Synchronize Individual Folders With SugarSync May 10, 2012
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As an actual geek (as opposed to a poser geek, which is what I usually am) I need to sync my Projects folder within Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 with my company desktop, company laptop and my home computer You would not believe how convoluted this is between the various (free) file services this is, involving setting up some special folder that I have to remember to dump the synced files to, to retrieve later and remember where on the next computer to put them. Yuck. I made batch files to do this for me, but there should be I better way….
There is. SugarSync lets me specify which folder gets backed up, and to what computer’s folder. I can upload file by mail. I can files share through public links like this one, my Spanish Flashcards for WinCE 5.0. It provides an app for your Windows Mobile devices, including my ancient phone.
And its Five Gigs of Storage for free (so far). That includes the dictionary files for my next two projects, and probably the third project as well. One of the creepy things they do, though, is ask to be given access to your Gmail, Yahoo! Hotmail or AOL(?) mail accounts to solicit your friends to become users also…this is optional, but they don’t offer you a way to do this on a person-by-person basis, which I would do.
Circuit Simulator May 3, 2012
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| Simulate! |
My Stepdaughter’s Presentation April 12, 2012
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April 28, 2012
Dwinelle Hall,UC Berkeley
The Bay Honors Consortium and the Center for Educational Partnerships at the University of California, Berkeley invite community college Honors Students to present their original research at the 5th annual Honors Research Symposium on Saturday, April 28, 2012
With stimulating presentations of research in a wide range of disciplines, campus tours and UC Berkeley student entertainment, this promises to be a stimulating event you won’t soon forget.
Online Registrations have closed.Walk-In registration possible the day of the event.
2011 Symposium Program here.
I Should Explain This to Normal People April 10, 2012
Posted by stuffilikenet in Applications, Brilliant words, Geek Stuff, Publishing Tools, Video.add a comment
I test (other people’s) code for a living, which often involves boring, repetitive keystrokes, mouseclicks and other user actions before producing a desired result (i.e., showing me where it’s broken). This can be automated in Visual Studio 2010 easily, but checking that the desired result has been achieved can be somewhat more difficult or at least non-intuitive. The process of checking a result or condition is nicely described in this video.
Where 3D Printing Should Be Headed March 13, 2012
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Researchers at the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) have now made a major breakthrough in speeding up three dimensional printing at the nanoscale resolution. The high-precision-3D-printer at TU Vienna is orders of magnitude faster and opens up completely new areas of application, like medicine.
This is done by combining two improvements: one, in the extremely precise way in which the laser’s mirrors are accelerated and decelerated (details boring, will not trouble you with this) and two, the chemistry of the resin. The resin has some initiator molecules which induce polymerization when hit by TWO photons from the laser, which only happens in the very center of the beam. Subtle and tricky, since this can be focused very precisely in all three dimensions. The focal point of the laser beam is guided through the resin by the aforementioned movable mirrors and leaves behind a polymerized line of solid polymer just a few hundred nanometers wide, allowing creation of intricately structured sculptures as tiny as a grain of sand.
This video shows the 3d-printing process in real time: one hundred layers, consisting of approximately 200 single lines each, are produced in four minutes.
Beat that, RepRap.
A 75-nanometer model of St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Vienna.
In contrast to conventional 3D-printing techniques, solid material can be created anywhere within the liquid resin rather than on top of the previously created layer only. Therefore, the working surface does not have to be specially prepared before the next layer can be produced which saves a lot of time. A team of chemists led by Professor Robert Liska (TU Vienna) developed the suitable initiators for this special resin.
The London Tower Bridge, also pretty small.
Researchers all over the world are working on 3D printers today. Because of the dramatically increased speed, much larger objects can now be created in a given period of time. This makes two-photon-lithography an interesting technique for industry. At the TU Vienna, scientists are now developing bio-compatible resins for medical applications. They can be used to create scaffolds to which living cells can attach themselves facilitating the systematic creation of biological tissues. The 3d printer could also be used to create tailor-made construction parts for biomedical technology or nanotechnology.
Jan Torgersen (l) and Peter Gruber (r) and the fastest 3D nanoprinter ever!
I am very interested in seeing how long it will be before custom electronics and analytical biochips are made using these techniques, like all those science fiction authors said would happen in nanobot medicine. Just sayin’.
A2DP With My Windows CE HTC8125 Phone March 11, 2012
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The BlueTooth stereo stack for A2DP isn’t installed and therefore stereo BT headphones won’t play stereo from your media player (use GSPlayer, it’s much friendlier than the MS product, and free) even though you can use normal microphony and such for phone calls. It just doesn’t work with my HTC8125 (rebranded through ATT as Cingular 8125). As you know, Microsoft stopped supporting this OS years ago, and never did make a fix for this. Some hacker somewhere did, and if you look forever on Google, you will find it (cheat and use xda-developers.com and rapidfiles.com). You are looking for two files named a2dpfix.cab and zoa2dp_113.cab and these instructions:
Connect your phone with ActiveSync, when its done click explore. drag and drop these two files to that folder (extra points if you know your way around the phone to do this without me telling you how). Go to your phone and click File Explorer from programs. If you don’t see those two files at the bottom then click the My Documents folder and you should see them there. Click a2dpfix.cab first and when it installs, reset your phone(tiny reset button next to your camera button). Repeat with the zoa2dp_113.cab file, and reset again. Install your headphones and you should see a new profile….stereo headset…make sure that’s clicked and setup your BT normally.
All this is necessary because my mp3 players keep getting their jacks destroyed by me carrying them around all the time…no ruggedizing for actual activities, like walking.
Not that I’m cranky about spending DAYS finding this solution. I wouldn’t want you to think that.
Coronal Mass Ejection March 5, 2012
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isn’t the name of a band, or a chapter in the Kama Sutra (although it might be a book by Henry Miller). When magnetic field lines break and reconnect, charged particles traveling along them can escape. It is a violent eruption on the sun, and we had a big one just recently. This is an X-class eruption, which can cause radio blackouts, satellite barbecues and other interesting phenomena like overheating wires. The ejecta will be here Thursday morning. Here’s a little movie of this modest event (estimated at upwards of twenty million tons of plasma and whatever else is cooking overhead):
[you have to click on them; WordPress doesn't show it properly]
Now, the geek in me (not the science geek, or the history geek, but the computer geek) absolutely loves the visualizations of this made by NASA’s (computer1) geeks. Pretty isn’t it? I should make it my screensaver, but I still want flying toasters (more on this later2).
It seems WordPress is disinclined to display animated gif files, so just save them to view. They are just gorgeous. Maybe I should make YouTube versions of them, so you can see them (a moving experience). *snicker*
1 Try to keep up, will you? I have a schedule to keep.
2 Don’t crowd me, there are enough parentheses for everyone.
JAVA Development With Eclipse for Android February 6, 2012
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I just want the world to know that installing Eclipse and ADT for Android is at least as nasty, brutish and long as installing any Microsoft product, and involves rebooting the application, if not the whole machine.
So there.
Proxy Bookmarklet January 31, 2012
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So You Want Help With Android Programming… January 29, 2012
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I alternate between loving this video for saying all the things I wish I could say, and someone saying them. I am somewhat conflicted.
Exciting update: there are lots of excellent resources there at forum.xda-developers.com, including the reminder that “Despite the name, Android will not help you create an unstoppable army of emotionless robot warriors on a relentless quest to cleanse the earth of the scourge of humanity.” Also, the forum moderators are disinclined to let n00Bz post questions, so if it hasn’t been asked already you are honked. I have always wondered how anyone is going to learn when NEW questions are discouraged.
I mean come on, this isn’t church.
