Miscellaneous Resources
LaTeX
LaTeX—pronounced “lay-tek” or “la-tek” when referring to the software (as opposed to the material)—is a markup language that allows you to typeset documents any way you want. In particular, it was originally created to make typing mathematical expressions easy and aesthetic.
When learning LaTeX, the biggest issue I encountered was that resources are scattered across the internet. As such, I organized below a list of core features that I think beginners should know at the back their head (as opposed to very specific features that you just search up or ask AI about when needed), plus some useful pages that I constantly refer to.
Finally, a note (for myself): while LaTeX allows customizing layouts any way you want, this should generally be avoided as the default layouts were already designed around conventional, time-tested typography standards, which balance readability and aesthetics; unprofessional customizations often do more harm than good.
- VS Code LaTeX setup
- Quick guide (Overleaf)
- LaTeX cheat sheet (Winston Chang)
- LaTeX math cheat sheet (Professor Dave Richeson)
- Tables (Overleaf)
- Figures and subfigures (Overleaf)
- Commands (Overleaf)
- Environments (Overleaf)
- Cross-referencing (Overleaf)
- Aligning equations (Overleaf)
- Mathematical fonts (Overleaf)
- Drawing diagrams (Overleaf)
- Drawing diagrams (Dr. Trefor Bazett)
- Drawing graphs (Dr. Trefor Bazett)
- Colours (Overleaf)
- Multi-file projects (Overleaf)
- The standalone class (Stack Exchange)
- "LaTeX is not a word processor"
- "LaTeX over Word"
- Open source book: The not-so-short introduction to LaTeX
Programming
Mainly Python:
- Runestone interactive book
- W3Schools tutorials
- GeeksforGeeks tutorials
- Notes on Python I made in highschool
- Notes on Processing.py I made in highschool
Basic Web Development
Similar to the LaTeX section, below is a list of resources I found useful, which I collected along learning how to build this website.
- W3Schools HTML tutorials
- VS Code HTML setup
- Domain and web hosting
- Hosting-related terminologies
- GitHub Pages documentation
- Jekyll documentation
- Liquid documentation
- YAML tutorial
- Fun fact: YAML originally stands for "Yet Another Markup Language," but was soon changed to the recursive acronym "YAML Ain't Markup Language" as it is really a data-oriented language rather than a markup one.
- Markdown guide
- A side note for people who were not familiar: "markup" is a class of (coding) languages, which includes several languages, whereas "Markdown" is one particular markup language, which has its specific syntax. I dislike the asymmetry between one being a class and the other being a particular, but unfortunately there is nothing I can do about it.
- W3Schools how-to guides
- KaTeX documentation
- Measuring browser viewport dimensions
- Google DevTools documentation
- Google SEO guides
- Google Search Console page indexing
- HTML characters, symbols, and emojis
- The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) international standard
Reddit Posts
In this section I list reddit posts I found informative (so far they are all UofT-specific).
- Tips and reflection from a graduate student who is done
- Guide to making your first year schedule (faculty of arts and science specific)
- (Full?) Guide to Preparing for First Week in University
Other Resources
These are very random, but I really wanted to mention them and I cannot think of a better way to organize them.
- Draw.io
- Google search operators cheat sheet
- Have I been pwned?
- My brother's website
- Probably not "useful," but I link it here anyways just for fun 😁