LaTex: no other tool can make you an academic!

I LaTexed in Linux (Ubuntu) with TexLive. The packages I used in my thesis:

pgfplots - plotting graphs
tikz - drawing figures, flow charts, include pgfplot graphs

Used IEEETrans class for thesis and conference paper templates.

Life was easy writing with LaTex as I could focus on content rather than formatting. Could easily change from one format to other with two or three words in tex file.

Teach effectively

Found this useful in preparing for lectures:

1. Waterloo pages

Camera phone...

What a materialistic world is this? Phone is for calling, but it has everything else and marketed with all the features is has except its ability to communicate voice. I have always seen people comparing their phones? "What megapixel is your phone camera?"
"Phone is an ornament to show people's wealth?" I wondered until last Friday when I saw this incident I am going to share with you.
I was near a traffic light, watching around through the glass of the bus I was traveling in. On the pavement I saw a young boy, with animated movements holding a camera phone up. Any guesses, what it was all about?
He was making a video call with sign language...
What a difference the technology can make in one's life. What different ways the same technology can be used...
BTW: I don not have a camera phone, otherwise could have snapped the scene for you ;)

Global Issue

After some time I felt, oh oh... what should be happening around the world. Since the monitor at my place, which was plugged into a TV box, burnt off totally after long time since the days the colors were changing like lizards, I didnt bother to watch news or listen to some discussion of what's going on around the world.
Hence I was looking some 'everything under one roof' kind of a place, to end up here (http://www.globalissues.org/)
At a glance I picked the article on global financial crisis http://www.globalissues.org/article/768/global-financial-crisis there.
Well, it was comprehensive. Anyway, what carught my attention the most is this nice video. What a visualization of it!
http://crisisofcredit.com/

weary winds

rough voice loud voice
cool voice low voice
humble voice hidden voice
so many voice
voice voice
let you not be carried away
let your roots go deep in truth
so no weary winds
can blow you off
hey ho... hey ho...

To run a cookie based web session in httperf...

I was trying to mimic how a user interacts with a web application using httperf tool. I installed httperf in my linux machine using source code from here:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/linux/httperf/download.php
(The originators of this tool are D. Mosberger and T. Jin from hp few years back)

Httperf is a command line tool. You have to type httperf followed by the options.
Httperf has an option called --wsesslog to simulate session.
#httperf --server localhost --port 80 --wsesslog 1,1,sessionfile --print-reply > outfile

Now the web server sends the pages requested by URLs in the session file. When you use --print-reply option the the HTML header and body of each resulting page is written to outfile. Otherwise only the performance information of the web server and the network will appear as the output of the command.


A user is represented by the sequence of URLs separated by think time which is called as session. Each URL in the session can be appended with POST data.
The format of the sessionfile is something like this:
/simple/login.php method=POST contents="username=user&password=pass"

Most imprtantly, if you are to have URLs with POST data you must state the Content-Type header. I set content type to 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n' and it worked for me.

Httperf currently allow an option called --add-header but that header holds equally for all the URLs in the session file. But for my task I needed diferent headers for different URLs in my session file. Fortunately I found a patch for getting this done:
http://www.overset.com/2008/03/27/load-test-ajax-applications-with-httperf/

After applying the patch I could use an additional attribute for the URLs in my sessionfile as follows:
/simple/login.php method=POST headers='Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\n' contents="username=user&password=pass"

Now its time to play with Cookies in httperf.... (think)
Of course by simply typing --session-cookie option with httperf command worked with a simple php site with just one cookie. But for me its to work with two cookies sent by server in two parts of the same header.

Will get back to this once I get some good news! :)

Satisfaction...

Job satisfaction is an achievement that not many people get in plenty. But the profession of teaching has made me feel that rare opportunity. Its such great feeling that keeps the fire of motivation when you see the attention, the feedback, the simple nod of a head from the students. You feel the importance of yourself being in that position.
I became a fan of the movie Freedom Writers which says such a motivational story. Hence hope to share. I feel like being a Ms. Erin Gruwell who can toast for change one day.

Watch 12 parts of it at youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=freedom+writers+part+1&search_type=&aq=0&oq=freedom+writers++-+par