed size range.

earthboundkid 3y ago

I spent my whole grad school procrastinating by working on a system for publishing my papers, which turned out to be the only marketable skill I got from my PhD, so I wouldn’t knock procrastinating.

earthboundkid 3y ago
For anyone who cares: https://github.com/earthboundkid/Watsuji-and-Aesthetics/blob/master/buildpdf.sh https://github.com/earthboundkid/Watsuji-and-Aesthetics/blob...