Excel's default settings for graphs often result in something a bit ugly, and getting those graphs out of Excel can be a finicky process. Font sizes get screwed up, the top and right tickmarks are usually missing by default, and so forth...

So, here's my quick reference for getting Excel plots to look the way I want them to look, so that they will show up as intended when used with a proper typesetting system such as LaTeX.

This seems to work for Excel 2007/2010 and XP/2003

Get the chart on its own page

My handful of regular human readers, and my truckload of regular spambot readers, might be wondering why I haven't listed any new boat designs since the Almaguin 400 and 500.

The answer is that I'm currently in the (hopefully) final stages of a graduate degree in medical physics. That means a lot of time in the lab, and a lot of late nights and weekends spent poring over calculations, making figures, and writing up a thesis.

The verdict

The D7000 is Nikon's best all-round camera as of late 2011. If you can't get a particular shot with this thing, you probably won't get that shot with any other camera at any price.

You can spend as long as you want tweaking just about everything on the D7000 to get it set up exactly the way you want it. Then, when you lift it to your eye, it gets out of your way and just works, exactly as it should.