Debugging in Python

Test driven development, clean code, and the occasional printf statement can go a long way towards debugging programs. But I remain a bit surprised by the number of developers who seem to take offense when users ask about a debugger for python. For those who do find reason for using a debugger I recommend:

• Debugging in Python
• The Python Debugger (Library Reference)

The former is a friendlier read with a tutorial flavor, while the latter provides a definitive reference.

Latex and Letter Paper

Very rarely do I work on a system that has the correct defaults setup to produce letter paper. The steps to get everything coming out nice and "letterpaperish" are:

1. Specify letterpaper in the documentclass command
2. Specify the paper size when converting from dvi such as: dvips -t letter mydoc.dvi -o mydoc.ps

A (slightly) more detailed description of this is available at C.U. Boulder's A4 paper vs. letter paper.