Forrest Sheng Bao's Cyberhome

Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

For anyone who works with MCU, DSP or in general embedded systems, you must know how important the parallel port on your PC is. But, it seems in lately few years, fewer and fewer motherboards have a pink parallel port.

Well, I just found the trick lately. There is a parallel pin array on your boardboard, like USB extension pins. On the PCB, around the parallel pin array, it prints something like "J_PRINTER"

So, what you need is a socket to parallel port, the IEEE 1284 D-sub connector. You just need to google something like "Motherboard Parallel Port Adapter," then you can get it within few dollars from places like eBay. Then you can have a regular parallel port on your computer.

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Agilent ADS is a great tool for circuit simulation on Linux.

1. Install ksh

sudo apt-get install ksh

2. Download and extract ADS2009 installation files. Enter the directory that stores all installation files. Run

./SETUP.SH

and follow on-screen instructions.

Be sure to set the proper path for ADS2009. ADS2009 could be very big, 5.5 GB. So it is better to install it on a separate partition other than your root partition, like below.

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

I just made a video tonight on how to debug a C++ program in anjuta, the open-source C/C++ IDE for Linux. anjuta is one component of GNOME development suite and thus part of GNOME project. I think it is very good, just a bit worse than Apple Xcode. But it is definitely way better than Microsoft Visual Studio. Microsoft should do some study on user interface design. Proper menu design, window layout and usability is more user-friendly than eye candies. Sadly, Microsoft focuses too much on eye candies, and makes using their software like dating a girl - every step is very complex.

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

It's very easy. Right click a file and choose "Property" from the menu. Like this

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

EDFbrowser is an open source EDF Browser. EDF/EDF+ is an open file format for biomedical time series, especially EEG and ECG/EKG signal.

But, the pain is, new (version 1.08 or later) EDFbrowswer "disabled the possibility to open discontinuous files."

I consulted the author, Teunis van Beelen, and got a solution from him.

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net
 

1. sudo apt-get install libcairo2-dev libatk1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev

2. Follow instructions here: http://labs.trolltech.com/page/Projects/Styles/GtkStyle
   
   Note, the last command should be sudo make install. There is no rule "checkinstall."

I wonder why there is no for QTGTKStyle Ubuntu deb package in which I can use apt-get to install in one line of command. Coz QTGTKStyle is too new?

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

I need to play around with couple of logic stuffs this summer, SAT solvers, ASP solvers, ASP grounders, etc. So, I need to compile lotta codes this summer. Today, I found a cool stuff.

There is an ASP grounder called Gringo, a Spanish word used by Latin Americans to call {Crazy} Yankees (not Asian/African/Hispanic/Native Americans or Martian(from the Mars) Americans but Caucasian Americans) as we call Canadians "Canuck." - How do Canadians call Russians on the North side? Well, over the pole.

by Forrest Sheng Bao http://fsbao.net

Since 2008, I have been helping Dr. Xie, Dept. of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University on bioinformatics computing. I worked happy with his Post-Doctoral researcher Dr. Qi, who is now with Indiana University. I plan to write down some instructions so that new PhD students can work happy with me as Dr. Qi did.

Workstation software configurations: