Author Archives: Aleh Cherp

About Aleh Cherp

Aleh Cherp is a professor at Central European University and Lund University. He researchers energy and environment and coordinates MESPOM, a Masters course operated by six Universities.

Three more tips on using TextExpander

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

Over five years of using TextExpander I’ve saved myself typing whooping 400,000 characters (a medium-size PhD dissertation). Yet, there are always new ways to use this amazing software. Here are three recent examples I’ve introduced into my workflows: 1. Names with accented characters … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Tasks | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Sources and Methods. And Tinderbox

Posted on November 8, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

I have just listened to Sources and Methods, a podcast “about interesting people doing interesting things”. This episode was their interview with Mark Bernstein, the creator of Tinderbox app. I fully agree with Mark that note-taking is a very important activity which we … Continue reading →

Posted in Notes | Tagged , | 12 Comments

Organizing academic contacts

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

Earlier I wrote about capturing contacts. This entry is about organizing academic contacts. Software for organizing contacts is not as developed as for other content (e.g. documents, tasks, or bibliographic citations) so finding a good app and a system may take a … Continue reading →

Posted in Contacts | Tagged , | 5 Comments

Macademic on Mac Power Users. Second-guessing.

Posted on October 27, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

Last week I had the pleasure of being a guest on MacPowerUsers, my favorite Mac podcast. Frankly, I was quite nervous before the show as I had never before spoken on air. But it turned out surprisingly relaxing. Katie and David felt like … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 12 Comments

A great list of apps for a university teacher

Posted on September 20, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

The Teaching in Higher Education blog has a great list of 10 apps useful for a professor. I am going to try all of them during the upcoming school year. Nice to see a professional touch. Thanks, Bonnie!

Posted in Workflows | 1 Comment

Capturing academic contacts

Posted on August 25, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

Contact management is very important for academic work. We need to be in touch with prospective and current students, alumni, co-authors, competitors and peers. On top of that there are journal editors and publishers, funders, university administrators, and journalists. Social … Continue reading →

Posted in Contacts | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

5 years and 200 episodes of Mac Power Users

Posted on July 20, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

I was incredibly lucky to buy my first Mac in the same year and the same month when Macpowerusers launched their podcast. I was also lucky to start listening to awesome Katie and David right from Episode 1. Now 5 years and 200 episodes … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

TextExpander for writing recommendation letters

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

The time it takes to write recommendation letters usually increases dramatically with the years spent teaching in a University. This is not a responsibility that should be ditched: many former students – especially those applying for academic positions – deserve glowing recommendations which should be … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation | Tagged | 3 Comments

What software do I really need for academic work on Mac?

Posted on July 4, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

A reader has just challenged me to re-think the software I use for academic work on Mac. Well, there are over 250 items in my Applications folder, but how many do I need to remain productive? So imagine that I have a completely new Mac with no … Continue reading →

Posted in Automation, Bibliographies, Email, Files, Graphics, Notes, Presentations, Projects, Tasks, Workflows, Writing | Tagged , , | 97 Comments

Papers 3: considerable improvements, but still beta

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Aleh Cherp

I have recently been asked to prepare one of the Oxford Bibliographies. This required sifting through, organizing and annotating a large number of references and so I decided to give Papers 3.0 another try. I have previously been disappointed by various deficiencies of this … Continue reading →

Posted in Bibliographies | Tagged , , | 50 Comments