வழிப்போக்கன்-ரமேஷ்

Latitude and Longitude values from Google Maps

2011-11-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

Just copy and paste the following javascript in the address-bar and hit enter. When you are on google map; right the location for which you want the Latitude and Longitude values; click on "center map here", now you copy & paste the jayascript on address-bar and hit enter.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Source

Port forwarding: ssh, Remote Desktop and afp

2010-05-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

Until yesterday, It was very complicated for me to understand “what's port forwarding? and how to setup a router to accept the incoming connections for ssh, ARD and afp”

Let me explain you my understanding here,

IP addres
there are two types of IP address
1. Static IP - permanent IP address (usually you have to pay for the provider)
2. Dynamic IP - IP changes every time you restart router (most usual one)

In general, every computer has two IP address, one is internal (private) another is external (public). Only your router knows your internal IP address and the computers that are connected to your router can communicate with your computer. In case any computer out side of your router wants to communicate your computer then it can approach you only via external IP address. For instance if you type 'http://www.whatsmyip.org' in your web browser then it will reveal your external ip.

So whom ever has Dynamic IP address, they must have different internal (ex: 192.168.1.23) and external IP (ex: 35.129.112.111) address. However if you have a static IP address then both of them are same.

What’s the problem now? Most of the routers usually does not allow the external request to communicate the local computer via port number 22 (default ssh port) and also few other ports like 548 (afp). If you want to ssh your computer from outside then it is a problem.

Here comes port forwarding to solve this problem above. It is nothing but you will say to your router “hey forward the external port 22 request to my computer”. Now the internal IP address plays the important role. If your router connected to many computers then make sure that every computers has their unique internal IP address, if not then just change it to any.

1. Open your router configuration page in a web browser by entering http://192.168.1.1, upon requesting user name and pass, file with admin and admin. I hope most of the router has the same user name and pass, if you can’t login successfully then you must contact the manufacture.

2. Depends on router you can easily find the port forwarding page, more interestingly there’s an website which explains the port forwarding for several routers. If you are lucky then you can find your router configuration in their webiste; http://portforward.com/.

3. Here I’ll explain you the port forward configuration for SIEMENS SL2-141-I ADSL WLAN Router.

4. Open web browser, type in http://192.168.1.1 and hit enter.

5. Now the browser should ask you the user name and password. Don’t copy and paste the following username and password, it doesn’t work

username : alice@13184
passwort : hnto$mgmt@lice

3. Click on Advanced on the top of the page followed by Virtual server on the left side of the page.

4. Click on Add, choose User defined. Enter the name of the program into the User defined box. It doesn't really matter what you put into this box, but something that will remind you why these ports are being forwarded would be a good idea. Select ALL from the From Internet Host IP Address drop down box. Enter the ip address to forward these ports to into the Forward to Internal Host IP Address box. If you are forwarding ports so you can run a program on your computer, you should enter your computer's ip address into that box. Use the Protocol drop down box to select the protocol type of the ports you are forwarding. If you are forwarding a single port, enter that port number into the External Port Start, External Port End, Internal Port Start and Internal Port End boxes. If you are forwarding a range of ports, enter the lowest number of the range into the External Port Start and Internal Port Start boxes. Then enter the highest number of the range into the External Port End and Internal Port End boxes. When you are finished, click the Apply button.

Here’s the screen shot of my settings.

that's all, hope it is your for you.

Useful links
http://portforward.com/
“Well known” TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products

Other useful ARD links
“How to” access Macbook by ARD via Internet
Is there a simple/cheap way to connect to another Mac?
How to securely control another Mac over the internet Internet
Make remote tech support as simple as possible

Link_Back-Chemdraw_&_Nisus writer

2010-05-01T14:28:00.000-07:00

As I’m a chemist as well as I had switch from windows to mac, I had and having few issues with mac OS. One of them is roundtrip editing of chemdraws in between word processor and chemdraw program. Also CPU and memory hook with MS-Word. I hope now this problem is solved with Nisus writer. I would say it’s an excellent word processor and I would suggest people to start using it rather than using MS-Word.

There is a pool on macresearch website (on bottom right corner) where you can pool as well as comment on the importance of this roundtrip editing as a chemist.

co

2010-03-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dfzq5xft_17dbqhpvg6

Tweak chemdraw tools with your favorite key

2009-11-14T12:29:00.000-08:00

Being a advance user in chemdraw, our hands are always focusing to do less work and get more job done. Ofcourse many people already know about how to utilize the chemdraw shortcut keys (for those who is not familiar look at this link). I have modified the shortcut key script file in order to assign a key for a particular action. The interesting information for you is that we can assign a key to involve chemdraw tool, which could be one of the draw back of chemdraw.

It's pretty easy to assign key, For example, I have assigned key "d" for Lasso and "q" for eraser tool. You can download my edited script file from here and look at them. Drop a message here, if you need more information.

Note: I did this only in mac chemdraw but not in microsoft windows and I don't have answer about will it the same in windows or not. The hotkey.plist file can be found in /cschemdraw/chemdraw items/

My first {great} shot

2009-10-24T06:43:00.000-07:00

I hope I made a very nice shot with my new CANON 1000D SLR, (RAW format) the following one I shot in Herne, Germany. Ofcourse I retouched the picture in photoshop.

My village (Pandamangalam) over google map!

2009-07-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

Today I am enthusiastic to view most of my efforts on Google map maker appeared over Google maps (still some of them are pending). I have drawn new roads, place of interests (Bus stations, Theaters, Temples, Medical shops, etc), I have done this not only for my village (Pandamangalam) and also over nearby town (Velur) and villages.

I'm pretty sure that this is going to help people who are visiting or living over there, especially GPS device user will be extremely happy if they play around, anyway I'll enjoy this on my iPhone in this winter :).

As I said early still lot of information's are missing which I did recently, hope this will appear soon. Why don't you people involve to improve the mapping over Google map maker? I hardly spent an hour to draw them.

Here's the link to view my efforts over Google maps (plz zoom to have closer look)
http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=11.115412,77.984133&spn=0.039331,0.064974&z=14

More links in my block
http://prramesh.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

View Larger Map

Geektool: Virtual Desktop Enhancement

2009-06-28T17:20:00.000-07:00

I have really grabbed a huge amount of shell scripts in the past two days and I’ll give you here my experience on Geektool (with all my grabbed scripts).

What it’s GeekTool

It’s actually a preference panel and creates a layer over the desktop which can be utilized to place picture, text file and shell script output. Most of the people use the last one (shell script output) to monitor their system like cpu hogger, etc

How to install?

Follow the link here and it gives you excellent screenshot tour

Here’s my screenshot

Click here to see more information of the Screen shot

please follow this link to get complete information

Google Map Maker

2009-05-17T12:33:00.000-07:00

As we are existed to see the beauty of google map, most of us (from Asian countries) are very interested to see the local streets, banks, post office, hospitals, pharmacy etc of our village on google maps.

This is ofcourse not appearing at present (eg; indian towns & villages), but we can easily make it to appear, here's the way to do this; as I have been doing,

Things that you can do;
1. draw roads
2. Point the places like hosipitals, theatres, hotel, postoffice, etc
3. draw regions of town/village or any places like school campus

Just sign in google map maker with you google account and play around.

Please remember that the changes that you will make on google map maker will appear immediately on google map maker, which has to be approved by experts this is usually done fast (within a day or week). After the approval of your changes google will make final revision before they appear on google map (this process may take long time).

Here's an short video which explains how to do this (it's pretty easy to learn, 5 min.)

I strongly suggest you to do this (it takes half hour ), because it'll be very useful for the public and ofcourse for you too.

Endnote video course

2009-02-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

Endnote is one of the best reference manager and it simplifies writing reference in publications, thesis, etc. There are lot of video courses in Endnote website, however I didn't find many information regarding how to import reference from several sources, defining term lists, editing output style and formating in Microsoft word. In this context I learned all these stuffs from elsewhere and I want to teach you all by this video course.

Hope you'll find this course very useful.

You can also download the high definition video from this link (Rapidshare).

Endnote video course part-1

Endnote video course part-2

Chemistry-dictionary integration to word processor or OS

2009-02-07T09:55:00.000-08:00

As a chemist, we are often frustrated by seeing red underlines while writing chemistry texts in word processor, text editor, etc. A very good example seen in thesis writing, countless red underlines can be seen.

Recently, a small group made chemistry dictionary, which contains thousands of chemistry terms and it can be easily integrated to word processors, like Microsoft word, openoffice, iwork, etc.

Here's the direct download link

I have included few more chem terms which is not included in the above link, you can downloaded my list from here.

Installation: word processors (Windows/Mac/Linux)

Please read the file "install.txt" in the downloaded file

Mac users: you can integrate to the OS, download the file from here

copy the file "en" and paste it in ~/library/spelling

In case that you already have the file "en" in the directory (~/library/spelling), then open the en file (the one which you downloaded) with textedit, copy and paste the contents into the en file which is already there in you directory (~/library/spelling).

Note: again I made my own chem term file for mac (combined the original file and my additional chem terms), however my mac couldn't read it properly and hangs often, so I removed the file from ~/library/spelling.

Please read the original post, if you have any problem in configuration.

Source: Chemistry-blog

Negotiating the treacherous Salang Pass

2009-01-19T23:28:00.000-08:00

It looks like a wonderful photograph, but it's really negotiating the hidden path in the Hindu Kush mountain. This important pass connects Kabul and the Asian cities.

Source: BBC

Red dissected cliffs

2008-12-07T02:16:00.000-08:00

Very nice view of the red dissected cliffs in Utah, US.

Google tips

2008-11-30T03:27:00.000-08:00

Current time of any city
Just type in google the “city name followed by time” for example; “chennai time“ or ”bangalore time“, see the resutls, it gives you the local time of the city.

Flight status
want to know the flight arrival or departure status???, just give the flight numer or flight name with numer and hit enter.
for example type: LH 4755 (flyes from London to Munich)

Pursuit of Nuclear fusion; feasibility for Mars spacecraft design

2008-11-09T09:29:00.001-08:00

High definition pdf here

We succeeded for the moon trip in 1969 itself, which is almost a half century ago. But the journey towards Mars still ambitious. You might aware of the obstacles for the astronauts, anyway let us recollect them first.

Our new space craft requires just half day reach moon (0.384403 million km) but it's not the case for the deep travel to Mars, may require few months to strive since it's 55 million km away from the earth. The atmosphere out of earth's territory endangers the life by the destructive solar radiations like cosmic rays, etc, it's also known as "solar winds or particle or plasma". Ofcourse we are always lucky that earth has a giant Magnetic region called "Magnetosphere" which reflects and also refracts them in high degree of angle (see the picture) to save our lives from this radiations. Unfortunately our satellites and communication, and navigation waves are exposed for this plasma radiations, leading for the disrupted communication.

The idea has been around since 1969 (our first mission) that to carry a portable Magnetosphere with space craft for the Mars journey. However it's impractical because the minimum of 100 Km of Magetosphere is only believed to work. But this turns to be a myth by the recent innovations of researchers. Experimental results from university of York, Uk based on nuclear fusion promises that it is possible to make a spectacular journey in solar storm by scattering highly charged, ionized particles from space craft.

In their experiments they used an apparatus which is originally build for fusion and they could demonstrate the potential viability of creating diamagnetic cavity (like earths Magnetosphere) for the spacecraft shielding and they have obtained promising results from the measurement of interaction between the flowing plasma and dipole magnetic field which ofcourse the shield of spacecraft.

References:
1. Science daily
2. Research article

Obstacle of fetal growth - Tip of the day

2008-11-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

It has been found that even a small amount to caffeine can restrict the growth of unborn baby, UK Government Food Standard Agency has alerted their guidance to reduce the daily consume of caffeine from 300mg to 200mg.

It's recommended that pregnant women has to reduce their consumption of caffeine, but don't replace it with other unhealthy soft drinks with lot of sugar.

Caution: lower birth weight baby
Common caffeine sources: coffee, tea, cola, chocolate, cocoa.

Source: Science daily

Mentos-Cola: a short explanation of physical reaction

2008-10-18T09:03:00.000-07:00

High definition pdf here

we know well about the giant eruption of carbon dioxide in diet cola-mentos mix and also it is a physical reaction. But we must know what causes the diet cola to liberate carbon dioxide in short period.

Proof for the physical reaction1 (not acid-base reaction):

There was a myth that an explosive acid-base reaction taking place when we mixup diet cola and mentos, but it has been disproved as following; Usually we can observe the changes in pH value if it's a acid-base reaction. Diet cola has the pH of 3.0 and this value didn't change after the addition of Mentos, which means clearly it's a not acid-base reaction. But if you add baking soda into the diet cola then the pH values increases to 6.1.

Potassium benzoate, Aspartame and Gum Arabic:
Mythbusters1 and Tonya Shea Coffey2 described that the presence of gum arabic (a surfactant) in Mentos, and potassium benzoate (a preservative), aspartame (a sweetener of food and most common in beverages) in diet cola causes the eruption of carbon dioxide. The detailed investigation gives an idea that when we drop a Mentos into the diet cola container it reaches the bottom and the surfactant "gum arabic" which reduces the surface tension of water (water resists the expansion tiny carbon dioxide bubbles by means of forming strong attraction between water molecule and the tiny bubbles require more energy to push water molecule away from each other for the purpose of expansion; this phenomenon called "surface tension"; ultimately the dissolved tiny carbon dioxide bubbles around the Mentos escapes, these liberated bubbles from the bottom of the container will act as an growth site, which will help the remaining dissolved carbon dioxide to over the surface tension of water and causes the giant eruption of gas.

There's an further explanation for the origin of fizz:
Cola already has carbonic acid (potassium benzoate will be the form of benzoic acid at lower pH) and carbon dioxide in the a certain equilibrium which gets disturbed upon the addition of Mentos.

Google video:

video 1, video 2

References:
1. Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. “Episode 57: Mentos and Soda.” Mythbusters, Discovery Channel, first aired August 9, 2006.

2. Tonya Shea Coffey, “Diet Coke and Mentos: What is really behind this physical reaction?,” American Journal of Physics 76, no. 6 (June 0, 2008): 551-557, doi:10.1119/1.2888546.

Weblinks:

Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

Onion tears

2008-10-08T13:17:00.001-07:00

High definition pdf here

It's well known that onion is one of the highly potential healthy flavoring food, since it gives us few phytochemicals, nutrients, etc. for eg; one of the major constituent is Quercetin, which is an anti-inflamatory as well as antioxidant.

But, why it irritates our eyes while slicing them? here comes the reason

When we slice the onion, cells get break down which releases the enzyme called "Alliinase" (look at the picture) and it converts the more abundant sulphoxide of onion (a aminoacid called "1-propenyl L-cysteine sulphoxide") into sulphenic acid (1-propenylsuphenicacid), which is unstable (never isolated) and it ultimately rearranges to the more volatile Propanthial s-oxide. Since this s-oxide is more volatile it can easily spread over the air and it reaches our eyes, where it reacts with water and converted into diluted sulphuricacid, this acid stains our never system and triggers the tear glands to produce tear for the purpose of diluting this sulphuric acid.

Some tips to reduce your tear while chopping onions,

1. Usually root of the onion releases maximum amount of sulfuric compounds, so it's better to cut the stem (top) of onion and peel downwards to the root, chop it without cutting off the root until the last.

2. Cooling in refrigerator (enzyme will be less active) or washing the peeled onion in water or slicing under water flow also suppress the s-oxide to reach our eyes.

3. Chopping near to the flame (for eg; near to gar burner) also helps.

4. Use sharp knife for slicing, which could reduces the amount broken cells.

Reference:
1. Imai, S.; Tsuge, N.; Tomotake, M.; Nagatome, Y.; Sawada, H.; Nagata, T.; Kumagai, H., Plant biochemistry: An onion enzyme that makes the eyes water. Nature 2002, 419, (6908), 685 doi:10.1038/419685a.

Cat like mammal "Meerkat"

2008-10-02T23:07:00.001-07:00

Let me share with you about a mammal called “Meerkat” and will give you a short description.

Not only the name looks like “cat” it also looking like (having sharp claw), but they can stand with rear 2 legs (as you can see in the picture) and the thin lengthy tail and body structure helps to balance. They mostly inhabits in the Desert of South Africa. The most important thing which I like is they are “Altruistic”; it means "selfless", for eg; if there is a threat while they forage then the senior Meerkats usually endanger of their own live for the young Meerkat. Also it’s interesting to know that there will be always one or more sentry while foraging and these sentries bark when there is a predator which will continue until there’s no threat of fear, later on different bark will emerge all hidden Meerkats from the burrow.

Hide unhide your files (Mac OSX tip)

2008-10-01T02:33:00.000-07:00

you can't do this from finder. it has to be done from terminal.

To unhide: chflags hidden (path of file or folder)

To unhide: chflags nohidden (path of file or folder)

replace (path of file or folder) with unix path of your file or folder. The easiest way to do this is to drag the file or folder to the terminal window.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To view the hidden file or folder

go to finder: press Shift+command+G together (make sure you are in the same directory where hidden file or folder located), it pops a window, give the name of hidden file or folder, that's it now you can see it.

To view the hidden file or folder from any location

press Shift+command+G together, give the name of hidden file or folder with full path (eg: /Users/xxxxx/Desktop/music.txt).

Secure VPN connection terminated locally by the client. Reason 422: Lost contact with the security gateway. Check your network connection.

2008-09-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

Secure VPN connection terminated locally by the client. Reason 422: Lost contact with the security gateway. Check your network connection.

Reason 422: Lost contact with the security gateway.

Troubleshooting:

Check your network connection. The machine's IP address changed or the machine is no longer connected to the Internet. Note: The VPN Client is required to disconnect the VPN tunnel for security reasons, if the machines IP Address has changed.

source: here

It's also important that your internet router must be configured otherwise your ip address changes while you connect VPN.

Router configuration for Alice internet, Germany and Siemens SL2-141-I router

2008-09-27T13:48:00.000-07:00

Internet router configuration for Alice internet, Germany and Siemens SL2-141-I router

1) download the configuration pdf file from here.

2) connect your internet cable to the computer

3) You have to configure TCP/IP settings
Please look at the pdf file, where you can find how to reach the setting location in your OS (all OS are explained in brief).

Once you in the location of TCP/IP setting, you have enter the IP, subnet, Standardgateway, DNS Server values manually.

IP:                                 192.168.1.[2-254] (eg: 192.168.1.178)
subnet:                         255.255.255.0
Standardgateway:                 192.168.1.1
DNS Server:                        196.44.128.146
                                        196.44.136.165

4) Please make sure that you have done the proper settings otherwise the next step will not work.

5) open your browser (IE or firefox or etc)

6) type 192.168.1.1 and hit enter

7) now the browser should ask the user name and password

Don’t copy and paste the following username and password, bz it’s not copying the symbols properly. But you can copy them from here

username : alice@13184
passwort : hnto$mgmt@lice

(note: If your browser doesn't ask username and password then you didn't configure TCP/IP settings properly)

8) After the successful login please following the stepwise setting according the pdf manual

please post your comments if you have any problem

Two moons on 27-th August

2008-08-27T01:30:00.000-07:00

Fake email:
I came across a forward fake email, u can see here
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two moons on 27th August

 27th Aug the Whole World is waiting for.............    Planet Mars will be the brightest in the night sky starting August. It will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. This will cultivate on Aug. 27 when Mars comes within 34.65M miles off earth. Be sure to watch the sky on Aug. 27 12:30 am. It will look like the earth has 2 moons. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mars and Earth were converging on Aug 27-th 2003 and it was looking like the distance between Mars and Earth shrunk in proximate of 56 KM to our naked eyes (but it's not true in reality), this was the first record of such a converge between earth and Mars. For our casual view this makes Mars to be more brighter and larger than the usual size.

But every year the same date, some fake emails are roaming around the internet with the same fake message.

Additional information: NASA

Konig see visit (Konig lake)

2008-07-27T03:05:00.001-07:00

Happened on 26/07/09

Group Me, Kumar, Srinivas, Tapan, Amilan, Sushma, Selvi, Mosmi

though we had new experience of strange and very attractive mountain lake, I regret to say that the return one hour journey was very boring for all of us.

this is one of our memorable excellent trip.

Trip to Deutsche Museum, Munich, Germany

2008-07-22T22:53:00.001-07:00

happened on 19/07/09

Though I visited several times to this Museum, this time I got inspired on the art of impossible object sespecially the work produced by M.C.Escher. Who was greatest artist in creating impossible figures, it's a type of optical illusion consisting of a two-dimensional figure which is instantly and subconsciously interpreted by the visual system as representing a projection of a three-dimensional object although it is not actually possible for such an object to exist (at least not in the form interpreted by the visual system).

In most cases the impossibility becomes apparent after viewing the figure for a few seconds. However, the initial impression of a 3D object remains even after it has been contradicted. There are also more subtle examples of impossible objects where the impossibility does not become apparent spontaneously and it is necessary to consciously examine the geometry of the implied object to determine that it is impossible.

Escher builds inhabited worlds around impossible objects.

Though I excelled at finding pirated softwares (as my friends said), my writing and fluency in english were poor. This was the reason I started to focus intently on write blog to improve myself in writing.