Thursday, August 25, 2011
Ninite: For automatic multiple program installation
Adding time servers to Windows XP
Version\DateTime\Servers. Click on the "Servers" entry to activate it on the right side.
Monday, June 06, 2011
MikTex and TeXniC center
the following to solve most issues especially related to BibTex acting
up or PDF LateX complaining about GUI framework.
a) Set packages to be updated automatically (Miktex>Settings)
b) Install package 'translator' if you graphics in your PDF.
c) Remove all languages you don't use Miktex>Settings>Languages.
d) Leave MikTex to be in A4 size and use the Ghostscript/dvips settings
to scale to Letter sized paper.
e) Update MikTeX as soon as you install it.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Firefox-4: Prevent Tab scrolling / tabMinWidth not working / Tab width setting
Firefox-4 does not support the configuration option >> browser.tabs.tabMinWidth [1] In Firefox 3.6 and older, you could set this value to 0 in about:config to prevent the scrolling of tabs if you opened up a large number of tabs. To get this to work in Firefox-4, you need to make some changes to your userChrome.css file [2]. Or you can install the Custom Tab Width Extension [3] In my XP installation the userChrome.css file was in C:\Documents and Settings\<userName>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<randomString>.default\chrome\userChrome.css Open this file, add the below lines /*--start below this line--*/ /*Added to re-enable min tab width=0 in Firefox-4 */ .tabbrowser-tab:not([pinned]) { min-width: 1px !important; } /*--stop above this line--*/ Restart Firefox and your tab behaviour should be back to the way it was. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574654 [2] http://blog.miranda.or.at/mozilla/firefox-4-and-minimum-maximum-tab-width [3] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/custom-tab-width/ |
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Embed all fonts in PDF
(Especially required to pass IEEE Explore PDF Check)
Place the following in the arguments to ps2pdf:
-sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true -sOutputFile="%bm.pdf" -c save pop -f "%bm.ps"
where "-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dMaxSubsetPct=100 -dSubsetFonts=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true" is the specification to tell ps2pdf to embed
everything.
See: http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/txie/publications/writingtools.html for
more information
Also, see my previous post here :
http://suneilmohan.blogspot.com/2010/01/miktex-texniccenter-us-letter-sized.html
Saturday, January 22, 2011
CM19a X10 Transceiver on Ubuntu 10.04
the more popular CM11/CM11A/CM15/CM17 versions all of which have serial
interfaces
** All of this information is from :
http://www.cuddon.net/search/label/CM19a ** I'm only posting it here so
that I can find it again easily
1. The Python driver written by Andrew (www.cuddon.net), requires
sudo/root permissions. To make the USB driver work for any user, do the
below:
Add this to /etcudev/rules.d/cm19a.rules
#Allow all users to read and write to the CM19a X10 Transceiver (USB)
SYSFS{idVendor}=="0bc7", SYSFS{idProduct}=="0002", MODE="666"
2. Blacklist two modules (in 10.04) so that the CM19a is seen by the system:
Edit using vim or nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
Add the following two lines at the bottom of the file:
blacklist lirc_atiusb
blacklist ati_remote
Reboot the machine so that the modules are unloaded and the udev rules
are updated at the same time.
Visit Andrew's site for Python drivers for the CM19a
http://www.cuddon.net/search/label/CM19a
Monday, November 08, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Random musing
monetize out-of-the-box mindshare that can enable the transition to
efficient interfaces that empower the best-of-breed supply-chains.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Consumerist likes my picture
http://consumerist.com/2010/09/consumerist-friday-flickr-finds-65.html
:)
Friday, September 17, 2010
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
CUDA 3.1 on Ubuntu 9.10 for Tesla c870
For Tesla c870 with Intel Onboard video (Integrated Graphics)
This is based heavily on the information from here:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=171590
[If you want CUDA 3.1 to run on Ubuntu 10.04, follow the above link to the Nvidia forums]
Note : Windows XP does not like dual video cards from different manufacturers, I believe Vista and later do support it - hence I had to goto Ubuntu.
You will need:
a) Ubuntu 9.10 (This is the latest supported Ubuntu package from NVIDIA
for CUDA 3.1)
b) A compatible card that supports CUDA. I'm using the Tesla c870 in this case.
My requirements:
1. The Tesla cards do not provide Video Out - hence the card needed to work in conjunction with the onboard Intel video card.
3. Multiple users need to be able to compile and run the code, so it needs to get installed to a commonly accessible folder
**Installation and Configuration**
==Part A==Getting Started==
1. Install Ubuntu.
2. Run the Update Manager and get all the updates to date.
3. Get g++ installed using "sudo apt-get install g++" (w/o quotes)
This will install g++ compiler for gcc-4.4.1 (which is the default for Ubuntu 9.10)
==Part B == Installing the driver==
Get the latest NVIDIA Developer driver from
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/cuda_3_1_downloads.html
Version 256.40 or later. Earlier versions will not work. (Ubuntu 9.10 comes with 175 and 195 in the restricted driver set, these did not work for me)
When I wrote this, the driver was packaged in a file called
devdriver_3.1_linux_32_256.40.run
You will need to install this after stopping the gdm (Gnome Desktop
Manager). To do this:
a) From the desktop, press CTRL+Alt+F1 - this should take you to a tty prompt.
b) Login with your username.
c) Type in "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop" (w/o quotes) to stop the gdm.
d) Wait 1 minute while the X server unloads from memory.
e) To launch the installation type "sudo ./devdriver_3.1_linux_32_256.40.run" (w/o quotes).
f) The installation should start - accept all the default options and you should be good to go.
If step (f) does not start, make sure the file is executable (Type "chmod +x devdriver_3.1_linux_32_256.40.run" (no quotes) at the command prompt to make it executable)
g) Once the driver has finished installation, reboot the system. This can be done easily from the command line - use the command - "sudo reboot"
h) Ubuntu should reboot and bring you back to the Gnome Desktop at this point. Login normally.
==Part C==Installing the Toolkit==
1. Now get the Toolkit from the CUDA site. When I wrote this, the toolkit was in a package called cudatoolkit_3.1_linux_32_ubuntu9.10.run
2. Before running this, there are a couple of packages you need to get. Otherwise during the make process, you will hit errors.
3. Open Terminal, and get the following packages
#(Fixes "cannot find -lXi" error)
* libxext-dev
* libxi-dev
* x11proto-xext-dev
#(Fixes "cannot find -lXmu" error)
* libice-dev
* libsm-dev
* libxt-dev
* libxmu-headers
* libxmu-dev
#(Fixes "cannot find -lglut" error)
* freeglut3-dev
* libglut3-dev
You can get all of these using "sudo apt-get [package-name]" (w/o quotes) where package-name is one of the above. Or you can use one large apt-get statement and get all of them in a single command like below.
"sudo apt-get install libxext-dev libxi-dev x11proto-xext-dev libice-dev
libsm-dev libxt-dev libxmu-headers libxmu-dev freeglut3-dev libglut3-dev"
(no quotes, remove any linebreaks that the HTML inserts)
You may not need all of them and some of them may already be installed on your machine depending on what you other software you have installed.
4. Once you have the above, install the CUDA toolkit.
4.a. Command = "sudo ./cudatoolkit_3.1_linux_32_ubuntu9.10.run" (w/o quotes)
4.b If it doesn't execute make sure it is executable, using the command "chmod +x cudatoolkit_3.1_linux_32_ubuntu9.10.run"
5. Accept the default installation path /usr/local/cuda, or change it as you wish, but keep track of it
6. Let it run to completion. It will exit with a message saying that the installation was successful as well as messages to add certain PATHS to your profile
**7. Open the GLOBAL .bashrc file (located as /etc/bash.bashrc) and add the two path statements listed below to the end of the file. You will have to be root to edit /etc/*, so open the file using the sudo command with your favorite text editor such as "sudo vi /etc/bash.bashrc"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib;
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/cuda/bin/;
(Single lines, terminate with a semicolon, no space on either side of the = signs, no line breaks.)
This is important for global use. If you don't want it globally, set these two statements inside your .bashrc (~/.bashrc).
8. Back at the command line, type in "sudo source /etc/bash.bashrc" to read in the updated paths. Test it to make sure using "echo $LD_LIBRARY_PATH" it should return the above path.
== Part D == Installing the SDK code samples ==
1. Get the SDK code samples from NVIDIA's site. When I wrote this, the SDK was inside a file called gpucomputingsdk_3.1_linux.run
2. Run it "sudo ./gpucomputingsdk_3.1_linux.run". Again do the chmod +x thing if it is not executable.
3. DO NOT ACCEPT the default install path. The default install path is something like "~/NVIDIA_COMPUTING_SDK" which will put it in your home-directory. This is a bad idea if you want global access. Make it something accessible to all, I used "/opt/cudasdk".
4. It will ask you for path to CUDA, if you installed cuda above in Part C step-5 to the default part, it will be in /usr/local/cuda
5. Let it run till it completes.
6. Once it completes, you need to compile the code samples for your machine. To do this navigate to the SDK path (path you specified in Step-3 of Part D). Then navigate to the subfolder "C". You should see a Makefile. To make the examples, run "sudo make"
7. The make process may throw up a bunch of warnings, but all files should make without errors. If there were errors, see if all the packages you should have installed in Part-C, Step-3 are present.
8. If you have to run make again, always do a "make clean" before running make.
9. At this point, you have almost got everything to work. If you have a CUDA enabled graphics card, you should be ready to go. If you are using a Tesla card like I am, you need a few more steps.
== Part E == Getting the Tesla card available on boot ==
1. Because the Tesla card is another video card, you need to make it get created as a node in /dev/ on each boot. (If you are using a graphics card, you don't need this, since it will be present since it is being used).
2. Make a file scriptname.sh (I call it cuda_start.sh) with the following (remove any line breaks that the HTML inserts) __Update the entry Provides: to match the name of the file__
===begin copy below this====
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: cuda_start
# Required-Start: $syslog
# Required-Stop: $syslog
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: Mounts CUDA device as a node in /dev
# Description: CUDA card requires entry in /dev, force create since NVIDIA is not video card
### END INIT INFO
modprobe nvidia
N3D=`/usr/bin/lspci | grep -i NVIDIA | grep "3D controller" | wc -l`
NVGA=`/usr/bin/lspci | grep -i NVIDIA | grep "VGA compatible controller" | wc -l`
N=`expr $N3D + $NVGA - 1`
for i in `seq 0 $N`; do
mknod -m 666 /dev/nvidia$i c 195 $i
RETVAL=$?
[ "$RETVAL" = 0 ] || exit $RETVAL
done
mknod -m 666 /dev/nvidiactl c 195 255
===end copy above this====
3. What the script does is to make a node in /dev. This is based off the code sample I found from user (mfatica) here : http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=49769&st=0&p=272085&#entry272085
4. Place this inside /etc/init.d/ so that it can be called by init when starting up. If you don't want to do this, you'll have to call the script everytime you reboot the machine.
5. If you are placing it in /etc/init.d, then
5.a Make it executable (chmod +x scriptname.sh)
5.b Run update-rc so that it calls the script as
"sudo update-rc scriptname.sh defaults"
Method from here
http://embraceubuntu.com/2005/09/07/adding-a-startup-script-to-be-run-at-bootup/
==Part F== Global access and making it all work
We are almost there, a few final touches:
Remember I wanted it to be global access. I have a group on my machine called 'examplegroup' - all the members of whom I want to give access to the CUDA sdk, so I need to set appropriate permissions.
1. Navigate to /usr/local.
2. Set group to examplegroup using the chgrp command
"sudo chgrp -R examplegroup CUDA" (w/o quotes)
Sets the group name of the folder CUDA (and recursively everything inside it because of the -R) to examplegroup/
3. Give the group full read-write permissions to the group
"sudo chmod -R g=rwx CUDA"
(w/o quotes, the g=rwx means to assign permission r(read), w(write), x(execute) to the group, -R flag for recursive )
4. Navigate to where you installed the SDK (Part-D, Step-3, for me it is /opt/cudasdk)
cd /opt/cudasdk
5. Set group to examplegroup
"sudo chgrp -R examplegroup *"
(w/o quotes, the * means everything in the folder, the -R makes it recursive)
6. Give the group read/write/execute permissions
"sudo chmod -R g=rwx *" (w/o quotes, again * = everything, -R = recursive)
7. You are done!
8. Logout and reboot the machine. This is so that your init script gets called and your device comes up. (You don't need to do it, you can source the script without rebooting but I'm not going into that)
== Part F == Test installation ==
1. When you reboot and come back, navigate to the SDK folder and then to C/bin/linux/release [For me that was cd /opt/cudasdk/C/bin/linux/release]
2. Run the deviceQuery script (./deviceQuery) You should get some glorious output
==snippet of my deviceQuery output==
./deviceQuery Starting...
CUDA Device Query (Runtime API) version (CUDART static linking)
There is 1 device supporting CUDA
Device 0: "Tesla C870"
CUDA Driver Version: 3.10
CUDA Runtime Version: 3.10
CUDA Capability Major revision number: 1
CUDA Capability Minor revision number: 0
Total amount of global memory: 1610416128 bytes
Number of multiprocessors: 16
Number of cores: 128
Total amount of constant memory: 65536 bytes
Total amount of shared memory per block: 16384 bytes
Total number of registers available per block: 8192
Warp size: 32
== end snippet of deviceQuery
3. Run a benchmark test ("./nbody -benchmark -n=100")
==nbody output==
Run "nbody -benchmark [-n=
-fullscreen (run n-body simulation in fullscreen mode)
-fp64 (use double precision floating point values for simulation)
> Windowed mode
> Simulation data stored in video memory
> Single precision floating point simulation
> Compute 1.0 CUDA device: [Tesla C870]
100 bodies, total time for 10 iterations: 0.326 ms
= 0.307 billion interactions per second
= 6.133 single-precision GFLOP/s at 20 flops per interaction
==end nbody output==
4. There is no step.4.
At this point your installation is ready to go.
Good luck!
=== Update : Apr 21, 2011 ===
An unexpected power outage caused the card to stop working. On rebooting, the card refused to run deviceQuery and complained of a potential mismatch between the API and the Runtime library.
After lots of debugging with the help of my colleagues and the department IT folks, we traced it to a corrupted driver package. The solution was to re-install the driver such that it overwrites the existing installation. To do this, follow Part-B "Driver Installation" again step-by-step and it will reinstall the driver for you.
You must do this step from a local console. Part-B driver installation cannot be reliably done from a remote SSH login.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Viewing an exception backtrace using gdb/dbx
You can use it to find out why/where a program caused an exception that
caused the OS to perform a core-dump.
GDB requires that you compile with the gcc -g flag (include symbols) to
get useful information. If you complied without the -g flag, the core
dump will not be very useful to you.
(If you have the source file, you can recompile once more with the -g
flag, then run gdb against the new executable and the old core dump file.)
Presuming you have complied file.c into myfile with the -g flag and
running it created a core dump named 'core'
Do:
$> gdb myfile core
This will start GDB and read in 'myfile' and 'core' and process it
At the gdb prompt, type bt (for backtrace)
(gdb)$ bt
This will walk you backward through the stack trace showing you where
the exception that caused the OS to abort and cause the core-dump. You
should see a line at the end of the output identifying which line of
source code caused the abort.
*******
On solaris, you can also use dbx. Run it as:
$> dbx myfile core
The opening screen will contain the backtrace by default.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
Nullsoft Beep
computers sound in the movies. It requires Windows 95 or later with
DirectX 3 or later.
features
* Excitement-Generation Technology[tm].
* Hyper-Auto-Blips[tm] on screen updates and keyboard input.
* Variable low hum dependent on system CPU load.
* System tray icon.
* Install and uninstall support.
* Source code included!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
MikTeX, TeXnicCenter, US Letter sized paper and IEEETran.cls
margin on all sides.
The default configurations for TeXnicCenter do not provide the proper
margins. You will probably get a top margin that is too wide (1.7 inches)
TeXnicCenter along with MikTeX, has the default paper size set to A4. To
get letter size, you must fix two sections in the build profiles.
This is for the default LaTeX > PS > PDF build profile. Modify as required.
Inside TeXnicCenter:
Menu Build > Define Output Profiles
Select the profile LaTeX>PS>PDF
On the right side, under Postprocessor tab,
1. Select DviPs by clicking on it.
2. Under the Arguments section, add the argument "-t letter" (w/o the
quotes)
3. Now select Ghostscript from the above list
4. Inside the arguments, change the argument "-sPAPERSIZE=a4" to
"-sPAPERSIZE=letter"
Click OK and close out the menu.
Now rebuild your latex document, your margins shouls be accurate.
To test your Latex setup, you could use the testflow from Michael Shell
here: http://www.michaelshell.org/tex/testflow/
References:
http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/faq/a4.html
http://www.michaelshell.org/tex/ieeetran
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/ps2pdf-bounding-box-and-page-size-problem-454441/
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Daylight Savings Time
Fall "Fall Back" > Move clocks backward - gain an hour of time.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Forward references in Verilog
If you instantiate a module with port connected to a signal line that
you have not declared, Verilog will instantiate a one-bit wire for you.
(and not complain during compile time). This is also true for wrongly
spelled wire names.
If you later attempt to declare the same wire, verilog will complain of
double-declarations.
You can get around this by declaring at the top line of every file
`default_nettype none . This will force verilog to flag all undeclared
wires.
see this thread for more information on this:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Comp/comp.lang.verilog/2009-01/msg00023.html
Part select in Verilog
either increasing or decreasing order (0:n] or [n:0].
However, all references in a given system have to follow that same order
- regardless of whether it is a part-select, non-indexed assignment(s) etc.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
New homepage template
old template had too much wasted white space down the center for most
content. This template looks more efficient in use of space.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
View PDF contents in Vim
To open a PDF file (in readonly mode) add the following lines to your .vimrc
autocmd BufReadPre *.pdf set ro nowrap
autocmd BufReadPost *.pdf silent %!pdftotext "%" -nopgbrk -layout -q
-eol unix -
(remove any line breaks, the second autocmd entry is one continuous line
all the way to the "unix -" statement)
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Fourteen billion years ago expansion started..Wait...
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
[pause momentarily, then quickly]
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang! (bang!)
The above is the first set of lyrics for the theme song of the TV show
"The Big Bang Theory"
http://www.lyricstime.com/barenaked-ladies-the-big-bang-theory-lyrics.html
Two theme songs
Group : "The Solids"
Song : "Hey Beautiful"
For the full album, the theme song clip starts at 3:08.
Details here: http://www.howimetyourblog.com/theme-song/
Youtube link : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SowWTahdb8Y
---
Theme song for "Big Bang Theory"
Group : "Barenaked ladies"
Song : "Big Bang Theory Theme"
Show Page from Wikipedia :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory_(TV_series)
Youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aym8_S3BXKw
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Breakfast?
2 Small Chicken Nuggets
1/2 Glass of Unsweetened Orange Juice
1 Medium sized Banana
1 Tall glass of Water at room temperature
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Ascii Cats
http://www.xmission.com/~emailbox/ascii_cats.htm
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Ceiling function-
Font: Symbol
Character Code: 233 (Open) ⎡ Unicode: U+23A1, 250(Close) ⎤ Unicode: U+23A4
Friday, July 03, 2009
Tweet from the Windows Command Line
My requirements for the setup were:
a) I should not have to install yet-another-piece of software just to post to twitter. (There are tons of them for download on almost every possible platform)
b) I'd like to be able to tweet from the command line.
c) I want to know what's happening in the code.
d) Since I have perl installed, if I could use it, even better.
So I went to CPAN and looked for Twitter related stuff. Found a lot of packages. I ended up using the Net::Twitter::Lite package in a perl script.
This caused one small issue, running the perl script required that I type in
perl scriptname "message"
to post to twitter. If I could compress it to just AppName "Message"
that would be perfect.To fix this, I used a Windows Batch file (.bat) to encapsulate the script and pass it the message.
If you want use it, you need two files, (twitterpost.pl and tweet.bat), let me know if you want to look at the source.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Fixing a Yahoo Widget
I am a fan of Yahoo Widgets for their clean look and generally good performance.
One particular widget has been a favorite of mine for sometime, because it does one task extremely well. However, it had one flaw. To display the text color correctly, it seem to rely on a set of deprecated Unix system calls. The bug/error was manifested when you tried to change the text color. The only text color it supported was Black _IF_ you did NOT have the Yahoo Unix Utilities installed.
Today, I downloaded the widget and then spent some time reading around the Yahoo Widget developers' section. The reference manual allowed me to find the valid replacement code. It was a two line fix. Remove one line of an old system call then add two lines of code to implement the new API call.
Since Yahoo widgets are just a repackaged compressed/zip file, extracting the code, changing the command repackaging it was simple. :) I was done in <20 minutes. I now have a working widget, that does NOT depend on the Yahoo Unix Utilities. Yay!
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Cosmos decommissioning announcement
our computational flagship, will be retired in mid-June this year. We
urge current users to port their codes to HYDRA as soon as practicable
and to back up all valuable files not residing in their home
directories. Because COSMOS has not been under hardware or software
maintenance for the last three years, a repair from a hardware failure
may just be too costly to afford. Supercomputing Facility analysts are
always available to help with with the transition to HYDRA.
By its retirement, COSMOS will have capped five and a half years of
extremely reliable (99.9% uptime) operation. It remains the favorite of
many users and the only system on campus with large enough RAM (128GB)
to accommodate serial jobs that require large amounts of it . Chemistry
has expressed interest in assuming control and administration of COSMOS
and plans to welcome users from other areas. We will keep our users
posted on any relevant developments.
---
Dear COSMOS users:
The system will be powered off at 9 AM of June 29, 2009. Thereafter, the
Chemistry department will take over its operation. This will be the
LAST notice about the decommissioning of COSMOS.
The Facility will delete all user data from the system right before
power off. Since COSMOS is not under maintenance, the resumption of its
operation, much less a prompt one, is not a certainty. Although we have
every expectation that the transfer will be smooth and uneventful, we
cannot exclude misadventures. The latter may even include junking it
because of high repair costs.
----
Yahoo and Pidgin
If you are running Pidgin 2.5.6 (www.pidgin.im/) or older, and having
issues connecting, updating to 2.5.7 will fix the issue.
[This is for WinXP-SP3]
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
SCSI is not magic
have to sacrifice a young goat to your SCSI chain every now and then."
-- John F. Woods
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Learn with BOOK
LEARN WITH BOOK
- R. J. Heathorn
A new aid to rapid - almost magical - learning has made its appearance.Indications are that if it catches on all the electronic gadgets will be so much junk.
The new device is known as Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge. Themakers generally call it by its initials, BOOK.
Many advantages are claimed over the old-style learning and teaching aids on which most people are brought up nowadays. It has no wires, no electric circuit to break down, No connection is needed to an electricity power point. It is made entirely without mechanical parts to go wrong or need replacement.
Anyone can use BOOK, even children, and it fits comfortably into the hands. It can be conveniently used sitting in an armchair by the fire.
How does this revolutionary, unbelievably easy invention work? Basically BOOK consists only of a large number of paper sheets. These may run to hundreds where BOOK covers a lengthy programme of information. Each
sheet bears a number in sequence so that the sheets cannot be used in the wrong order.
To make it even easier for the user to keep the sheets in the proper
order they are held firmly in place by a special locking device called a 'binding'.
Each sheet of paper presents the user with an information sequence in the form of symbols, which he absorbs optically for automatic registration on the brain. When one sheet has been assimilated a flick of the finger turns it over and further information is found on the other side.
By using both sides of each sheet in this way a great economy is effected, thus reducing both the size and cost of BOOK. No buttons needto be pressed to move from one sheet to another, to open or close BOOK, or to start it working.
BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. Instantly it it ready for use. Nothing has to be connected or switched on. The user may turn at will to any sheet, going backwards or forwards as he pleases. A sheet is provided near the beginning as a location finder for any required information sequence.
A small accessory, available at trifling extra cost, is the BOOKmark. This enables the user to pick up his programme where he left off on the previous learning session. BOOKmark is versatile and may be used in any BOOK.
The initial cost varies with the size and subject matter. Already a vast range of BOOKs is available, covering every conceivable subject and adjusted to different levels of aptitude. One BOOK, small enough to be held in the hands, may contain an entire learning schedule.
Once purchased, BOOK requires no further upkeep cost; no batteries or wires are needed, since the motive power, thanks to an ingenious device patented by the makers, is supplied by the brain of the user.
BOOKs may be stored on handy shelves and for ease of reference the
programme schedule is normally indicated on the back of the binding.
Altogether the Built-in Orderly Organized Knowledge seems to have great advantages with no drawbacks. We predict a big future for it.
-------------
Found on slashdot :http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1276127&cid=28404637
Monday, June 15, 2009
fashion, I went for the one username that has been mine for so long, my
full name :P Nothing else I tried was available! (honest!)
If you want to follow me on twitter, here's the relevant link ->
http://m.twitter.com/suneilmohan
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Punching bag violence
seconds? End violence towards punching bags now."
-- STKinTHEmud @ the PHD Forums
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Cat and Mice
cable longevity remains mice...
Person B: Any category of "cat" can certainly help with that...
(Cat 3, Cat-5, Cat-5e, Cat-6, Cat-6a ... are all types of network
cables- the one you plug into your laptop / router is generally Cat-5)
[Seen on slashdot]
Monday, March 02, 2009
Thunderbird about:config
same way as the Firefox browser.
In Firefox, if you want to change advanced configuration settings, you
can get to this page, by typing in about:config into the address bar.
So how do you do that in Thunderbird which has no 'address bar' ?
Some research on Google found me the answer:
Thunderbird's about:config can be reached by navigating as follows.
1. Open Thunderbird,
2. Goto Tools>Options>Advanced>General
3. At the bottom of this tab, is an entry that says "Advanced
Configuration" and has a button to the right called "Config Editor".
4. Click on Config Editor to launch the Thunderbird editon of about:config
Sunday, March 01, 2009
My fortune of the day
Today's fortune: The guy who reads your fortune is not feeling well. We hope you are.
:D
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
1,234,567,890 seconds since the Epoch ...
In Unix world, the calendar starts on Jan-1,1970 and Unix systems compute time since the epoch.[5]
The system call, 'gettimeofday()'- returns the number of seconds since the Epoch, which is defined as Jan-1,1970.
[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/functions/gettimeofday.html]
As was pointed out on Slashdot,([1][4]) if you want to be really precise about it, you would figure out that Unix time does not take into account leap seconds. Therefore Feb-13,2009 @23:31:30 UTC is not exactly 1,234,567,890 seconds from Jan-1, 1970.
To be precise, Feb-13,2009 @23:31:30 UT1 is 1,234,567,890 seconds from Jan-1, 1970 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Time for an explanation of what UT1 is and how it differs from UTC.[2]
People across the globe celebrated this time by having party and such. See the coordination link below[3]
Possibly interesting further reading :
[1]http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/13/1534240
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Time
[3]http://www.1234567890day.com/
[4]http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1127059&cid=26851049
[5]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
Anyway, Happy 1,234,567,890 seconds since the Epoch!!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Classic TV Ads
Spread The Light of Freedom
This was a television spot that was created by the Lok Seva Sanchar Parishad many years ago. It was a part of 2-3 series that were aimed at spreading the message of National Harmony and Integration. This one is my favorite amogst the lot. It features famous atheletes of the time carrying a flaming torch across the country.
(2:37 in duration, completely instrumental)
Note: Doordarshan is the Indian state run TV broadcaster. The music clip starting at 2:16 to the end is the closing verses of the Indian National Anthem.
Bajaj
A manufacturer of vehicles in India, came out with this ad in 1989. Classic for its content. I seem to remember this playing every weekend morning before some of my favorite cartoons.
(40 seconds long, Hindi words)
Doodh
(Note: Doodh = Milk in Hindi) The ad is promoting milk consumption. -This ad that took me by surprise. Without having seen the ad for atleast 8 years in a stretch, the first time I viewed it on Youtube, I found that I could sing the words of the jingle flawlessly without stumbing or hesitating even a bit for the words.. Talk about information retrieval! I was impressed by my own ability to be able to recall this so well.
(32 seconds long, combination of Hindi and English content)
I'll post more of these if I come across more interesting ones.
Thursday, February 05, 2009
Creating GMail Interface buttons

They look pretty nifty and simple, but a lot of work went into them. Google's Visual Lead Douglas Bowman (stopdesign.com) was the leading force behind the creation of this new set of buttons. He wrote a detailed blog entry on the design and describes the work that went into creating the set of buttons that are just right for the job. Read his blog entry by following the link below
Read "Recreating the button" by Douglas Bowman (stopdesign.com)
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Building SimpleScalar/ARM cross compiler based on gcc-2.95.2
This was built on Ubuntu 8.10 with gcc-3.4 running on a Virtual Machine - Sun Virtual Box, XP Host, x86 Architecture
(The following instructions are an updated version to the instructions in ANNOUNCE.cross from http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/code/arm-cross/ANNOUNCE.cross)
--
1. Get all packages from http://www.simplescalar.com/v4test.html
cross compiler kit
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/code/arm-cross/ANNOUNCE.cross
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/code/arm-cross/gcc-2.95.2.tar.gz
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/code/arm-cross/binutils-2.10.tar.gz
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~taustin/code/arm-cross/glibc-2.1.3.tar.gz
2. Untar and expand all 3 .tar.gz files into a single folder. (/home/example/arm-cross)
3. Make sure you have gcc-3.4 installed on the system. (Ubuntu's GCC 4.3.2 did not compile this package)
4. Build and Install binutils
cd binutils-2.10
../configure --target=arm-linux --prefix=/home/example/arm-cross
make
make install
cd ..
5. You should now have a bin/ folder inside arm-cross/. Add this to your path. (If using bash shell, use the below command, modify to fit your shell)
export PATH=$PATH:/home/example/arm-cross/bin
6. Rehash the filesystem to see the newly created executables.
In Ubuntu 8.10, rehash is /usr/bin/c_rehash - no arguments, just executable
7. Now build the GNU GCC cross compiler (This is what gave me the most trouble- after lots of playing around, the following steps worked) [1]
7.a. inside arm-cross/
cd gcc-2.95.2
../configure --prefix=/home/example/arm-cross --target=arm-linux --with-as=/home/example/arm-cross/bin/arm-linux-as
This should configure without any errors.
7.b. Now, edit the Makefile. Inside the Makefile, find and replace 'rmdir' with 'rm -rf' (without the quotes)
7.c The current version of libgcc (as shipped with Ubuntu 8.10) seems to be incompatible with the build environment of the cross compiler, so we are going to build it with STATIC linkage. [2]
make LANGUAGES=c BOOT_LDFLAGS=-static
This should take a while, but should complete without any errors.
If you encounter any errors in this step, check the above steps carefully. Before reattempting to build, always do a 'make distclean'. This will purge all files that were created during the make process and allow you to start afresh. One of the side effects of make distclean is that it will also remove the Makefile. Hence you will have to begin at the ./configure step again.
If this passes successfully, install the package using the below:
make LANGUAGES=c install
At this point you have the compiler installed and working.
Here's the output of the version string as reported by the cross compiler at this stage:
example@machine:~/$ arm-linux-gcc -v
Reading specs from /home/example/arm-cross/lib/gcc-lib/arm-linux/2.95.2/specs
gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)
8. Now follow the instructions in ANNOUNCE.cross to fix the specs
vim /home/example/arm-cross/lib/gcc-lib/arm-linux/2.95.2/specs
replace all occurrences of "elf32arm" with "armelf_linux",
this fixes an innocuous incompatibility between the most
recent GCC and GLIBC libraries...
9. You now have a working arm-cross compiler that can produce binaries that can be run on SimpleScalar/ARM
arm-linux-gcc example_code.c -o object_file.o
Now run object_file.o using the appropriate simplescalar tool.
-------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
To fix error with xgcc
from http://sourceware.org/ml/crossgcc/2001-02/msg00081.html
use an explicit "--with-as=/path/to/as" on the gcc configure line
[2]
This fixes the set of messages:
ibgcc1.S: Assembler messages:
libgcc1.S:1: Warning: rest of line ignored; first ignored character is `@'
libgcc1.S:2: Warning: rest of line ignored; first ignored character is `@'
from
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/arm-toolchain-problem-350988/
use the BUILD_LDFLAGS=-static
Sunday, February 01, 2009
February
As the month gets going, you're going to be tempted on multiple occasions to rush. On the 1st, you don't want to spend the extra minute brushing your teeth. You want to skip the flossing. You want to hit 'send' before you spell check. You want to buy a suit without trying it on. You don't want to leave the chicken in the oven for the whole 45 minutes. The rule for you to keep in mind? Slow down! Rushing will get you nowhere (but you could contract salmonella), so watch out! You'll be in a better place for action-taking and decision-making on the 5th and 6th. Your life is more or less charmed on the 10th and 11th, when everything you touch turns successful. Going with the flow on the 16th is what you want to do, but you could find your canoe is stuck. Disentangle yourself, carefully. You're feeling awfully romantic on the 19th and 20th, so make sure somebody's going out on a date with you one of these two nights! You'll be ready to get things fixed-up
quick on the 25th, but your colleagues aren't on the same page, so watch out. On the 28th, talk shop. You'll enjoy it.
Monthly Career: (http://shine.yahoo.com/astrology/virgo/monthly-career/)
A little soul searching, when it comes to where you're at with your career, would be helpful on the 1st. A lot of soul searching would be really helpful. After all, if you never ask yourself just how you feel about your work, where you're at, how you're doing and where you're headed, how will you be able to do a good job navigating your way there? Go over all those itty-bitty nitpicky details on the 4th. You'll be ready to try being a little bit more flexible on the 8th and 9th, if only because you've run out of other ideas for how to address the problem. You'll see just what an excellent approach this was when everything comes out just right on the 11th. Your curiosity could propel you into a very romantic place on the 14th. Who knew that that cutie at the office was so very interested? If you're taken, let them down easy. Hard work pays off, just the way it's supposed to on the 19th and 20th. A couple of super confusing details threaten to derail you
on the 25th. Research on the 28th will get it all under control.
--
Monthly Relationships (http://shine.yahoo.com/astrology/virgo/monthly-love/)
Sure, it's romantic to do things for the object of your affections. But giving too much of yourself too much of the time isn't romantic at all. On the 1st, it's time for you to step back and recharge. Spend all your energy doing nice things for yourself, and you'll find that, in the long run, you have a lot more energy for romance. After all, you can't take care of other people if you're all tapped out yourself. You should keep this in mind: Your job is to love you. From there, you can love others. Put romance on the back burner again on the 5th, when your best bet is to organize friends or family in some kind of activity. On the 10th, you're finally in tiptop form and ready to welcome romance with open arms. Guess what? Romance embraces you right back! Excellent! Now hold hands! If you're curious and you want to get to know them better, be sure to schedule something special on the 14th. You two are getting along like gangbusters on the 19th. You're
ready to take things to the next level on the 24th, but don't criticize them if they lag. On the 28th, you're compatible.
--
January Review
January's so called accurate predictions didn't come true. Nothing happened on any of the many specific dates in january - though if you look at the financial aspects of it, they may have slipped by about a week.
Oh well, lets see if February works out any better shall we?
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Adding PATH to bash
PATH = $PATH:/PathToAdd1:/PathToAdd2:/PathToAdd3
export PATH
Thursday, January 29, 2009
l33t
figure it out.
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Saturday, January 24, 2009
Servers and fan replacements
The old fan was still spinning, but the server's on-board diagnostics were complaining that it was bad. On shining a flashlight onto the spinning unit, it did appear to be spinning slower than the rest of the units - so we figured that replacing it was probably a good idea.
It was much easier to do it early in the semester when people aren't using the machine that much. This made it easier to find a time slot when no one else was logged on, since replacing the fan requires that we power down the machine.
Now I get to go look at the machine about once a week to make sure that the error lamp stays OFF. :)
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
A Presidential Inauguration
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/01/the_inauguration_of_president.html
Monday, January 19, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
January
From here : http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology/virgo/monthly-overview/
The 1st gives you the chance to immediately implement your New Year's resolution to not be overly critical -- when you wake up to find a great big post-party mess. Sure, there are party hats in the sink and plastic champagne flutes on the floor, but take a deep breath and remind yourself of your resolution: Be constructive. Don't be afraid to delegate, just don't give into the urge to nag. You'll be proud of your progress on the 5th and 6th, especially when you notice an overall sense of calm pervading your environment -- thanks to your diminished critique. On the 11th and 12th, you want to be organized, but something is getting in your way. Is it your desire to go skiing? Why not give in? You might want to lock up your credit cards on the 17th, since a whole lot of luxury items will look indispensable (they aren't). On the 21st, take a risk -- you won't be sorry. Being open-minded and experimental will only enhance your life on the 27th. There's always time to go to an experimental dance performance! Don't let a problem with a co-worker ruin your day on the 30th -- turn it into a learning experience!
Monthly Career:
From here : http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology/virgo/monthly-career/
As the year starts out, you might think you know just want you want, career-wise, on the 1st and 2nd. You very likely based all of your New Year's resolutions on a certainty of where you're at and where you want to go, but before you take the plunge into a new year at work, take a second look: Things may be far more complex than you realize. This isn't a bad thing -- after all, it would be boring if you already knew everything all the time. Don't fret, but do be prepared for some (exciting!) challenges this year. You need to be careful -- to the point of neurotic -- when going over details on the 7th. On the 13th and 14th, some of the very thrilling upsides of the unknowns you are encountering begin to present themselves. Could all this office upheaval result in a big promotion for you? You'll be very curious on the 19th, so give your quest for more details a wide berth. On the 24th, somebody cute at work has their eye on you -- if you aren't available, let them know right away (and ditto if you are available!). On the 28th and 29th, turn off your impulse to criticize before you know the whole story.
Monthly Relationships:
From here : http://astrology.yahoo.com/astrology/virgo/monthly-love/
Somebody really, really, really thinks the world of you, and they want you to know that on the 1st. So why are you criticizing them so much? Are you maybe feeling a little bit vulnerable? Like if you allow yourself to feel how much they love you, you might accidentally give up some of your self-control? Have you considered that giving up some self-control and accepting unconditional love, unconditionally, could be a good thing? Give it a shot, this year. On the 4th, a personality clash at work could take the wind out of your romantic sails. Try not to let it. You'll be ready to communicate some of your deepest feelings on the 8th. The 13th and 14th are your days: Spend them as romantically as you can. Even just staying home and cooking dinner together could be perfect. On the 18th, if you're feeling romantically restless, explore those feelings. Where are they coming from? Fun and romance are in the cards for you on the 23rd, when somebody surprises you with a date you hadn't expected. Sushi dinner at the zoo after-hours? Don't say no! On the 26th, it's really important that you stay positive. You'll be more than ready to end the month in a well-rested spot on the 30th.
---
Ok, let's see how the rest of January plays out.
Forecasts
Since I figured out this patten many many moons ago, I'm rather skeptical about horoscopes.
However, this being a new year and with my resolution to try to do new stuff on my own, I figured, I'd give Yahoo Astrology a chance to predict the months of January- March. Every month, I'll pick up and record what the site said for me and at the end of the month, I'm going to see how well (or not) it all worked out. Of course, the way some of these are worded, anything that happens could possibly be related to what was written.
Yahoo Astrology can be found here : http://astrology.yahoo.com
Next post, predictions for January.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Blocked schedules
Thursdays have me blocked from 9:35am through 7pm.
And this is before finding out what the lab meeting schedule and other
research based deadlines for the semester are. :-/
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Miss Mailers
dealing with mailing lists.
Miss Mailers Answers Your Questions on Mailing Lists
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/mail/miss-mailers/
<abstract>
Summary: An explanation of how to use and run mailing lists
</abstract>
Monday, January 05, 2009
Speed upgrade
Looking at our bills over the past few months and talking to people
around us, my roommate and I decided that we need to renegotiate our
plan with the ISP. So he called the ISP this morning and they bumped us
up to an 8Mbps plan for the same price per month!! Whoop!
With a 54Mbps WiFi connection, my laptop just reported an average
download speed of 5Mbps and an upload speed of 500Kbps. Not bad at all
for a shared connection and the router being in another room. :D
Friday, January 02, 2009
Season's Greetings
May the year bring you lots of laughter, fun, success and prosperity in
all your endeavors large or small.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Disenchanted
Edited to replace the embedded videos with links. (Jan-1,09)
The 2008 HMS Genetics Department Christmas Skit
PART-1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=No8_2ID8ch4&hl=en
PART-2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MNOKDniNrw&hl=en
PART-3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LntERliGozk&hl=en
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Christmas Eve Adventure
Just as I was pulling out of my apartment (I hadn't gone 50 feet), I saw what looked like white steam come out of the right side front corner of the hood of my car. With memories of having seen this in the past (in other cars), I stopped and opened the hood and peeped around.
Two things caught my attention (a) My coolant tank was bone dry (b) The air filter and some other parts had green fluid sprayed on them. Meant I had a massive cooling system leak somewhere. The next question was where. We poked around the engine and found that the upper radiator hose had developed a large rip in it and hence the source of the leak.
Finding a replacement for this on Christmas eve was tricky, but luckily it wasn't 5pm as yet. (It was 4:15). So we went looking for a replacement. Two stores said they would have to order it in, while the third one had one in stock. Armed with the replacement hose, new clamps, new coolant, we returned to the car, replaced the hose and refilled the coolant. At 5:30 we were done and the car was returned to regular operation. Oh, and it took 1.2 gallons of coolant to refill the radiator.
Whoop! Yay! for being able to notice the leak in the day time, Yay! for it happening close to my apt and not in the middle of a highway, Yay! for it happening in town and where I have people whom I could call upon for help.
Merry Christmas!
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Bacon and Cheese Roll - I made it !
So I did it.
I made the bacon and cheese roll.
See detailed pictures here :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/68701052@N00/sets/72157611501230447/detail/
[If you are not signed into flickr, you will only see one picture, you need to be signed in and on my family/friend list to be able to see all the pictures]
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Solstice and Equinox
Equinox is the day of the year (happens twice a year) when the Earth has the same amount of night and day time hours.
2008:
Equinox Mar - 20th
Solstice June - 20th
Equinox Sept - 22nd
Solstice Dec - 21st
2009:
Equinox Mar - 20th
Solstice June - 21st
Equinox Sept - 22nd
Solstice Dec - 21st
2010:
Equinox Mar - 20th
Solstice June - 21st
Equinox Sept - 23rd
Solstice Dec - 21st
More here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice
and
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/EarthSeasons.php
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
Owning the Empire State Building in 90 minutes
"In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building. And it wasn't that hard. The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property."
Read all about it here : http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/12/02/2008-12-02_it_took_90_minutes_for_daily_news_to_ste.html
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Bacon Cheese Roll
http://foodproof.com/photos/full/bacon-cheese-roll-1290
[One person who randomly reads this blog, likes bacon a lot :) -> if you see this, call or text me and I'll tell you when I plan to make it.]
Thursday, December 11, 2008
and then there was snow...
Here's a snowman (or is it a snow lady?) a friend and I found on campus
(If you are familiar with the campus, this was located next to Sully's statue)
[This is also an attempt at an emailed picture posting]
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Quasars in Lightbulbs
We looked up some statistics on the web[2] and came up with some interesting figures.
A quasar is said to produce the same amount of power as 10^12 suns.
Our sun produces 4 x 10^26 Watts of power.
Taking the average light bulb to be 60Watts, that means the sun produces the equivalent power of 6.67 x 10^24, 60W light bulbs.
Plugging that into the data above, we find that a quasar outputs the same amount of energy as 6.67x10^36, 60W light bulbs !
So there you have it -> A quasar outputs the same energy as 6.67x10^36, 60W light bulbs
--
While most of us in this conversation were not astronomers or in related fields, two of the participants in this conversation were
astrophysicists. One of them did some number crunching with actual formulae and numbers of luminosity and frequency from the field and came up with a value of 2.7 x 10^34, 60W light bulbs. Close enough for back of the envelope calculations!
--
[1] One person was going to be giving a talk on quasars to people from another discipline.
[2] Some of the data was sourced from Wikipedia or links from Wikipedia, use these numbers at your own risk. If you use these numbers to do anything important, you are insane.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
More SPAM Winnings
According to the SPAM making its way into my email, over the past two
days, I have apparently won over 1,500,000,000 British pounds.
hmmm...
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Pans and Heat
Thursday, November 20, 2008
SPAM winnings ?
On Monday, I was congratulated on winning 500,000 UK Pounds and today, I was congratulated on winning 1,000,000 UK Pounds. All I need to do to get the money is to send them my contact information. :P
If only things were that simple ;) :P
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Words, Parsing and Ads
While I knew that the system does parse emails to display the appropriate ads - it was a tad surreal to see the ad so accurately reflect the content. (This wasn't a simple word matching, it was more complex than that.)
Risks
[If you don't know what I'm talking about - Don't ask me. I will not tell you.]
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Another bike in the pool
Friday, November 07, 2008
Speech Recognition update
The speech recognition thing works quite well. More training has helped it improve accuracy.
However, there is one issue that needs to be fixed before I can have it replace typing for large text entry. The fact that it is slow.
I can type (and hence input data) faster than it takes to listen to my voice (which has to be at a controlled pitch and speed) and then transcribe it totext.
Also, I find that I'm not used to dictating stuff to my computer and hence end up with lots of junk input in addition to the main text. Typing is more focused and controlled input of data in my case.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Speech Recognition!
So last night, I was talking to a friend and I began to wonder why my computer could not convert speech to text. So today after school, I came home and looked up online to see if the Linux operating system had any utilities that would allow me to do this. While looking around online, I saw (to my surprise) multiple entries pointing to the fact that Windows XP and Office 2003 seem to have some sort of dictation software.
Since I had Office 2003 professional on my machine, I went to take a look to see if the I had the software utility installed. After about 10 minutes of poking around the innards of my computer, I realized that I could indeed get this thing to work.
Once I got the software installed, I spent a couple of minutes (about 20 minutes in all) training the package to understand my voice. Because of the fact that I am not a native English speaker the package takes longer than usual to understand my pronunciation of some of the words. For some reason it seems to think of the word 'package' as packet, and packet as 'kicked'. I obviously need to train this package some more so that it can understand me better.
Oh, and a thank you to Amy, for introducing me to a project ;) that convinced me to go look up speech recognition from my computer to prevent me from having to type out pages and pages and pages of text.
It may be that further posts on this web site will be powered by speech recognition. Let’s see what happens.
The above post was composed using the dictation feature, then formatted and edited before I posted it here. To demonstrate how accurate (or not) the software package was with about 20 minutes of training, I have enclosed the raw text generated by the software below. Take a look, I'm rather impressed with the quality.
So last night I was talking to a friend and I began to wonder why my computer could not convert speech to text Saturday after school I came home and looked up to see if the linux operating system had any utilities that would allow me to do this while looking around on the day of useful runs as a multiple entries pointing to the fact that the news expert and office 2003 seem to have some sort of dictation software
Since I had office 2003 perfection of on my machine I went to take a look at if I had the senior treaty install . after about ten minutes of poking around that he notes off my computer and realized that I could indeed get this thing to work
Once I got the package installed I have spent a couple of minutes training the packets to understand my voice
because of the fact that I am not a native English speaker the packets take longer than usual to understand my pronunciation of some of the words. . For some reason it seems to think of the word package has been kicked
I obviously need to train this packet some more so that it can understand what is better or for the first 30 minutes I think this is doing pretty well
The law PCI and each time a friend using major project which required me to go look up speech recognition from my computer to prevent me from having to type out pages and pages and pages of text will obviously using me introducing me, it may be free to post on this web site will be powered by speech recognition. Let’s see what happens.
Monday, November 03, 2008
Bikes, chairs and swimming pools
While we didn't hear/see the folks responsible for this, one of our neighbors reported hearing people making a lot of noise the night before. Perhaps the drunken revelry lead to an idea about a new place to store your bike.