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Have MATLAB talk to you
I want MATLAB to tell me when certain operations had completed on a program that involved long calculations. The solution is simple. Create a program called talk.m. The add the following code: This code works with MATLAB 2023b. A few previous versions of MATLAB returned the error “No voice installed on the system or none…
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Coding Across Platforms (a Cautionary Tale)
While on a plane, my laptop ran out of battery. I was working in MATLAB. I switched to my iPad and started coding in Pythonista a simple program to produce points on a sphere. After half an an hour, I had coded a program that computed the coordinates of points along meridians. I needed this…
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Sonification
It is possible to represent a dataset in (a trajectory, actually) with a combination of a 3-dimensional space, color and sound. Sound can be a powerful technique for representing data because it allows for the creation of complex and nuanced representations of information in a relatively compact and efficient format. Listening to a data set…
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How to Visualize a Complex Professional Timeline
Professional achievements and contributions often do not follow a simple linear progression, but rather may be cumulative and intersecting in nature. Some tasks can be parallel and complex and some achievements can be incremental and hard to track and highlight in a linear timeline. Intersecting bubbles offer an interesting solution to complex timelines. They can…
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SQL Server problem “Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘PIVOT’.” Comparing SQL Server and Oracle
The problem: I had a query in Oracle that runs smoothly: and I needed to replicate it in SQL Server. I kept receiving the error  “Incorrect syntax near the keyword ‘PIVOT’.”  in SQL Server. I was baffled for I thought that this type of query was standard. The solution: SQL Server is very peculiar in the…
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How to Resize a Windows Hard Drive in VirtualBox
The problem:  Resizing a hard drive in a windows virtual machine is a common problem with a solutions in multiple places over the Web. e.g. http://www.howtogeek.com/124622/how-to-enlarge-a-virtual-machines-disk-in-virtualbox-or-vmware/ In summary: Run the following command: where 1638400 in this example represents a desired size of 1.5 TB for the partition. Note that you DO NOT need 1.5 TB…
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Making Music with Lattitude
First of all, what is lattitude? Music has been my safety valve. Either with a guitar and a looper or with any object that can make sounds, alone or with a band. Among many bands I tried in the past, Lattitude, Athens, GA, 2013-2018, and Los Amantes de LucÃa, Bogotá, 1994-1996 were my favorites. Below…
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How to execute ImageMagick in PHP via exec in IIS Windows – MediaWiki Math
The problem: I had to install MediaWiki on my Windows server with the intention of using math notation. The math module would not produce any image. The solution: The first step was to identify the culprit. Consider the page test.php with the following source code: You will notice that the web page cannot produce the…
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Lattitude
The concept of “lattitude,” as I define it to mean “Latin attitude,” is a reflection of a cultural and historical narrative that champions collective well-being and and a commitment to life’s pursuits with passion and intensity. At the heart of lattitude is a community-centric ethos that has historically shaped Hispanic culture, rooted in ancestral indigenous…
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Remove all tables from a MySQL schema
The problem: I have a MySQL database schema with 100+ tables and I want to delete all tables using a simple command. The solution: Most solutions out there tell you to use a cryptic command line argument. You can actually do it with two SQL queries: First, list all tables in the MySQL schema: This…