Uninstall Linux in a Windows XP– Linux Dual Boot Machine

I followed the following steps while uninstalling Ubuntu Linux on my laptop.

1. Use Windows XP installation CD to boot.
2. Go to recovery console and enter fixmbr
3. Restart the system. Now it should boot in Windows
4. Remove Linux partition by using the disk management utility of Windows XP.

Values of Environment Variables

To display value of environment variables in command prompt in windows use the following command

echo %variable_name%

For example to display the value of CLASSPATH variable type

echo %CLASSPATH%

Way to learn Algorithms

Excerpts from The Art of Computer Programming-Fundamental Algorithms by Knuth, Page No. 4

“...the reader should not expect to read an algorithm as if it were part of a novel; such an attempt would make it pretty difficult to understand what is going on. An algorithm must be seen to be believed, and the best way to learn what an algorithm is all about is to try it. The reader should always take pencil and paper and work through an example of each algorithm immediately upon encountering it in the text.”

Fuzzy Systems

If Approximating Nonlinear Areas, then Consider Fuzzy Systems
is an interesting read. According to the authors, based upon antecedent-consequent part of the rules, fuzzy systems can be broadly classified as follows:

• Linguistic fuzzy models
• Fuzzy relational models
• Takagi-Sugeno (TS) models

System Dynamics and Agent based toolkits

• Swarm
• Recursive Porous Agent Simulation Toolkit
• Zeus

According to this article, Swarm and Repast “deploy unsophisticated agents”, whereas Zeus “deploys sophisticated” agents. I agree with the author’s view point that software agents can model humans as well as other technological components. The author uses the term “dumb” agents to represent the technological components.

Parameterized Unit Testing

I am looking for a demonstration of Parameterized Unit Testing. This is an interesting topic. Parameterized Unit Testing with Symbolic Execution is an interesting read. But, I am looking for some free software or prototype to work on my code.

Google SketchUp

Today, I played with this 3D modeling software. I am totally falling in love with Google SketchUp. Both Windows XP and Mac OSX versions are available for download. I hope my knowledge in introductory mechanical engineering is helpful to create 3D models.

Insilico

Biology, never interested me, when I was in school.
The article, Combatting Disease with Computer-Aided Drug Design, by A S Nair interests me in Computer-Aided Drug Design.

He stresses that biology is migrating from natural science to information science.

Hamachi VPN

Hamachi seems to be a very good vpn lan setup system.

Microsoft to Macromedia

I had some pictures and wanted to send tiff files to a publisher. I created the pictures using Microsoft Office products (PowerPoint and Excel, predominantly). I had trouble converting those images to tiff files directly from PowerPoint or Excel. So, I followed the following steps:

1. Open Macromedia Fireworks
2. Copy the object from the Microsoft Office application
3. Create a new document in Macromedia Fireworks
4. Choose appropriate canvas color in the new document window
5. Now paste the object into Macromedia Fireworks
6. Change the image size or resolution by clicking on image size button
7. Open Export Wizard (File-> Export Wizard)
8. Choose appropriate purpose and finally the tiff file is created

Alternative Keyboards

I wish I had known that alternative keyboards existed when I was learning typewriting in my high school.

Today, I learned that QWERTY is not the only type of keyboards available. Dave Child compares DVORAK and QWERTY layouts.

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.