Linux

• To get the GIMP to use themes properly, back up ~/.gimp/gtkrc and then copy ~/.gtkrc to ~/.gimp/gtkrc
• As in emacs, at the command line C-a is ``home'', C-e is ``end'', C-k is ``cut'', C-y is ``paste''. (The notation ``C-'' means hold the control key and hit the given letter.)
• Grep is cool. At a command line you can ``pipe'' anything to grep and have it search your data. For example, if Netscape is misbehaving you could do ``ps aux | grep netsc'' and you would get only the lines of ps that had the string ``netsc'' in them. Similarly you can look through files. For example, if you've got your code from CS2 in ~/CS and you want to remember how to overload the ``>'' operator you could do this: ``cat ~/CS/*.* | grep operator>''.

Windows (If you have to use it for some reason)

• Create a directory (say C:\quick) and add it to your path. (To do that edit C:\autoexec.bat and make the path line start with that directory like this: ``PATH=C:\quick;C:\PR...''.) Now throw links into that directory and name them something short and quick (eg: rename ``Outlook Express'' to ``outlook''.) now you can use the the start->run command to run any of those programs just by typing in their name. (This is very emacs-like :-) You have to restart your computer for the path change to take effect.

Maple

• If you want help on a command you just enter ``?commandname''.
• If you want to run several commands and have the output after all of them you can hit shift+enter at the end of each line.
• In physics, do your calculations with units. It generally makes things much more clear. For example you could use ``g := 9.8*m/s^2;'' As long as you are sure not to use ``m'' or ``s'' elsewhere as variables this will work and then your results will have units already calculated.
  If you are having trouble with units coming out seeming wrong (like having force in kg*m/s^2) you may be able to get maple to give you the right result by defining ``N := kg*m/s^2''.
• ``restart'' clears all variables and, well, restarts. (For some reason RPI's documentation didn't mention this.)
• ``a := 'a' '' clears all assignments to the variable ``a''. This is useful if you only want to reset one variable. (Guess what? You can use that syntax on things other than a!)
• You can do 3D parametric plots like this: ``plot3d([Re(exp(I*t)),Im(exp(I*t)),t],t=-2*Pi..2*Pi, s=-1..1,numpoints = 3000);'' (You have to have run ``with(plots)'' before hand.

Misc.

• On the TI-85 you can set it to engineering mode and have all your answers in the form x*10^y where y is a multiple of 3. This is great for (surprise) engineering purposes because these easily translate to ...micro, milli, kilo, mega, giga ...
• SI Prefixes:
  

  Factor	Prefix	Symbol	Factor	Prefix	Symbol
  10^24	yotta	Y	10^ -1	deci	d
  10^21	zetta	Z	10^ -2	centi	c
  10^18	exa	E	10^ -3	milli	m
  10^15	peta	P	10^ -6	micro
  10^12	tera	T	10^ -9	nano	n
  10^9	giga	G	10^ -12	pico	p
  10^6	mega	M	10^ -15	femto	f
  10^3	kilo	k	10^ -18	atto	a
  10^2	hecto	h	10^ -21	zepto	z
  10^1	deka	da	10^ -24	yacto	y