cat /proc/claus

I’ve been working recently to setup a webserver for my work group at UFRJ. After talking to some friends, I decided that the best idea to set up a common main page for the laboratory was to use some sort of wiki. So that everyone can edit it without too much trouble.

Now, there are SO MANY wiki solutions that it is kinda hard to choose the right one. Fortunately, I managed to find the Wiki Matrix. Wiki Matrix is a website that helps you compare wikis. You can use a “wizard”-like questionnarie, where you specify what are you looking for, and what you wish for a wiki, and they will filter their data base for you. Going through their wizard, I managed to reduce my search from 200-something to 18 wiki softwares. After that, these wiki softwares are displayed side by side with a feature list, and you can hide certain features you don’t care about. I managed to further refine my search to 3 wikis, with DokuWiki the clear winner (and two more in case I can’t use it for some reason).

So even if you already have a favorite wiki, give Wiki Matrix a chance before making a new installation. Some of their comparison criteria, such as date and frequency of software updates, were very useful for me.

So yesterday night I dropped a whole cup of coffee on my keyboard (and my whole desk, but never mind that). I desperately tried to dry it all out as fast as I could, but after I spending a ton of paper towels, the “t” and the “y” keys were still stuck (so that whenever I pressed “t” I got “rt” and whenever I pressed “y” I got “uy”).

My first tought was that maybe some sugar or coffee dried under those keys, binding their pressure sensors together. I tried as hard as I could to clean it under them, to no success. Then I decided that I would try to take the keyboard apart to fix it.

Bad mistake.

First of all, why does a freaking keyboard has SO MANY SCREWS? My keyboard had 16 (SIXTEEN!) screws attached to the lower side. Worse yet, even after I released all those screws, the keyboard would not come apart! The plastic was probably welded shut, and I could just pry at the borders. WTF?

Then I noticed something wonky — when I took off the screws, half of my keyboard stopped working — but it was not a consistent half: The enter and space keys were okay, as well as the number row and the function keys. But all the keys in between where non-responsive. As I started putting the screws back in place, the keys started responding again. Maybe the screws were just holding the sensor in place? It does not make much sense, externally accesible screws that would not give internal access, but would hold the internals of the keyboard in place >.< Of course, when I put it all back together, it was working even WORSE than before. Not only the t and y keys were stuck to the r and u keys, but the q key was stuck to the tab key, and the w key was stuck with the CAPS LOCK key (they are not even close together, WTF?) the o and p keys were stuck to [ and ], respectively. It made no sense at all.

So I guess I will have to buy another keyboard today. I don't know if I screwed my old keyboard for good, or if I just spread the water that was inside and created new and amazing connections, but I have enough work this week that I cannod afford to be without a computer until I figure out what went wrong

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

In other news, I just got this VIM cheat sheet from my laboratory’s mailing list. I should take the chance to properly learn how to use VIM, I guess. Hope it is useful to others too.

Today I had to re-write these scripts, that I used a lot when I took more photos than I do now. I´m pretty sure that I had versions of these scripts somewhere in my backup hard disk, but I can´t get it to work for some reason. BTW, that makes me pretty afraid, there are some important data on that disk, but I will face that problem some other day — plenty to do today already.

Without further ado:

Script for mass renaming files:

for i in *.jpg;
do mv $i `basename $i jpg`JPG;
done

Script for mass resizing pictures:
for i in *.JPG;
do convert $i -resize 600x600 `basename $i JPG`jpg;
done

¨basename¨ is a neat little program that I didn´t know about. It strips leading directories and trailing extensions from filenames (and if you give it the correct parameter, it will leave the period in the end of the file name). ¨convert¨ is a program in the Imagemagick package.

Person A generates a document, using Power Point (don’t ask). Sends it to person B. The document displays slightly differently on person’s B computer, due to differences in fonts, environment, program version. B performs minor changes to “fix” these displays differences, and sends the document back to A. A then see differences in his own computer, fix them, and sends them back to B.

Rinse, Repeat.

>_>

In a recent interview, the interviewer asked me to briefly explain my PhD work. While showing him what I did, he intersected “that’s just like Genetic Algorithms, right?” - “Yes, I am actually working on Genetic Algorithms” - “But your curriculum said you worked on “Evolutionary Computation”

…

I can’t really blame him. The field of evolutionary computation (and bioinspired heuristics in general), is plagued by too many “cute/cool” names, such as “Ant Colony Optimization”, “Ant Clustering”, “Memetic Algorithms”, “Queen bee optimization”, “Cat Swarm Optimization”, that often say very little about the technique under them, and less about what other techniques are related.

These names are often the result of well intentioned researchers who want to relate their findings with their inspiration, or who think that a new cool name can bring in more attention, more people and more ideas to the field. But I feel that these names more hinder than help, by making it difficult for people not in the field to have a grasp of what is connected with what, and for people in the field to make sure that what they are doing was not already done by someone else with a different cool name.