Paste Special

Instead of using "Paste" option in Microsoft Office programs, try to explore "Paste Special" for pasting different kinds of objects, images, text.

Monthly Statistics

For the past one year so far, November month has had the highest number of visitors. This is proportional with the number of posts (November being the month with highest number of posts). But, the surprising fact is that the second highest is in March, where the number of posts is just only 3.

Wireless Cracking

I was looking for wireless tools that available for Windows platform.
Stumbverter
Cain Password Recovery Tool
I will evaluate these tools over the weekend and write about them.

Graduate Student Research Conference

Blender

Here is a free and cool software for 3D modeling and animation.

Happy Birthday Eclipse

Belated though!
The actual birthday is on Nov 7th.
Eclipse is absolutely helpful and easy to use. One of the best IDEs I have ever used. It was the reason many IDE developers opted out of competition.

Apple Store

I visited the Apple Store for the first time. For the first time, I saw all latest apple products and accessories all in one place with the Apple logo outside the store. Mac books, Macs, and other apple products were on display for demonstration. People were always buzzing in and out of the store.

Windows, Mac, or Linux

This is the dilemma faced by many advanced computer users.

Personally, I use all these operating systems regularly. I work on windows during the 5 weekdays, Linux during the 5 weeknights, Mac during the weekends.
Though I admit to being a long-time Windows user, I am fascinated by Ubuntu Linux and Mac.

Windows is the undoubted favorite among most of my friends. Most of the hardware vendors provide drivers and support for windows platforms.

Macintosh leads in one way by not allowing other computer manufacturers to install their operating system. They come only in Apple’s products. From the user point of view, it is in a class of its own. It’s easy to use and the user is not bothered with any drivers or setup. Macintosh is the best user-friendly operating system that I have ever worked on.

Is Linux a good operating system for a general computer user? I have been recently trying to install a successful version of Linux on Laptops. I installed red-hat Linux servers regularly in my job 5 years go. We never used to use the GUI version of Linux. I used to fiddle with the basic stripped down text version of Linux. I never faced problems during installation of wireless or problem with BIOS. When it comes to Linux, I personally find that there is a lack of support for it to work. Why is this happening? Linux is good for enterprises on cost-cutting.

But, if you are trying to train users on Linux, be my guest. I don’t think there is any way of ‘teaching’ Linux. One has to just learn it by himself. Linux lacks stable operating versions. The claim that Linux is easy to work on legacy systems is fallacious. I have had so much trouble installing Linux on laptops.

Look at this news article.

In spite of all the above rant about Linux, I love the fun I get while tweaking with Linux. It sure is a toy for geeks and novel users, alike.

More on Endnote 9.0

I have Endnote 7.0 in my laptop and Endnote 9.0 in my desktop. When you use a 9.0 version to open a file created by 7.0, it converts it to a different format. Hence, there is no backward compatibility. This is such a shame.

Now, I cannot work on the copied files from my Desktop to Laptop. So, all my papers are getting written in my desktop.

Delete the rows/columns of blank cells in Excel

For many people who use excel as a preprocessing tool for huge data sets, they are required to select blank cells in a huge excel file. The following steps will help you select multiple blanks in the excel file.

1. Edit -> Go To ( or ^G or F5)
2. Click Special
3. Choose Blank option
4. Edit-> Delete
5. Choose appropriate option (Entire row/column)

Please leave a comment if you find this link useful or if you have any other suggestions.

Endnote problems

Endnote should make a clean uninstall during their upgrade process.

Earlier, I had Endnote 7.0 in my system. Recently, I upgraded to Endnote 9.0. I noticed that the upgraded version, Endnote 9.0, was not able to import any of the bibliographic formats from any research database. Later I checked the ‘Folder Locations’ in Edit-> Preferences option of the software. It was still pointing to a folder named ‘Endnote,’ which is apparently the settings on the older version. Now, I just changed the folders back to the one in ‘Endnote 9.’ Problem solved.

NerdTest

Do you consider yourself a nerd?
Check your nerd score at Nerdtest.

I got this link from Nonoscience.

AXML

Rajani did some interesting experiments with AXML on her personal notebook. With the help of user guide she installed and ran the AXML experiments. I am at awe to see the ease at which AXML can be installed and used for document engineering. I will update more on the tricks and tweaks done to install and execute some of the experiments of AXML.

Exploration Day

NMT defines exploration day as "an opportunity for prospective students and their families to explore New Mexico Tech's campus in Socorro.”

What happens when only high school students come to explore the school?

I was faced with this quandary when a couple of high school students stopped by my office. This is mainly because of the changing syllabus in high school.

XML and AXML

I am recently studying about these terms and technology. My friend has promised me to teach the applications of these technologies in Eclipse.

Intensional and Extensional Documents

I ran across these terms while reading about Active XML. I wonder the correct meaning for these terms.

OSX Applications

Earlier, I was under the misconception that Macintosh does not have much support for developing free applications. Now, I find using a Macintosh more pleasant than working on Windows. I have posted some links in the sidebar.

Dapper Drake to Edgy Eft

Upgrading from Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 6.10 was a breeze. It took about 20 minutes to upgrade on my Averatec.

Program for Large Network Analysis

I stumbled on Pajek program after reading Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. At first the Pajek program seems to a very neat network visualization tool. I will have to explore it to know more about it.

Expert System

CLIPS is a good tool for building expert systems.