Online Backup

I discovered DROPBOX. And I'm happy I did. I almost threw away an IT news magazine that Eisen has torn to pieces. Good thing I took a look at the write-ups. If I hadn't I would not have read about free and convenient ways of backing up and syncing files.

I have two laptops, the old one is a desktop replacement at home and the other is my netbook which I carry around a lot. If I wrote a document on one of them I usually back up by writing an email to myself with the document attached. Cumbersome. And if I get lazy, I'll forget to do it and curse myself when I need the document elsewhere.

When I read about Dropbox I was amazed to find that it is cross-platform. MAC, Windows, Linux- can do. Free space is 2GB. If you need larger space you'll have to pay $9.99 per month for 50GB or $19.99 per month for 150GB.

You need to install Dropbox in each of the computers you want to have sync and backup access to. In Windows, a My Dropbox folder appears inside the My Documents folder.

Just drag your files to the My Dropbox folder and it will sync the copies in all your computers once they are online. Pretty neat.

Remember to save the modified file in the My Dropbox folder, though. Better yet, open it from there and save it there. If you have a copy of the file in a local folder it won't sync or backup unless you drag it again in My Dropbox.

Now I don't have to tear my hair and gnash my teeth when I've written a file in my desktop replacement. Simply by dragging it to My Dropbox I can have access to it anywhere.

Beeps when turning on your computer

The PC won't turn on properly, instead you hear patterns of beeps. They are actually built-in diagnostic alerts. They can tell you what's wrong. I got this from http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1223 while googling what those beeps mean.

• No beep - no power, loose peripherals, bad motherboard or cpu
  
• One beep - ok
  
• One long, one short - motherboard problem
• 1 long, 2 short - video problem
• 1 long, 3 short - video problem
• 3 long - keyboard error
• Repeated long - memory error
• Continuous high, low - CPU overheating
  

I was trying to fix some old PC's in the lab since the students were complaining only 2 were working. Heard repeated long beeps in three computers - memory problem. Opened the hatch and placed the RAMS in a different slot and made sure they were snug and completely in.

Et voila! They worked!!!

Offsetting pages in OpenOffice

I created a journal paper template following the fine advice of Dmitri Popov. A master document is ok but sometimes I just want to PDF that subdocument (journal article) right away with the corresponding planned pages.

Searching the web for offsetting solutions, I've got mixed results, none of them completely satisfactory.

Until... I found the best advice that came along. This is from OpenOffice.org's Tutorial on Page Numbering.

Summary
1. On the page where you want an offset page number go to the first paragraph
2. Right-click, select Paragraph then Text Flow
3. Check Insert, then With Page Style , then choose the page style you created if you have one on the scroll down menu
4. Then on Page Number, insert the start of the page number.

Composing a string and executing it in Matlab : preserving empty spaces

Say you want to automatically open files which are named file001, file002, etc. Further suppose that these files are in a folder named d:\folder 1, d:\folder 2, etc.
Normally, you could use strcat to concatenate a string together with num2str. For example
FILE = strcat('file00',num2str(i));
But strcat will eliminate empty spaces so if strcat is used this way,
FOLDER = strcat('folder ',num2str(3)); % note the single space after 'folder'
the result will be
FOLDER ='folder3'.
To preserve the empty space, use square brackets instead:
FOLDER = ['folder ',num2str(3)]
Suppose you composed a string containing a command:
com1 = 'cd c:\folder 3\file001.jpg'
To execute the string use exec:
exec(com1);

Installing software in a netbook

I love my netbook! It's light, it's cheap, and it has a large disk space. But when it comes to installing programs in it, I'm reduced to : 1) borrowing an external CD drive, or 2) downloading the software from the net.

There are two other ways: 3) share the CD drive over the network, and 4) create an ISO image of the CD. This last one I find very handy. I got this solution from btfx in Yahoo Answers.

Step 1. In a computer with a CD drive, create an ISO image of the installation CD. A compact freeware suggested is http://lc-iso-creator.en.softonic.com/

Step 2. Copy the ISO image in a USB drive.

Step 3. Insert the USB drive in the netbook and mount the ISO volume using DaemonLite http://www.disk-tools.com/download/daemon

Be sure to unmount the ISO after use.

The Problem with Technical Knowledge

The problem with technical knowledge is that, technology marches by so fast that what you know now will become obsolete later, and quite quickly. If so, does it make sense to learn a technology at all? The Philippines is still a techonology "consumer" according to Dr. Roger Posadas in his talk on Science at "Beyond 2010". So will we be forever catching up?

I think there are still key concepts and skills to master (quantum mechanics for example) that will be relevant in the long term.

But I also think we can be ahead or be anticipatory. If we do research, we make our own technology and create new knowledge. In tackling research problems we come to grips with cutting-edge technology and create solutions where there are none.

I like to tell my students that a good research begins with a good research problem. The challenge really is asking the right questions.