2D CAD: DraftSight

Once a while one needs to draw something small. It’s better to do  it with a CAD system which can be compatible with professional CAD system like AutoCAD and others. I was using A9CAD, but I see beta version of the  DraftSight from Dassault Systemes is much more promissing. Now it’s available for Windows and Mac, and it should be also available for Linux. Now it’s located to the Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese-Brazilian, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish language.

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Setting static IP on UBUNTU

Graphical user interface is nice, but sometimes is easy to be lost, even with simple tasks. Here is an example, how to setup static IP address 192.168.1.2:
Menu:
System/Preferences/Network Connections/
Panel:

 Wired/Auto eth0/Edit/
  Connect automatically
  IPv4 Settings
   Method: Manual
   Address: 192.168.1.2,255.255.255.0,192.168.1.1
   DNS: 192.168.1.3,208.67.222.222
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Software installation

Software installation should be easy and smooth. There are many possible options, including free installer for Windows (incl. 64 bit) INNA Setup from Jordan Russel’s software, NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) for POSIX and 32 bit Windows. More could be found at sourceforge.net  .

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Lasers and star models

Astronomy was long time just observational science, observing celestial bodies. Now is possible to model and study some celestial objects. Critical is understanding of behaviour hydrogen, the most common element,  and another elements  under extreme conditions, like inside of stars, planets or interstelar clouds. Extreme conditions could be created by powerfull lasers,such studies are conducted for example by Gianluca Gregori’s Research Group at the University of Oxford.

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Protected PHP source code display

For developer is very convenient to see PHP source code simply adding extension phps instead of php.
If you would like to access control to the source code, here is how to do it.
For example, everyone could see page www.example.com/page.php,
but only user joe will be able to see www.example.com/page.phps

cat /data/dir/htdocs/.htaccess
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*).phps$ /protected/sourcecode-phps.php [L]


cat /data/dir/htdocs/protected/.htaccess
AuthType BasicAuthName "Protected Access"
AuthUserFile /data/dir/htpasswd
require user joe


cat /data/dir/htdocs/protected/protected/sourcecode-phps.php
<?php
 $uri=$_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].str_replace(
   ".phps",".php",$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']);
  if (file_exists($uri))highlight_file($uri);
  else echo "PHP source file not found: $uri";
?>

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IANA IPv4 Address Space Registry

Recently I found a problem with some website, which I could not see from one specific network. After long investigation, including owner of that website, we found that website was very particular about filtering all but only valid IP addresses. The problem was their table of valid address space was not valid. The current one should be at http://www.iana.net/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml Interesting is list of 12 unallocated prefixes, (e.g. 005/8 = 5.0.0.0):  5,23,37,39,100,102,103,104,105,106,179,185.
It’s more then 4% of address space.

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Writing a research proposal

Good research paper starts by good research proposal. Here is one of a many resources, how to write a research proposal, including:A Basic Proposal Outline:

  1. Introduction
    • Topic area
    • Research question
    • Significance to knowledge
  2. Literature review
    • Previous research others & yours
    • Interlocking findings and Unanswered questions
    • Your preliminary work on the topic
    • The remaining questions and inter-locking logic
    • Reprise of your research question(s) in this context
  3. Methodology
    • Approach
    • Data needs
    • Analytic techniques
    • Plan for interpreting results
  4. Expected results
  5. Budget
  6. Bibliography (or References)

Another structure suitable for clinical studies

STUDY PROPOSAL

  1. Working Title:
  2. Aim:
  3. Background:
  4. Hypotheses:
  5. Design:
  6. Methods:
  7. Statistical Power Calculations:
  8. Clinical relevance:
  9. References:
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H.323 Desktop client

Searching for H.323 client, it looks like Radvision SCOPIA Desktop Video Conferencing has a lot of interesting features, including 720p video and recording. It’s MSIE plugin. Not sure what is a price.

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Watering Plants

Reading the Popular Science magazine I found really interesting invention by Pieter Hoff: Groasis Waterbox. It allows to capture condensed and rain water, and to water plant for long period of time even in dry desert environment. It’s important to take advantage of young first primary roots, which are able to penetrate soil much easily. Also is important to be aware of importance of underground microcapilars.

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Excell Visual Basic

After long time I had to do something with Visual Basic, so here is Hello World:

1. Open MS Excell
2. Open Visual Basic Editor (VBE)
Tools->Macro->Visual Basic Editor
3. In VBE open Module window
Insert->Module
4. Type following text:


Sub showMessage(msg)
MsgBox msg
End Sub
'
Function multiplyLine(line, n)
i = 1
msg = "1. " + line
Do While (i < n)
i = i + 1
msg = msg + Chr(10) + CStr(i) + ". " + line
Loop
multiplyLine = msg
End Function
'
Sub showMultipleMessages()
iNum = InputBox("Multiple Messages Input", "How many messages would you like")
n = 0 + iNum 'conversion
m = "Multiple messages:" + vbLf + multiplyLine("Hello", n)
showMessage (m)
End Sub

5. Click Run or press Alt-R

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