I looked rather different back in 1984

NE major aspects of my life is exercise — weight training in particular. On pretty much this date, precisely 10 years ago, I began to work out. The road has been long and I now reap the benefits. Today is by all means a personal milestone.

Christmas appears to be the time of many resolutions and changes for me. It was around this time (22^nd/23^rd of December) in 2001 that I joined the health club, which I have cherished ever since. It was only yesterday that I decided to take the WordPress forums more seriously as well, especially because of the upcoming release of WordPress 2.0 (probably this Monday).

All in all, this time of the year, only a few days before Christmas, has special magic for these peculiar reason. These days of significance, namely those that go back to December 1995, still are and will always retain a sentimental value. As I have worked out regularly ever since (i.e. no breaks) this also symbolises the time when I got ‘shackled’ for good. Yes, for good, for the better.

F I ever undertake a repetltive task that pertains to research, I wish to either automate it using existing (preferably free) tools, script it (e.g. bash, Perl or MATLAB which is by all means expenesive), or costomise the desktop environment to minimize the number of moves, clicks, etc. Productivity through convenience can be achieved using clipboard stacks, mouse focus policies and so forth.

I find Linux to be a powerful tool in research. Windows, for instance, could not replace the multi-tasking capabiltities and expresiveness of Linux. Macs likewise, although they are most popular among designers, technical designers included. They are not, as far as I can tell, an optimal programming platform considering the price which they sell for. Singularity from Microsoft is intended to address the deficiencies related to Windows in the research sector. It is Singularity, as well as Monad, that ought to endow Microsoft with the platform that suits so-called “power users”. Monad is a command-line tool for Windows, that has been hacked a few months ago and will therefore be excluded from Windows Vista. In the mean time, KDE will remain my favourite desktop environment. Linus Torvalds could give a polite nod.

Desktop environement productivity tools and essays:

• Desktop Mouse Gestures
• Program Invocation Methods
• Keyboard Accelerators
• Previews on Desktop

S I approach the end of my Ph.D., I need to keep an open eye on job openings and vacancies in academia. I wish to do so in the least time-consuming way. What better way than feeds of information that give a rapid daily flow?

Vacancies are delivered as search results for a query or criteria specified by the user, e.g. location, sector. This has the same characteristic and advantages that RSS technology typically offers:

• Narrower scope and less visual clutter
• Littler user intervention, ‘pull technology’ versus ‘push technology’ such as E-mail
• Summarisation (title versus detailed description, link/s)
• Flagging of new content as opposed to previously-read entries.

There are many more arguments in defence of feeds, but they will be missing the point of this post and are worth a discussion in their own right. The following are job vacancies Web sites, which I know provide RSS feeds:

• Monster RSS – International coverage, sub-divided by job type
• Jobs.ac.uk RSS – Jobs in academia world-wide with emphasis on the United Kingdom
• CWJobs – Jobs in IT (United Kingdom). Search for terms, then use the RSS button/facility, currently at the top

[On to personal ramblings] Earlier today I read a more official announcement about the Google headquarters in Dublin. I have known about this for several months as I am/was considered for a Software Engineer/System Administrator position there. I also pointed to photos from the Googleplex in London before. In general, I have openly expresses disdain, skepticism and anger, as well as support, admiration, and sympathy for Google in the past. Their affinity to and backing of Open Source software probably transcends the controversy though.

Related items:

• Weather RSS Feeds
• Syndicating News
• Search Results as RSS, Google Results as RSS Feeds, Keeping Track of Google, Yahoo RSS
• RSS Feeds for Journals

A server as your main and central ‘workstation’

AVE you ever wondered if re-entering passwords, restoring settings, synchronising bookmarks, and exchanging files are at all necessary tasks? Could these repeatable tasks possibly be avoided? Is there a way of working from a variety of places, totally oblivious to the location of data and the state of the applications used? To me, there is a simple method for keeping everything in a single place, but it relies on a quick network connection.

I keep all my settings synchronised by always SSH‘ing (must get X-forwarding enabled) to a single machine that acts as a server. All other machines are used merely as terminals; and yet, one must assume the user is always connected via fast fast Wi-Fi or Ethernet. How truly comforting would it be to have all the computers behave in the same way? With good bandwidth in hand, also the level of responsiveness is identical.

This can definitely be done with Windows and Apple Macs although, if you steer way from UNIX and its variants, that might involve complications when it comes to applications, utilities or commercial software (Windows in particular). It is worth emphasising that you need only install software once — on the server. Data is stored on the server as well and this includes settings, browser cookies and so forth.

In short: same everything, different hardware, from different locations, at any time (provided you do not mind electricity bills for workstations that are constantly on). I always leave my machines switched on because I often find that it is a good return (productivity-wise) on investment.

Related items:

• RAID Redundancy
• Computers Become Hosts

A surprise birthday gift from last year

Y birthday is coming up next Saturday. There will be no fuss, but a Christmas party instead that night. I can recall last year’s birthday quite vividly, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. The photos reflect poorly on that very reality.

I never liked getting older, especially because I was among the oldest kids in my class (a December born). I tolerated rather than celebrated. I hope and expect that this year’s birthday will be yet another ordinary day, at least in my mind. Perhaps I can fool myself… thinking that I never truly mature by letting it pass by quietly. We digress…

VER at the Computer Vision Digest, I recently mentioned the IEEE in the context of RSS feeds for journals. It is most pleasant to see RSS feeds penetrating even the world of academia, which usually lags behind in terms of state-of-the-art anything. The IEEE makes the admirable exception, as always.

Several weeks ago I also mentioned my two submissions to IEEE conferences, as well as two other successes. Everything seems to have settled on the right route, which grants me a quick Ph.D. at the age of 24. This was by no means easy for me; I will not pretend it has ever been the case. The first year was sluggish and unpromising. As a matter fact, I was warranted (or rather warned about) a difficult program with potentially rewarding outcomes. This warning was raised on the very first week, as soon as I joined the Division.

Nowadays I work on my submission to an IEEE journal, namely Transactions in Medical Imaging. I must admit that their L^AT_EX templates have been made simple to use — something which I am very pleased with because I am T_EX-illiterate ( I normally use L_yX as a front-end). We are aiming for the special issue on validation.

NB: because this item will be of little interest to many, I have just added a new category aptly named “Personal” and assigned this item to it. If you wish to subscribe to just a few particular topics, see the feeds page where a broader category breakdown gets listed. I still try hard not to ‘noisify’ the blog with personal chit-chats and raves.