LaTeX packages for PhD theses

I have been looking at LaTeX packages for PhD theses, most closely at the Dalhousie package, the Stanford package, and the UCLA package.
Dalhousie and Stanford uses the "plain" bibliography style, which means that references in text are as short as possible as[1]. For such a long text as a PhD thesis it would force the reader to have to continuously search the Bibliography in the end. The UCLA packages givesMore... another type of abbreviation in text, like [Bar03], ie taking the first three letters of the author name and the year of publication.
I prefer the Chicago style, often used in humanities which gives (Bartle, 2003). This can be accomplished by using another bibliography style such as "authordate". In order for this to work one need to let the LaTeX printer have access to the appropriate .bst file, for example authordate1.bst.
If one sticks with using 'authordate' and want to be able to in some cases print out both the name and the year (Bartle, 2003) and in other cases only print the year (2003) one also need to let the system access the style file "authordate1-4.sty".
After some experimenting with the packages the following additions to the main file thesis.tex in the Dalhousie package gave me the functionality is sought:

In the beginning of the file, where packages are imported, add:
\usepackage{authordate1-4}

and in the end, before you refer to your library file, add:
\bibliographystyle{authordate1}


Useful resources:

Examples of bibliography styles

authordate package at CTAN

dalthesis -- Dalhousie University Thesis Document Class

Stanford University latex thesis style file

The UCLA Thesis Style for LaTeX

Blogging with MS OneNote

Using OneNote for blogging is possible for those that have server space with WebDAV functionality... More...

I use the software OneNote from Microsoft a lot when i work. It has features for documenting what one does in a really nice integrated way. It is useful to remember processes with many steps, where the first time one tries there are a lot of trial and error. Keeping track of the errors is... well since i have the memory of a goldfish: next time i do something I don't need to repeat the errors. I take a massive amount of screen dumps in sequences, so i don't need to write everything down. This way I can keep up the work flow but still be documenting.

OneNote 2007 has this interesting little featur "Blog this". Choosing this option for a onenote page brings up the same page in Word 2007, and it is possible to, with a few simple steps publish it. It works perfectly fine for text, but not so well for pictures.
One need to specify a location (called Image Provider -> Own Server) where the image files can be uploaded to.
It does not work to use Flickr. The Flickr help forums have several posts where users try to work out how to do it, but no solution is posted.
It does not work to specify an account on any FTP server either.
Turns out one need to have access to space on a server that uses WebDAV.

Links:
Microsofts pretty unhelpful support page
Brandon Siegl's post explaining why it is rare someone manages to get it to work.

Roll out... Roll back... Roll out (repeat)

After 30 - 40 hours of rolling out, rolling back, rolling out, rolling back (repeat) different versions of Torque MMOkit (version 0.0.3 SP, 1.3 SP, 1.5.2 SP) and searching the forums for undocumented todo's and trying them one by one.... and for each change, recompile world, update server database, build new client, restart servers, try client locally, try client remotely.... I finally got an empty world running and could log on several simultaneous characters. (v.1.3)... More...

I have been working with a local server so far, and felt that if i don't have hands-on proof that i can run it as multi player i can't really relax. Now I can relax. About this particular thing. (after this I had to enter single player Civilization IV trance, the ultimate security blanket)

Single Sentiment - Sorrow

For the the guided paper prototype play i conducted some of the design for World of Minds, i used paintings by Bosch as inspiration when i made the single sentiment mobs. Here is an example:



it was relaxing to draw these mobs, as a break from designing game mechanics and worrying about coding them.