Tangible Tips

Essential Applications for the Erudite Academician

2010-09-17T14:41:00.004-05:00

Doing research takes time. Anything that can be done to reduce the time taken (without affecting quality) can be beneficial. Below, I list several applications I've come across that tend to save time and/or money (especially important for the budding doctoral student).

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Syncing software: This group of applications allows you to automatically synchronize files among multiple computers and users. This is useful if you have a desktop and a laptop and always want to have the most current file available.

http://db.tt/W01fcm2 - Dropbox (freemium) – Syncs folders you specify across multiple computers, with 2 Gigs free. You can pay for premium service that gives more. Use my link and we each get an extra 250 Megs free. If you sign up with a .edu e-mail address, you will get twice the free space for each referral.

https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=bn36ex4pctb3c – SugarSync (freemium) They support Windows, Mac OSX, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Symbian. So, this software seems to cover more types of devices than Windows Live Mesh (www.mesh.com ( http://www.mesh.com/)) or Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQ3MzM1Nzk?m=4).

It syncs folders you specify across multiple computers. You can share a synced folder with others and give them different levels of access. You also have access to the files from the web. You can e-mail files to your SugarSync account and the files will automatically sync to all the computers you have it set up on. These

They give you 2 Gigs of storage free, but if you sign up with the link above, you (and I) will get an extra 500 Megs free. They have a special now that allows you to get unlimited free storage based on how many referrals you get (if I understand it correctly).

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Remote connectivity: This group allows you to access computers remotely. Do you have an application on your home computer that you would like to run from your office? Do you have a file on your desktop computer when you are at your local coffee shop (and you didn't put it in your synced folder)? Here's how

www.LogMein.com - (freemium) Remote connection to your computer. I like it better than mesh's remote access. It's faster. However, you cannot transfer files through it unless you upgrade to the paid account. You can transfer files with mesh.

http://www.tonido.com/ - (free plus free and paid add-ons) According to their site, this software let's you "run your own cloud." Tonido is a quick install and allows you to access your computer through a web page. It appears to me to be almost like setting up a server on your computer. The advantage of this over logmein is that you have much finer control over access to files. Logmein is what you would use to access your own equipment - you wouldn't give anyone else access to logmein passwords. With Tonido, you can set up a collaboration site on your own computer and give limited access to those in your collaboration group. There are many other features...check it out.

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Collaboration sites: Here are a couple of sites that allow you to easily collaborate on projects.

https://workspace.office.live.com – (free) – from their website – “Microsoft Office Live Workspace beta is an easy-to-use Web-based program that helps you exchange business or personal information with the people you choose. Use Office Live Workspace to collaborate on documents, notes, spreadsheets, presentations, and lists — any information that is important to your business, friends, or family. People you invite to share your workspace can review, update, and comment on your files from any computer that has an Internet connection.” It also appears that you can share your computer screen remotely, sort of like an online meeting. This has an add-in to MS Excel, Word, and Powerpoint, allowing you to save directly to your Office Live workspace. This site is a good source for collaboration. You can set up a site for a particular paper or project you are working on and give access to others on the team

documents.google.com - (free) Google has made tremendous strides with their Google Docs. You do all the work in the cloud, so as long as you have web access, you have access to your documents. Also, using GDocs, you can have multiple users on multiple computers working on the same document simultaneously. Imagine, all the students in the same class taking notes in the same document at the same time...pure chaos. Gotta love it!

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Miscellaneous: This section is a compilation of various tools that I find useful.

http://www.tracker-software.com/product/pdf-xchange-viewer - (free) - PDF-Xchange viewer provides you the ability to edit .pdf files. You can highlight text, add notes, and make many other edits to a .pdf. If you want to go "paper-less," this is a great tool, particularly when you are reading downloaded articles for your research.

voice.google.com - (free) - Set up an account with Google Voice, and you will be provided your own phone number. Use that one number to link all you other phone numbers and provide transcribed voice mail to your e-mail. You can also use GVoice to call any U.S. number from any other U.S. number free. If your university has PIN codes to charge you for your long distance calls, use GVoice to make them free instead.

http://www.openoffice.org/ - (free) – OpenOffice.org is a free alternative to Microsoft Office or other office suites. From their site: “OpenOffice.org 3 is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.” OpenOffice can read and write to MS Office documents and spreadsheets, but not with 100% identical results. It's close enough for most uses, though.

www.theultimatesteal.com - ($79.95) - If you absolutely, positively, have to have a Microsoft product, the ultimatesteal.com site offers Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2010 (for students only) for $79.95. The site was still up as of August 12, 2010.

www.dreamspark.com- (free) – This is an awesome opportunity for students. Unfortunately, it's not for faculty. Microsoft is giving away free software to students. They offer Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, SQL Server 2008 Developer, and several more. Depending on your university, students can verify very easily through JourneyEd, an academic software company, and have access to the software within a few hours. These are full versions of the software - an excellent opportunity!!

http://www.zotero.org/ - Zotero (free) – A citation manager (like Endnote). It is an extension to the Firefox browser that does what Endnote does and more. It was created by researchers for researchers. I have worked with it a little. One of the nice benefits (endnote kind of does this now - not automatically) is that you can automatically sync your data to the Zotero server and other computers. I think you can select what server you want to sync to and you are able to share your data with others through the syncing process. Like most open source projects, there is a lot of creativity among those who are working on the software and I expect some pretty interesting things in the future.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ - (free) – Google Desktop – Download the Google Desktop software to multiple computers. The software will index your files and give you search results from your computer like those you get when you do a web search. In other words, it will let you search for a word or phrase within files. Picture this: you are working on a paper and you remember a quote, but you can't remember from which of the hundreds of pdf articles you have did the quote come. Use a hotkey to pull up google desktop search, put in a few words of the quote, and your file appears.

https://www.xmarks.com/ (free) - If you use Firefox as your browser, get the add-on XMARKS. It allows you to sync all your bookmarks/favorites among different computers. So, if you are on a lab computer using Firefox with Xmarks, you will have the same bookmarks you have on your home computer and work computer (assuming you set up Xmarks up on each of them). Xmarks also has an add-on for Google's Chrome browser, so you can sync across browsers, too.

http://ultimate-research-assistant.com/ - (free) – The Ultimate Research Assistant is an advanced Internet knowledge mining technology. Need a fast summary of some of the data on a particular topic? Go here. I prefer the Advanced Search because it returns up to 50 results instead of 10.

http://armstrong.wharton.upenn.edu/delphi2/ - (free) – Delphi Decision Aid! Delphi is a data-gathering tool to aid in the anonymous survey of expert judgments, obtained in a series of rounds, ultimately for forecasting purposes. This can have (but is not limited to) the following applications:

* New product forecasts

* Personnel selection

* Estimating the effect of a change in a marketing program

* Predicting outcomes in conflict situations

Delphi Decision Aid! is designed only for use with questions that yield either rankings or quantitative estimates.

This site helps you to:

* Select experts

* Develop questions and scales

* Obtain responses from the experts

* Summarize a report after each round

It also allows access to relevant literature including, in some cases, full-text articles.

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Miscellaneous, non-research: This section is a compilation of various tools that I find useful but are not necessarily research-focused.

http://www.winsplit-revolution.com/download - (free) – from their site: “WinSplit Revolution is a small utility which allows you to easily organize your open windows by tiling, resizing and positioning them to make the best use of your desktop real estate. What can it do? WinSplit is especially useful for high-end LCD screens with high resolutions because it helps you to efficiently manage many active windows. For example WinSplit is useful for owners of the Dell 2407FPW monitor. The advantages of using WinSplit is that it saves you from having to drag and drop windows by allowing you to snap windows into specific tiled configurations using simple keyboard hotkeys.

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/ - Synergy (free) - Allows you to control other computers on the network from a single computer, mouse, and keyboard. In other words, if you have your laptop on your desk next to your desktop computer, you could use your desktop computer keyboard and mouse to control your laptop. Both devices have to be on the same subnet.

All the best,

Fred

Fire Safety: Could this happen to you?

2010-02-18T22:47:00.001-06:00

A long time ago (I believe I was 13 years of age), a teacher of mine had each of the students write a report about fire safety. With the help of my father, we came up with what is below. It's light reading and I hope you enjoy it. Please share the link with others who may care to take a short mental excursion. You may freely copy and share the story with others as long as you attribute it to this blog.

Note: Any similarities between the characters in this story and anyone you may know is merely coincidence... or is it?

All the best,
Derfster

The scene opens and Mr. Snuffy is sitting there, carelessly smoking on the sofa. The cigarette ash falls down and sets fire to the sofa. Mrs. Snuffy has just started cooking dinner. She set the heat on the range very high and has a lot of fat in the pan. She runs to investigate what Mr. Snuffy is yelling about. The high heat makes the fat splatter that hits the cat that has been lying on the kitchen table. The cat, which is startled, jumps off the table and lands on the sleeping dog. The flaming dog runs into a lamp with a frayed cord. The sparks from the frayed lamp cord set fire to the drapes. Mr. Snuffy tries to tear the burning drapes off the wall and yanks so hard that he falls backward into the fireplace screen and knocks the burning log into the middle of the living room.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Snuffy runs back into the kitchen to see what frightened the cat. When she sees the splattered fat, she tries to wipe it up with paper towels, but the high flames set fire to the paper towels and the flames get into the pan. She picks up the pan to throw it into the sink, but burns her fingers on the handle and drops it into the middle of the floor. Meanwhile, upstairs, their son Derf comes running down to see what all the commotion is. He trips on the steps, falls onto the table carrying the liquor. The liquor falls onto the floor, breaks, and sets fire to the carpet. Wanda, now, comes running over to see what the problem is. She still has the stereo headphones on, pulls the stereo off the stand; it breaks and sends sparks spewing all over the place, setting fire to the carpet.

Mrs. Snuffy, remembering that baking soda will put out grease fires, reaches for the box, but accidentally grabs a box of phosphate detergent. She dumps that all over the fire and it proceeds to explode in a big flash. Mr. Snuffy tries to stamp out the fire on the living room rug and sets fire to his pants. Mr. Snuffy struggles to get his pants off and trips. He lands on the family pet pig, which takes off and knocks over the TV on the stand. The TV knocks over the birdcage, and the family’s pet chicken flies out through the fire in the kitchen. The chicken catches fire and flies through the house. The burning chicken flies into the bedroom and sets fire to the drapes. Wanda, trying to beat out the flames on the drapes with a broom, manages to break the window. The squealing pig runs into the ironing board with iron still turned on on top of it. The iron falls down and hits the floor and proceeds to start burning its way through the basement.

In the meantime, Mrs. Snuffy who is in the kitchen, decides she wants to extinguish the flames with the spray head from the sink. She turns on the water, grabs the spray hose, runs to hard, and disconnects the hose and the water proceeds to squirt up to the ceiling. Mr. Snuffy finally manages to get his flaming pants off and runs into the bathroom to throw them into the toilet bowl. Unfortunately, Mrs. Snuffy was trying to remove some toilet stains with gasoline. As he throws the pants into the toilet bowl, he is greeted by a blinding flash.

The fire from the range has now gotten behind the refrigerator. Mrs. Snuffy and Derf are trying to move the refrigerator further out from the wall to put out the fire, but it gets caught on the floor, tips, and falls on the floor that has already been weakened by the fire. It falls right through the floor and ends up in the basement. The refrigerator lands on the gas dryer, breaking the gas pipe. The gas is ignited by the pilot light and the fire begins to burn heartily in the basement. The daughter, who was downstairs in the basement doing the wash, is startled by the gas flame, jumps back and knocks over the shelf storing the paint and paint thinner which then crashes on the floor and begins to catch fire. The living room is, by now, a raging inferno and Mr. Snuffy remembers that Grandma is still upstairs.

Mr. Snuffy runs outside and grabs the extension ladder out of the truck to climb up to her bedroom. He puts the ladder up and begins climbing up. But the ground, soft from the recent rain, gives way, the ladder slips, and he falls with the ladder on top of the outhouse, almost killing Grandpa. Grandpa has the best bowel movement he’s had in years. Grandpa, in a fit of anger, climbs out of the rubble of the outhouse, grabs a board and throws it at Mr. Snuffy. His aim isn’t too good, so it goes right in through the bedroom window and knocks over the lamp on the night table.

Mr. Snuffy seeing that the ladder probably won’t do the trick tries to throw a rope up to Grandma. He ties a rock to the end of the rope and throws it up to the window. Unfortunately, he throws it too hard, hits Grandma, and shorts out the battery in her hearing aid. The noise startles Grandma and she flings her knitting across the room. The steel knitting needles hit the electric blanket and cause a short in it which proceeds to set fire to the bed. Grandma, being angered by being hit by the rock, throws the rock out the window again. It lands on the windshield of the family pickup truck, breaks the windshield, and crashes through the dashboard. The impact causes a short in the wiring, setting fire to the car’s engine.

Grandpa, recognizing that Grandma is still in danger, sets the ladder up to the window again to try to get Grandma out of the flaming bedroom. Mr. Snuffy, in the meantime, attempts to back the burning pickup truck out of the driveway. Little does he realize as he backs up, but the rope connected to the ladder is caught on the pickup’s bumper. The force of the rapidly accelerating truck pulls the ladder out from under Grandpa. Grandma, who during all the commotion had just climbed out of the window onto the ladder, is left hanging from the windowsill.

Mr. Snuffy continues backing out of the driveway and promptly backs into the fire engine that had been called by the neighbors. From the force of the collision, the fire engine’s ladder, swings around and narrowly misses Grandma who is still hanging from the windowsill. Grandma grabs the fireman’s ladder without letting go of the window. The rotted wood gives way and the side wall of the house falls down, narrowly missing Grandpa, but destroying Mrs. Snuffy’s prize Dandelion patch.

Mr. Snuffy climbs out of the wreckage of the pickup truck and runs back toward the house to try to rescue Mrs. Snuffy and the rest of the family still inside. The daughter in the basement, by stepping on the refrigerator, manages to climb up into the kitchen just as the iron has finished burning through the main beam. The first floor collapses into the basement. The firemen get Mrs. Snuffy, Wanda, Derf, and the other daughter out just in time. The firemen manage to get the family and the pets out of the house just in time. Mr. Snuffy, in order to save the second car, tries to back it out of the driveway. However, he did not look where he was going. He backs the car into a tree, the force of which snapped off the tree. The second floor had already been weakened by the collapse of the first floor and the main beam. But, the branch, like the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, hit the roof of the house causing, the second floor to settle down into the basement along with the first floor.

The scene closes with all the members of the family staring at the rubble of what moments ago, was their home.

The Alpha - Hello World!

2010-02-17T22:01:00.000-06:00

"Hello World."

This phrase above is frequently used by beginning computer programming students as the first message they program to display on the computer screen. Therefore, I thought it appropriate to start my first blog with the same statement.

My hope is that you come to enjoy this blog and return to it frequently to see my updates. You will see humorous stories, tips and ideas covering a wide variety of topics.

Thank you for visiting.

All the best,
Derfster