It’s an excellent dictionary and also has verb conjugation – it’s easy to use and fast.

This doesn’t work:

\begin{figure}
  % Requires \usepackage{graphicx}
  \center{
      \includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{"pictures/Factors.eps"}
      \caption{Randomly generated schemes}
      \label{ScatterplotOfFFactors}
  }
\end{figure}

Whereas this is fine:

\begin{figure}
  % Requires \usepackage{graphicx}
  \center{
      \includegraphics[width=0.7\textwidth]{pictures/Factors.eps}
      \caption{Randomly generated schemes}
      \label{ScatterplotOfFFactors}
  }
\end{figure}

What’s the difference? It’s the quotes around the filename ( {pictures/Factors.eps} vs {“pictures/Factors.eps“} ) – in the first one. I’d been thinking of the filename as a string – but in LaTex it’s not.

If I add quotes the file compiles without error and displays in the DVI viewer not a gap is left where the image should be – remove the quotes and the image displays correctly.

Initially I thought that it was having problems with images in a subdirectory (they’re in a directory called “pictures”) but that was only one of many dead-ends.

This might save someone some time (and sanity). When you’re writing a thesis, the last thing you want is to waste time figuring why the tools won’t work.

This is another example of something that happens so often when programming – seeing what you expect to see. None of the examples had quotes, mine did, and I just didn’t see them.

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

It’s very hard to know what to say, except “watch it” …

YouTube – Modular robot reassembles when kicked apart

Morse Therapy
– Dr. Gary Bold, ZL1AN; excerpted by Eric Falkof, K1NUN
There was a magazine devoted to the preservation and glorification of Morse Code, Morsum Magnificat
(www.morsum.demon.uk).

Excerpting an excerpt from Number 41, August, 1995, I found this article that summarized my feelings about CW.

“…I know that if I go to bed now [after a stimulating period of intense thought and writing], I’ll just lie awake and the ideas I have to propound in the morning will rush madly about, echoing and muttering in my brain. My solution has always been to fire up the TS-520, limber up the Brown Brothers paddle, put on the cans and exchange CW for a while with someone on 20 metres. After a while the Morse begins to decode itself automatically, and little ASCII strings march quietly and effortlessly through my head.

My pulse-rate slows, and the network theorems and Fourier transforms of my professional life go away. I have almost become one with the radio, a bionic post-processor tacked on the end of the audio chain. CW is the purest form of communication I know, a ‘mind-to-mind’ linkage. The words appear right inside my head, words that were never spoken; uncorrupted by accents, verbal peculiarities, oddities of vocal intonation. They leave no room for other thoughts. Almost like a form of meditation. Very therapeutic. After thirty minutes of that, my metabolism has been slowed right down and I am relaxed. I can go to bed and sleep comes.”
by Gary Bold – ZL1AN.

Gary’s website http://www.physics.auckland.ac.nz/staff/geb/loads.htm has some excellent articles but the one I use most is his Morse tutoring program that, very sensibly, works most on the characters that are the least frequent and the hardest to learn and has some subtle and ingenious features that has bought me back to it year after erractic year, until I can finally copy code off the air. The program is called NZART Morse Tutor – I recommend it highly.

Giovanni – ZL2GX

Then I found out why all the tutorials on morse code contacts say “write it out first”  – I hadn’t of course. Brain turned to mush but Peter was amazingly merciful. The next one will be better, but it’s a buzz anyway.

Morse code is such a simple mode but somehow, elegant.

Giovanni – ZL2GX

You can do this by going to to TortoiseSVN/Settings in the right-click menu and giving a list of patterns for files you DON’T want included in the "Global Ignore Pattern":

Here’s my list (should be all on one line):

~*.doc #*.*# *.aux *.bak *.bbl *.bin *.blg *.cfg 

*.dcu *.dll *.dof *.ddp  *.drc *.dsk *.dsm *.dvi 

*.err *.ess[Mm]odel *.exe *.idx *.ilg *.ind *.lo 

*.lof *.log *.la *.lst *.map *.o *.obj *.old *.out 

*.rej *.rsm *.suo *.sav [Tt]humbs.db *.tmp *.toc 

*.tps *.~*  *.*~ #*# .*  .*~ *~. bin cvs CVS obj

The bin/cvs/CVS are directories, the rest files. Obviously there are ignored extensions for files other than those related to Delphi.

I put a text file containing this list in the repository, so it’s easy to have the same exclusions when setting up TortoiseSVN a new machine.

It’s also a very good example of how concise python can be:

Annotated TinyP2P – Annotated version:
   http://www.exonsoft.com/~kochin/TinyP2P/tinyp2p.html

Original Version:

# tinyp2p.py 1.0 (documentation at http://freedom-to-tinker.com/tinyp2p.html)
import sys, os, SimpleXMLRPCServer, xmlrpclib, re, hmac # (C) 2004, E.W. Felten
ar,pw,res = (sys.argv,lambda u:hmac.new(sys.argv[1],u).hexdigest(),re.search)
pxy,xs = (xmlrpclib.ServerProxy,SimpleXMLRPCServer.SimpleXMLRPCServer)
def ls(p=""):return filter(lambda n:(p=="")or res(p,n),os.listdir(os.getcwd()))
if ar[2]!="client": # license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0
myU,prs,srv = ("http://"+ar[3]+":"+ar[4], ar[5:],lambda x:x.serve_forever())
def pr(x=[]): return ([(y in prs) or prs.append(y) for y in x] or 1) and prs
def c(n): return ((lambda f: (f.read(), f.close()))(file(n)))[0]
f=lambda p,n,a:(p==pw(myU))and(((n==0)and pr(a))or((n==1)and [ls(a)])or c(a))
def aug(u): return ((u==myU) and pr()) or pr(pxy(u).f(pw(u),0,pr([myU])))
pr() and [aug(s) for s in aug(pr()[0])]
(lambda sv:sv.register_function(f,"f") or srv(sv))(xs((ar[3],int(ar[4]))))
for url in pxy(ar[3]).f(pw(ar[3]),0,[]):
for fn in filter(lambda n:not n in ls(), (pxy(url).f(pw(url),1,ar[4]))[0]):
(lambda fi:fi.write(pxy(url).f(pw(url),2,fn)) or fi.close())(file(fn,"wc"))

It can automatically mount a Truecrypt drive or (on untrusted computers) NOT mount, or mount read-only. Plus lots of other features.

To quote

“geek.menu is a fork of the PortableApps.com Menu, adding support for
security features, internet searching capabilities, category support,
autorun apps, and much, much more. It can serve as a replacement for
the portableApps menu.”

Download from Sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=209346

The portableApps system is intended to allow you to take all the programs you usually use with you on a USB flash drive and not rely (or save setting) on the computer you’re using.

or use the Linux command

etherwake -b mac-no-of-lan-interface-on-computer

The Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_(text_editor)

has a very nice 10 line summary.

This note is primarily so I can remember where to find it again :-)