KDE4 maximize button tricks

It turns out, if you middle click the maximize button on a window in KDE4, it'll set the window to maximized vertically. If you then drag the window to a different desktop with different dimensions, it will auto-resize to match the new max-height. The same goes for width and right clicking this button. Just don't forget how you set this because the setting appears to be stored somewhere and is super annoying when it isn't clear how to turn it off.

Reference Managers

Finding a good reference manager is a BIG DEAL if you need to write papers... And being a grad student means that sooner or latter, you NEED to write papers.
To Date I have mostly used JabRef however it is a bit limited, and doesn't seem to support inserting references into OpenOffice/Word very easily. Lately I've found:
Zotero
Mendeley
and
Bibus
All seem to have more features than JabRef, however I really like the online database/pdf storage options of Zotero, and it seems Mendeley is even better? I'll have to try them all out and see.

Carbon nanotube radios

I had a long chat with an old friend the other day (Jesse of Geek Club fame), somehow we manged to get onto the subject of carbon nanotube radios and brain implants. I imagine it is only a matter of time until someone figures out how to deliver these in pill form and target them to specific regions of the brain by attaching some sort of protein sorting domain... Then a little tweak with the right frequency when you walk into the supermarket will send you on a shopping binge without limit or control. Perhaps it could be put into vitamin pills ;)

Magnesium Brain Supplements

Since everyone can use a little more synaptic plasticity...

p.s. If magnesium-L-threonate (MgT) is available somewhere on the market, please let me know.

Windows 7 and samba network sharing

I spent a number of hours googling for an answer to this problem, so now that I've finally figured it out, I'll post some details.

I have an ubuntu linux server which has a raid5 for storage of photos I've taken, documents, and various other junk. Some of the shares are public read-only so that my photos/documents don't accidently get deleted while others are password protected with read/write access. In windows XP the whole setup was working great, but when I installed Windows7 I was able to access public shares, but not the passworded ones. Finally I found a reference to "Credential Manager" (some newfangled password manager) in which I found that Windows7 was storing my user name as Computer\user (C2D\shunter). As soon as I deleted the "Computer\" part, the shares all started working perfectly. Weird....

Packages for Ubuntu and Bioconductor

Bioconductor is a set of packages for R which facilitate processing biological data in a number of forms. I use R/Bioconductor quite a bit under Ubuntu, and when I install a new copy somewhere, I always have to go through dependency hell trying to remember everything I have to install through Synaptic before the various Bioconductor packages will compile. So, here is a list of what I had to install this time:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk libgtk2.0-dev graphviz-dev libgtk1.2-dev curl ggobi libxml2-dev mesa-common-dev libglu1-mesa-dev libgd2-xpm-dev libmysqlclient15-dev

Install all of these (and their dependencies), and your life should be easier. (Note, I have multiverse, universe, and restricted turned on in /etc/apt/sources.list).

Google KNOWS!

I noticed an interesting phenomenon the other day. I usually have GAIM running under Linux, on my laptop, while often my Gmail account is logged in on my desktop. Strangely, when I get messages on googletalk, they seem to somewhat randomly appear on one or the other computer, but not both. Soon it became clear that if I used the desktop, messages would quickly start going to the desktop. If I used the laptop, the messages would just as quickly start going there.
After independently verifying this behavior with a friend of mine, I believe that Google has a full tracking system set up. They KNOW every time you touch your computer (GoogleTalk monitors mouse/keyboard input apparently), as does Gmail loaded in Firefox. Do they log this demographic information back home for future use? Who knows.. but I'll sleep better knowing that Google knows I've quit for the night.

Why I'm glad I didn't vote for Bush..

A little story I recently received in my email:

THE ANT AND THE GRASSHOPPER

OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's
a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the

ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he
dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible


MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his
house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks he's
a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away. Come winter, the

shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why
the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold
and starving.

CBS, NBC, ABC & CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering

grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can
this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is

allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody
cries when they sing, "It's Not Easy Being Green."

Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house where

the news stations film the group singing, "We shall overcome." Jesse then
has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper's sake.

Ted Kennedy & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Dan Rather that

the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call
for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share.

Finally, the EEOC drafts the "Economic Equity and Anti-Grasshopper Act,"

retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant is fined for failing
to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to
pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.


Hillary gets her old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a
defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of
federal judges that Bill appointed from a list of single-parent welfare

recipients. The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of
the ant's food while the government house he is in, which just happens to
be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he doesn't maintain

it. The ant has disappeared in the snow. The grasshopper is found dead in a
drug related incident and the house,now abandoned, is taken over by a gang
of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.


MORAL OF THE STORY: Vote Republican


Pretty standard ignorant, uncaring Republican bs. Especially in the light of recent events.

So I wrote back:
A nice story.. but in reality, the GOP leadership is full of scheming criminals who are bankrupting this country financially and morally.
The current administration's involvement in Iraq has
led to far more civilian deaths than Saddam Hussein's ever did.

WASHINGTON -- A new study asserts that roughly 600,000 Iraqis have
died
from violence since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, a figure many
times higher than any previous estimate. Human Rights Watch has
estimated Saddam Hussein's regime killed 250,000 to 290,000 people over
20 years.

Thats about half the population in Idaho dying violently in three
years. So I guess that the people who voted for Bush would rather have
that than the evil dems who might support education or welfare or
abortion or something really wicked like that. (By the way, I've been
out of the loop for a while, when did God remove "thou shalt not kill"
from the 10 commandments? Or did he just append "unless they are brown
people" to the end?)

Heck, Bush has even cutting spending (by billions of dollars) for veterans (a group one might associate with the "ants" and
not the grasshoppers?) So I think your little story is pretty much
bunk.. but if you want the blood of 600,000 civilians (many women and
children) on your hands.. then by all means, support these criminals.