Night Walker

Resize multiple images in Word

2012-01-24T11:09:00.000+11:00

Usually there are a number of images in my word documents. After I fill in all the contents, often it is necessary to change the size of all the images. For example, all are reduced to 50% of its original size. Word seems not to provide a straight way to do it. However, we can use the repeat function.

First, choose one of the images, resize it. For Word 2007, see help here.
Then choose the next image, press the repeat button. For more information about repeat button, see here. The keyboard shortcut for repeat function is CTRL+Y or F4.
Do the same to every other image. Done!

Easily Copy/Move/Open favorite folders with the free MyFolders Windows Explorer Shell Extension [del.icio.us]

2012-01-18T17:50:46-08:00

Daily Writing Tips [del.icio.us]

2012-01-05T14:35:01-08:00

Logging into Yahoo mail with Firefox gives unresponsive script warning

2011-11-18T21:34:00.001+11:00

When you log into Yahoo mail using Firefox, you may experience the following problem:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding...

To solve this problem, we need to increase the default script execution time.

Type "about:config" in your Firefox address box. Click the I'll be careful, I promise! button.
In the Filter box, type "dom.max_script_run_time".
When the filtered result shows up, double click the entry "dom.max_script_run_time".
In the pop up windows, change the default value to 20, or 30.

Reference: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/mail/yahoomail/settings/technical-13.html

Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files. [del.icio.us]

2011-11-14T14:58:20-08:00

Fiverr – The place for people to share things they’re willing to do for $5 [del.icio.us]

2011-11-14T14:58:06-08:00

Windows Firewall Notifier [del.icio.us]

2011-10-13T15:06:06-07:00

Arclab Thumb Studio | Freeware Image Gallery, Slideshow and Web Photo Album Creator Software [del.icio.us]

2011-09-21T20:02:52-07:00

Grindstone [del.icio.us]

2011-09-17T20:20:18-07:00

YAP cannot find the path specified when using TexStudio

2011-09-16T21:11:00.000+10:00

This week I started to use TexStudio, formerly knowns as TexMakerX, on my laptop. When I press 'F3' to view the dvi file, the following error occurs:

Windows API error 3: The system cannot find the path specified.

It also gives you the file path it cannot find in the same window.

The strange thing is, the file is in the given path. However, the YAP cannot find it. My system is 64-bit Windows 7, maybe it has something to do with they system? Googled a bit, nothing useful. Then I switched to TeXnicCenter, guess what, it is working perfectly. Thus there should be something wrong with the TexStudio configuration.

Looked at the TexStudio log windows, it shows

Process started: "C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\yap.exe" -1 -s 14F:\folder x\math.tex "F:\folder x\math.dvi"

And in the configuration, it is the default value except the yap path.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\yap.exe" -1 -s @?c:ame "?am.dvi"

After checked it carefully, I realised that the space in the path may cause the problem: the math.tex file in the log window doesn't have a "" to enclose the path. So here comes the solution. Change the dvi viewer command into one of the following in the configuration:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\yap.exe" -1 -s @?c:ame" "?am.dvi"
"C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\yap.exe" -1 -s @%.tex %.dvi

Replace the yap path based on your system. Either of the approaches above has been tested and works well.

Planner - GNOME Live! [del.icio.us]

2011-09-13T19:49:44-07:00

Easy Photo Effects - Apply effects to your photos and images [del.icio.us]

2011-09-13T15:05:25-07:00

Latex equation editor for Word and PowerPoint

2011-09-12T11:46:00.000+10:00

If you use Latex, usually you hate the equation editor that is built in Microsoft office. One of the miserable factors is that, though the Microsoft office suit has been in the market for more than 20 years, Microsoft failed to provide a decent mathematical equation editor for the academics. In this post, I would like to share the tools I use for Word and PowerPoint.

For Word, I use TexSword, http://texsword.sourceforge.net/. TeXsword is a macro package for Microsoft Word. It allows you to insert equations with labels, and equations can be referenced later on. Of course, you use LaTeX to typeset equations.
For PowerPoint, I would like to recommend IguanaTex, http://www.technion.ac.il/~zvikabh/software/iguanatex/. It is a PowerPoint plug-in that allows you to insert LaTeX equations into your PowerPoint presentation. There are other tools available, such as Tex4PPT, http://sites.google.com/site/tex4ppt/. But I haven't tried it.

Both TexSword and IguanaTex have been tested with Office 2010 and they work well.

Leptospermum scoparium - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia [del.icio.us]

2011-08-01T19:38:13-07:00

Small top margin/gap on Windows 7 desktop, Dell computer

2011-07-20T09:50:00.010+10:00

If you have received a Dell computer recently, you probably notice that, when the UAC window pops up or you change the theme of Windows, all the maximized windows are not fit to the full screen any more. They shift down and leave a small margin or gap on the top.

Notice the space between the edge of the screen and the top of the title bar.

This is caused by a process called toaster.exe. This process belongs to Dell DataSafe Local Backup. One simple way is to uninstall this software. But it seems that this software is integrated into Dell factory image restore, I am not sure it is safe to uninstall. I checked the startup service shown in the msconfig, and found a familiar name, which is SoftThinks Agent Service. SoftThinks is the software vendor that provides this problematic software. So here is the way to get rid of the process toaster.exe and you don't need to kill it every time your computer starts:

Open 'Control Panel'
Double click on the ‘Administrative Tools’
Double click on the ‘Services’
Scroll down and find the ‘SoftThinks Agent Service’, double click on it. In the pop-up window, change the startup type to ‘Disabled’, and then click ‘OK’.
Restart your computer, problem solved ;).

The steps above can be also applied to disable the DataSafe program.

中文版: http://time360.blogspot.com/2011/07/dellwindows-7-toaster.html

“The installer has insufficient privileges to access this directory” when updating FastAccess

2011-07-09T15:23:00.005+10:00

New Dell computers come with a face recognition software FastAccess from Sensible Vision. When updating to version 3.001.049, an error may occur during installation:
“The installer has insufficient privileges to access this directory” .

The upgrade consists of two phases. First it will uninstall the old version, then install the new version. This is why this error shows up. To avoid this error, follow the steps below.

Copy the downloaded installation file FAInstallV3.001.049.Dell.exe that is located at ‘C:\Users\***\AppData\Local\Temp’ to the desktop for future use. Replace the ‘***’by your user name.
When you see the error, the old version of FastAccess should have been uninstalled. Go to control panel—> Programs and features to double check it. Then simply restart your computer.
Delete the folder ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Sensible Vision’.
Double click on the installation file on the desktop to install the software.

Quick setup guide of Latex in Windows

2011-06-06T16:03:00.003+10:00

Latex is complex enough for some users. So, here comes the quick setup guide if you use Windows operating systems.

Download the necessary software.

proTeXt - MiKTeX-based distribution for Windows, http://www.tug.org/protext/, download the .exe version.
Ghostscript, http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
TeXnicCenter, http://www.texniccenter.org/. Based on my experience, the alpha version of TeXnicCenter is stable for daily use. Alternatively, you can use TexMakerX http://texmakerx.sourceforge.net/.

Install the software.

Install the Ghostscript. The default setting should be fine.
Double click the proTeXt to unzip it to a temporary folder. Navigate into the folder and install MiKTex, full installation is recommended.
Install TeXnicCenter or TexMakerX, or both.

Done! ;)

Update 22 July 2011:
Now TexmakerX has been renamed to TeXstudio, the project page is http://texstudio.sourceforge.net/.

Australia Trip 2006 - 2011

2011-05-23T20:34:00.002+10:00

Photos: Wenbin;
Music: Dark red clouds - Tone, from Healing Collection IV.

A trip to the Falls in NSW

2011-05-16T21:44:00.002+10:00

Photos: Wenbin;
Thanks: Stephen;
Music: 岫壑浮云 Deep Valley and Floating Cloud (CHEN Yue and Mark)

IEEE PDF eXpress: Font XXX is not embedded

2011-05-03T15:15:00.009+10:00

When a PDF is submitted to IEEE PDF eXpress, a common problem for Latex users is that ‘Font XXX is not embedded’. This happens because fonts are not embedded when converting ps format to PDF format. Therefore, if we add extra command to ask the program that converts ps to PDF to embed all fonts, the problem can be resolved. The following solution is based on the assumption that you have Ghostscript (ver. 8.63 or above) installed and you use ps2pdf to generate your PDF document.

Open the window where you can modify the ps2pdf command arguments. For example, for TeXnicCenter, you can find it through Build—> Define output profiles—> Latex=>PS=>PDF—>Postprocessor—>Ghostscript (ps2pdf). Then add the following command:

-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer

-dPDFSETTINGS=configuration calls the predefined settings when converting ps to PDF. The parameter ‘configuration’ can be one of the following: /screen, /ebook, /printer, /prepress, or /default.

The ‘/printer’ option sets the EmbedAllFonts option to be true by default. Actually, except the /screen option, all other options will embed the fonts.

Further details can be found at http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/svn/Ps2pdf.htm#Options.

Reference: http://people.engr.ncsu.edu/txie/publications/writingtools.html#missingfont

Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP offline installer

2011-04-28T10:06:00.004+10:00

If you are still using XP, and wonder where to download the Windows Live Essentials for Windows XP offline installer, you can get frustrated since it seems that there is no direct link provided anymore on the official website. Don’t worry, here are the links.

Version: 14.0.8117.416

English: http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/en/wlsetup-all.exe

Simplified Chinese: http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/zh-chs/wlsetup-all.exe

Traditional Chinese: http://g.live.com/1rewlive3/zh-cht/wlsetup-all.exe

Subscripted assignment between dissimilar structures

2011-03-28T17:22:00.004+11:00

Look at the following two MATLAB examples.
clear a g
a.b =[1 2 3];
a.c ='example';
g =struct('c', '', 'b', zeros(1, 3));
g(1) =a
***************************
clear a g
a.b =[1 2 3];
a.c ='example';
g =struct('b', zeros(1, 3), 'c', '');
g(1) =a

These two scripts are the same except slight difference that the order of the structure of g is defined.

When the first one is called, MATLAB will throw an error:
??? Subscripted assignment between dissimilar structures.

However, the second one can run without any error. That is, this error can be solved by changing the order of the structure definition.

The other way to solve this problem is calling the function s = orderfields(s1) when defining the struct.

Toshiba A100 automatically restarts during system restore using recovery DVD

2011-03-07T09:24:00.005+11:00

Yesterday, my housemate asked me to help him to recover his Toshiba A100 laptop back to out-of-box status. "Easy!" That's what I thought. Unfortunately, it was not that easy.

I got the Toshiba recovery DVD, inserted the computer, and started from CD/DVD. When a screen showed “Please wait”, the computer restarted. Maybe I did something wrong. So I searched the Internet and tried to find out how to recover the system, none worked: pressing "C" then turn on the computer; pressing numeric "0" then turn on the computer.

Luckily, I came across a post at http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/608008, a guy mentioned it may work if you delete all the data on the hard disk. Why not give it a try? I used my XP installation cd to erase all the partitions on the hard disk and created a new partition, then quitted the installation. Next, started the laptop from the Toshiba recovery DVD. Everything worked fine now. After "Please wait" screen, another menu popped up, asked you to recover the system back to out-of-box status or erase the data on the disk.

Problem solved, followed by painful system update :(.

Regarding this strange problem, I suspected that Toshiba recovery software will check some files on the disk if there are data there. If the file it checks has corrupted, strange problems will appear.

Battery power drain during laptop hibernation

2011-02-25T20:16:00.012+11:00

I bought a new laptop that comes with Windows 7, and noticed that the battery power drains around 10% in just one night. This is not right. At first, I thought maybe I was not lucky, got a faulty laptop. But then I thought I shouldn't be that unlucky. So I searched the Internet, it seems there are some Thinkpad users have this issue and this problem and some were fixed by a software patch.

If it is not a faulty laptop, I suspected some devices woke up. But I didn't know which one. So, I disabled the wake timers in the Advance settings of the Power options. In the following days, the battery power drain didn't repeat.

Note that, the battery and power adapter of my laptop also have been replaced. So if the software trick doesn't work, you may need to consider the hardware issue. I cannot decide which 'fix' really fixes the problem since they were done almost at the same time.

Update:
It happened again, but only once. Thus I was not sure what caused that. Treated it as an isolated case.

MATLAB function: all combinations in a vector

2011-01-11T10:44:00.004+11:00

function [vout len_array] = combn_all(v, k)
% combn_all All combinations of the N elements in V.
%   Inputs: v, a row or column vector,
%           k, a scalar or vector, see the MATLAB built-in function 
%              combnk for details
%
%   Outputs: vout, a cell array

n =length(v);

if nargin <2
    k =1:n;
end

if strcmpi(k, 'all')
    k =1:n;
end

len_array =factorial(n)./(factorial(k).*factorial(n-k));
vout =cell(1, sum(len_array));

for m =1:length(k)
    vn =combnk(v, k(m));
    if m ==1
        ind1 =1;
    else
    ind1 =sum(len_array(1:m-1))+1;
    end
    ind2 =ind1+len_array(m)-1;
    vout(ind1: ind2) =mat2cell(vn, ones(1, size(vn, 1)), size(vn, 2));
end

**************************************
Examples:

>> [vout len_array] = combn_all([1 2 3], 1)

vout =

[1] [2] [3]

len_array =

3

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>> [vout len_array] = combn_all([1 2 3], [1 2])

vout =

    [1]    [2]    [3]    [1x2 double]    [1x2 double]    [1x2 double]

len_array =

     3     3

>> vout{4:end}

ans =

     1     2

ans =

     1     3

ans =

     2     3

Microsoft Security Essentials installation error 0x80070643

2010-12-31T00:29:00.004+11:00

At http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/msestart/thread/908fad3e-f9fc-4d8a-be83-ae7d3bc48db5, the post explains how to solve the problem when you are receiving an error 0x80070643 during installation of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Yesterday, when I installed Microsoft Security Essentials on my sister's laptop, I encountered this issue. Unfortunately, the post mentioned above doesn't help. However, I noticed that all the Google search results were redirected to a strange address. Thus I suspected that some malwares prevented the installation from being completed.

I downloaded Spybot-S&D and cleaned the malwares. It had difficulty when clean the harmful redirection in the hosts file. I had to obtain the full control through the security tab of the file properties.

After the removal of the malwares, Microsoft Security Essentials was installed successfully.

et al ie and eg in Latex

2010-12-09T12:12:00.004+11:00

When writing a paper, it is common to use et al., i.e., e.g.. However, in Latex, you cannot simply use the forms "i.e." or "e.g." These words end with a period and Latex will treat the period as the end of a sentence. Thus extra space is added automatically. To prevent the extra space in Latex, the correct use of these words is

i.e.\
e.g.\
et al.\

For example, "...two colours, i.e.\ red and blue."

Image spatial filtering Q&A

2010-12-07T13:16:00.002+11:00

What is spatial domain and where is it?

The spatial domain is the image plane itself.

What is spatial filtering?

Spatial filtering is similar with the point operations. Given a pixel at (x, y) in the input image, the output pixel of spatial filtering depends on not only the pixel at (x, y) but also the neighbourhood of the point (x, y).

What are filter, mask, filter mask, kernel, template and window?

They are the same thing with different names. A spatial filter is matrix that defines a neighbourhood with predefined operation for spatial filtering.

When filtering an image, should I use convolution or correlation?

To perform spatial filtering, both convolution and correlation can be used, as long as the intended operation is implemented through the mask. It is just a matter of preference.

How does a matrix transform vectors?

2010-12-02T14:24:00.006+11:00

This post gives an introduction to geometric spatial transformations through an example.

The figure above shows a vector V1 expressed as (x1, y1) , and another vector V2 which is obtained by rotating V1 anticlockwise.

Assume the vector length is r, we can express x1 and y1 as

Then for V2, we have

and

If we expand the vectors to a 3-D space, we will have

Based on results above, the relationship between V1 and V2 can be expressed as

Convert a video to images

2010-11-30T14:47:00.006+11:00

Recently in a post Convert images to avi video in MATLAB there is someone anonymous asking how to convert a video to images. If they have read the MATLAB help file carefully, this would not be problem.

An example is given below.

mov =aviread('vipscenevideoclip.avi');

for m =1:length(mov)
[im,map] = frame2im(mov(m));
imwrite(im, ['im' num2str(m) '.jpg'],'jpg');
end

A letter from my family 一纸乡书

2010-11-01T11:25:00.001+11:00

Photo by Wenbin; Music 一纸乡书 A letter from my family by WANG Junxiong; Thanks Stephen.

Word fails to start

2010-10-28T14:26:00.004+11:00

When you try to start Microsoft Word, and receive the following error message:

Microsoft Word has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

You read the information given on the screen and click on the Send Error Report or Don't Send. In the following window, it asks you to start in safe mode or not. If you click yes, Word will start, but no add-ons. If you click no, then Word will repeat the error message again, until you close the Word in safe mode. How frustrating!

A solution to this nightmare is deleting the normal.dot template file. It usually locates at
C:\Documents and Settings\your user name\Application Data\Microsoft\Templates on Windows XP.

If the solution won't solve your problem, open the template fold, and delete the redundant .dot files.

Windows 7 logs you into a temporary profile

2010-10-25T12:21:00.002+11:00

I believe lots of people who use Windows 7 have seen the following message:

"You have been logged on with a temporary profile. You cannot access your files and files created in this profile will be deleted when you log off. To fix this, try logging off and logging on later. Please see the event log for details or contact your system administrator."

This happens when your profile is being operated by a process, and you log in using the profile.

To solve this issue, it is very simple, being patient, give the computer several seconds to run the starting up processes. For example, if you just log off the computer, wait for 10-20 seconds then log in, it should help you avoid the message mentioned above.

Visions of a dream

2010-10-23T00:10:00.001+11:00

Photo by Wenbin; music 'visions of a dream' by Llynya.

Flowers in a Riot of Color 乱红

2010-10-17T00:42:00.002+11:00

Photo by Wenbin and Stephen, landscape of China; music 'Flowers in a Riot of Color' (乱红) from 'Impromptu (Xiao & Piano)', by Chen Yue & Mark.