Short Reviews

A Short Test Review of OmniPage 16 Pro.

Computer Related Resources

MiniWiki.tgz
A very small wiki bolt-on to existing web pages.
lmnh.R
A small extended class to add normalized [n] coefficients and White heteroskedasticity [h] adjusted T-stats to the ordinary lm class.
gettex.zip
allows extraction of all latex macros with a given name with basic support for nesting.
bstfiles/
All .bst style files for bibtex.
colornames.sty
latex color names equivalent to the HTML names.
latexhelpindex.html
helps to create an automatic index for a latex document. the user supplies only the first incidence of the word; further occurances are automatically included.
reflabel.html
diagnostics to determine multiple and missing labels/references.
webbib
system to create ipo and cascades web pages.
addmacros2tex.pl
adds \curwdate{}, \curwdatetime{}, \curfile{}, and \system[command]{% }% to (La-)TeX files. will soon be obsoleted by a new feature of texlive that will allow one to use real pipes. so, you will be able to do 
   \def\system#1{\input "|#1" }
   \system{ls -l \curfile} % you must keep \curfile
Hooray!
badenclosures.pl
standalone imap client which notifies senders of microsoft office files that these files are proprietary and generally unreadable.
Screen Calculations
For a 16:9 screen, 
width = 16/Sqrt(337) = 0.87*diagonal,
height= 9/Sqrt(337) = 0.49*diagonal
area = 0.427*diagonal^2
Thus, widths are
Diagonal Width Height Area dpi@1920x1080
17 inch 14.82 inch 8.334 123.5 130
19 inch 16.56 inch 9.315 154.3 116
20 inch 17.43 inch 9.805 170.9 110
21 inch 18.30 inch 10.30 188.4 105
23 inch 20.05 inch 11.28 226.0 96
24 inch 20.92 inch 11.77 246.1 92
30 inch 26.15 inch 14.71 384.6 73
37 inch 32.25 inch 18.14 585.0 60
42 inch 36.61 inch 20.59 753.8 52
50 inch 43.58 inch 24.51 1,068.2 44
60 inch 52.29 inch 29.42 1,538.3 37
72 inch 62.75 inch 35.30 2,215.1 31
100 inch 83.67 inch 47.07 3,938.0 23
The 30 inch dual-link computer monitors (like the DELL 3007, the HP LP3065, or the Apple Cinema Display 30) at 2560x1600 in 16:10 format have a width of 25 inches, and a screen resolution of 100dpi. A 30 inch monitor with a resolution of 1280x720 (1366x768) has a resolution of 49dpi (52). For a 16:10 screen, the area translation formulas are 
width = 8/Sqrt(89) = 0.85*diagonal,
height= 5/Sqrt(89) = 0.53*diagonal
area = 0.45*diagonal^2

Mathematica

How to convince Mathematica that all symbols are real during simplifications: 

In[1]:= Unprotect[Simplify]
Out[1]= {Simplify}
In[2]:= Simplify[p_]:=
  Simplify[p,
    And@@Map[Function[s,ToExpression[s,InputForm,Element[#,Reals]&]],
        Names["Global`*"]]]

A latex-emacs reference and label checker

...written in perl, can be found here.

Linux CD Burning

Long Explanation: here.

  1. Make sure that ide-scsi is a command-line option at boot time.
  2. use x-cdroast. it can blank CD's in master tracks, create session/image.
  3. mkisofs -a -A Application-Description -f -J
	    -r -V USERNAME -o /tmp/USERNAME.iso PATH_TO_DIRECTORY
  4.  cdrecord fs=12m speed=4 PATH_TO_ISO

Linux kernel installation notes

Note: bunzip2 uncompresses .bz2 files.

  1. obtain the most recent tar ball from kernel.org. unpack it in /usr/src. the rest of this note refers to the newest version number "latest".
  2. relink linux to point to the newest source tree: 
    $ ln -s -f /usr/src/linux-newest /usr/src/linux
  3. apply patches to bring it up to the most recent release. 
     $ cd /usr/src/
 $ patch -p0 < patches
  4. configure the kernel by running: 
     $ make menuconfig
    Eliminate as many drivers as possible. They often create problems later on.
  5. compile the kernel by running: 
    $ make dep; make clean; make bzImage ; make modules ; make modules_install
    watch carefully for errors. typically, you will need to eliminate more modules in order to get a kernel where there are no dependency or compile problems at the final step.
  6. install the kernel: 
    $ cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz-latest
    and its system map (for resolution of symbols to the modules) 
    $ cp /usr/src/linux/System.map /boot/System.map-latest
    and create an initial ram disk for booting 
    $ cd /boot; /sbin/mkinitrd initrd-latest latest
    remember to replace latest with your new kernel version.
  7. edit grub (the LILO replacement): 
    $ emacs /boot/grub/menu.lst
    Advice: change the name of the kernel each time, so that you are certain on reboot that you have properly reconfigured grub for the revised version. 
     $ sh /boot/grub/install.sh
    installs the menu.lst file. (Do not forget to add "hdc=ide-scsi" as an option after your kernel, or you will not be able to use your IDE CD writer later.

Other linux notes

  1. start gnome via xinit /usr/bin/startgnome.

Most used programs