New Installation of Matlab with missing Toolbox Help

On many occasions, when I upgraded my Matlab installation, I found that many of the toolbox documentation was missing in the Product Help Browser. Turns out that there is a option in Preferences->Help to determine which documentation to show and which to hide. Choose All or the required toolboxes in this option.

Creating a Plot with labelled axis and title in SAS

title 'Autocorrelated Time Series';
proc sgplot data=a noautolegend;
series x=time y=y / markers;
reg x=time y=y/ lineattrs=(color=black);
run;


From SAS documentation

Adobe Flash plugin on Firefox / Iceweasel on Debian Etch AMD64 / EM64T Platforms

I had a little trouble setting up the flash plugin on the my new AMD X2 machine running Debian Etch. So I summarise what I did to finally get it working...

Firstly,install the necessary 32bit libraries - ia32-libs and ia32-libs-gtk

1) Install nspluginwrapper
It is available at http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/nspluginwrapper . Download the .deb file and do an dpkg -i nspluginwrapper-xxversion.deb

2) Get the Adobe Flash
The tarball is available at http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash

3) (Un)gzip and untar the flash tarball

4) Copy the libflashpalyer.so and flashplayer.xpt to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins

5) Run the following command
/usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/x86_64/linux/npconfig -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
This will create a file named npwrapper.libflashplayer.so in the /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins directory.

6) Create links to the npwrapper.libflashplayer.so file in your firefox / iceweasel plugins directory (typically /usr/lib/firefox/plugins/ and /usr/lib/iceweasel/plugins /)

This should do the the trick...Check if the installation is fine by typing about:plugins in the address line. It should list Shockwave Flash as one of the plugins.

Now go enjoy YouTube

Variable filenames in Matlab Save

In Matlab, a command such as
fname = 'foo';
save fname var1

will store var1 in fname.mat as against the desired foo.mat

A solution to this would be to issues the following two commands
foos = sprintf('save %s var1','foo');
eval(foos)

will save var1 in foo.mat

Mosquito

I finally had a week long vacation on account of diwali and ramzan holidays. As I was expecting to spend a significant part of my vacation travelling, I took with me two of the lastest additions to my small library - The Argumentative Indian by Armartya Sen and The City of Joy by Dominique Lapierre. The former is a series of essays by the venerable nobel laureate on the argumentative aspects of Indian culture and history while the latter is touching description of the great city of Calcutta.

I started off with Sen's book, but after I finished reading the first two essays, I realised it was too serious a book to read while on vacation. So I set it aside for a cold rainy day and took up the other book which I am, well, yet to put down! A very engrossing account of the life of the downtrodden in a Calcutta slum. I had earlier read another book - Freedom at Midnight by the same author and with City of Joy, Lapierre has entered my list of favorite authors.

I leave u with an extract from the book, about an Indian mosquito:

Indian mosquitoes have as a distinguishing characteristic the fact that they are minute, make very little noise, and tease you endlessly before making up their minds to bite. The effect is a torture of anticipation which, if it were not Indian, would almost certainly be Chinese.

How true!

No Time to Vote, then don't Crib!

I just returned from an EML on the 'Dilemma of the Indian Nationhood' by Prabhu Chawla of India Today. He was lamenting about the politicians playing the communal card. But the key question is why are the playing it?

Well, in my view it is simply because a large segment of the Indian population is more bothered about a Ram Temple in Ayodhya than about their children going to schools. And what about the rest - the affluent middle classes? We dont bother to vote!

Polling day is looked upon as a public holiday - sitting at home contently watching the progress of polling on TV rather than actually taking the trouble to walk down (yes, in theory in most cities and towns one can walk) to the booth and vote.

Unless and until we bother to vote, can we expect the politicians to take cognisance of us? Why would the politician want to invest in a segment of people who only take and give nothing in return?

The BJP realised this very painfully at the end of the last general elections (2005). During their years in power, they had shifted loyalties towards the affluent middle class. India was supposedly shining and the economy booming. But, on the day of the big election, the affluent middle class sat at home watching Prannoy Roy on NDTV, while another huge segment of the population took the trouble to make their voice loud and clear - India Shining or Not, Where is the Ram Temple?

So as long as the 'secular' crowd continues to sit comfortably in the comforts of their drawing rooms, the politicians will continue to play the communal card!