Windows XP Recovery CD + ISO Recorder

I wanted to start the Windows XP Recovery Console from a CD, but I did not have the original Windows XP installation CD, neither did I have the i386 folder in my Windows installation folder. I found that in order to create a bootable CD, the rc.iso can be downloaded from here. The *.iso file cannot be copied directly on to the CD, instead it has to be extracted and burnt on to a CD. Any standard CD burning software such as Nero or Roxio can be used to do this. In case any burning software is not available, a free software to burn *.iso files is ISO Recorder.
Once the boot CD is available, the steps to boot the computer using this CD are as follows:
1. As soon as the power button is pressed, press the F12 key to access the boot list. This is the order in which the BIOS uses devices to boot. Ensure that the CD-ROM is selected to be above the hard drive in the boot list. Insert the boot CD into the CD-ROM drive. Save changes and restart the machine.
2. The computer should now boot using the Windows XP Recovery CD. Once the recovery menu is reached, press R to select the "Repair with Recovery Console" option.
3. Select the Windows installation that you want to access from the Recovery Console.
4. Type the administrator password when you are prompted to do so. NOTE: If no administrator password exists, just press ENTER. This will provide access to the Windows XP Recovery Console.

Creating Numbered Equations in Microsoft Word 2007

I was trying to create numbered equations in Microsoft Word, so that the equation numbers would automatically update as I keep adding more equations. I found a very nice post on the MSDN website (link), which gives a step by step procedure for creating a customized equation type known as "numbered equation". Writing equations in MS Word is much more tedious than writing them in LaTeX, but if the report has to be made in MS Word, this is a worthwhile thing to know about.

Opening *.eps files with GIMP

I installed GIMP on my system and needed to edit *.eps files. On trying to open an *.eps file, I got an error which did not allow me to open these files since I did not have Ghostscript installed on my system. Even after installing Ghostscript, I saw the same error on trying to open the file. The solution to this was to add an environment variable in Windows to tell GIMP where to look for Ghostscript to open these files. The procedure for this is:
1. Right click on "My Computer" and select "Properties".
2. In the tab "Advanced", select "Environment Variables".
3. In the window on the top, click "New".
4. Variable name: GS_PROG
5. Variable value: C:\Program Files\gs\gs8.64\bin\gswin32.exe (This is the path of the Ghostscript variable on your system).
6. Restart GIMP.

Update (07/19/2011):
In Windows 7, there are 2 types of environment  variables - System variables and User Variables. System variables apply for all users, while User variables only applies for the current user.

Engauge

Engauge is a free software which is useful to pick out data points from a published graph / figure. This is particularly useful while trying to superpose older published data with new results, when the original data files are not readily available. The software interface is pretty straighforward and the help files are decently elaborate. It also has an automated utility to try and detect data points or you can go the manual way by clicking each point that you need. All in all, a very useful utility for technical writing.

Update : I also found a few other alternatives, but I have not used / tested them. Here they are in any case - Plot Digitizer and g3data (this works only for Fedora OS).

Quick & tasty grad student food

At my sister's request, I will deviate from the usual theme of this blog, and post a recipe. Disclaimers include : I do not claim this to be my original recipe, its simply something I find easy to make. I do not claim to be an expert chef, instead I hope this can help a few grad students make a quick meal.

Ingredients:

1. Frozen mixed veggies -  1 packet

2. Onion - 1 medium sized

3. Tomatoes - 2 medium sized

4. Ginger - garlic paste - 1 tsp

5. Salt - to taste

6. Chilli powder - to taste

7. Coriander powder - 2 tsp

8. Yogurt - 2 tsp (optional)

9. Lemon concentrate (optional)

10. Oil - 2 tsp

Procedure:

1. Microwave the veggies, so that they are 75% cooked. 

2. Heat the oil in a tava. Cut the onions into decent sized pieces (about half an inch on each side) and sautee them in the oil until they look golden-brown.

3. Cut the tomatoes in decent sized pieces, add them to the onions and sautee them too.

4. Add the ginger-garlic paste to this mix and let this cook for a 3-4 minutes.

5. Let the mixture cool down for 5 minutes, and then grind them into a gravy.

6. Meanwhile, take the microwaved veggies and put them in the earlier tava.

7. Add coriander powder, salt, chilli powder and the gravy to the veggies and let it cook for sometime, until the veggies are fully cooked. 

8. If the dish is too spicy, add the yogurt and lemon mix. Be careful at this step, as adding too much of either will make the dish taste sour.

9. If you want to get fancy, add a garnish of cilantro / spring onions at the end.

8. The dish should be ready in a total of 25 minutes or so.

Suggestions:

1. Use canned beans / tofu / paneer instead of veggies. In that case, skip the microwaving step. For a higher calorie meal, fry th tofu / paneer in the oil before sauteeing the onions.

2. If using tofu / paneer, it has to be slow cooked, or else the tofu / paneer will taste raw. 

3. For variety, I replace the coriander powder with cumin powder or garam masala interchangeably. Even better, get one of the Everest masala / MTR powders from the Indian store. Or the best I have found is to use the Patak masala pastes, which can also be found in the Indian stores.

Two requests for all readers:

1. If you have any suggestions / comments about this recipe, let me know.

2. If you have any other quick recipes / links to the same, please post these in the comments too.

Let me know if any of you find this useful !

And now Reliable Calling

Close on the heels of Airtel's 1cent/min deal to call India, Reliable Calling has come up with a similar offer. For 8$, you pay 4$ as fees, and for the remaining 4$, you get 400 minutes. So, effectively it works out to 2c/min, but they like to advertise it as 1c/min! In any case, these 400 minutes have to be used within 14 days, as opposed to the 30 days of Airtel. All in all, I feel the Airtel deal is better, but if someone has a born hatred to Airtel, and would like an alternative, Reliable Calling seems to be the answer!

PDF Hammer

This is in some sense a follow up post to an earlier post dated 03/13/2008. PDF Hammer is an excellent web-based utility to manipulate PDF files. Obviously the best part is that it is web-based, so no software has to be installed. It has a very nice graphical interface to manipulate PDF files to merge, rearrange and delete individual pages from multiple documents. The makers of this software also have a more advanced, but paid version of this software, but I think this free version is pretty handy too.

Civic Musical Road

I saw this Honda Civic ad today where a section of road has grooves cut into it. The result of this is as the car drives over it at 55 mph, a preset musical tone plays from the grooves. I thought that was pretty cool! There are also a whole bunch of other videos of youtube with handheld cameras of people going along this section of road. What I was able to learn from the web was that lots of residents who lived close to this section complained that it was being a disturbance, so the road was paved over. However, this was remade on another section of road farther away from homes, so if anyone is visiting Lancaster, CA, which is about 70 miles N of Los Angeles, you should try this out! Check this news article for some more info.

However, such musical roads are already present in Holland, Japan and South Korea. Here's the Wiki on this too. Here's hoping these roads are made in lot more places!

Design the symbol for the Indian Rupee

The Ministry of Finance, Government of India has an open competition to design a symbol for the Indian Rupee. Surprisingly the Indian Rupee does not have a symbol, on the lines of $ for the Dollar. The details of the competition can be found here. The contest closes on April 15th, so all you budding designers need to work fast. The winner gets Rs. 250,000 and the final five shortlisted participants get Rs. 25,000 each. Not bad money I must say!

Airtel Calling Card

Although my fellow blogger at ramakrompers beat me to this, I still think this is worth posting. Airtel is offering calling to India at 1 cent/min, which is ridiculously cheap. I currently use Reliable Calling, and pay 3.5 cent/min. The relevant fine print for the Airtel deal:

1. It costs the same to call either landlines or mobile phones.
2. Pay $10 and get 600 minutes talk time, because they charge $3.99 as rental fees. It works out to a little more than 1 cent/min, but it is still much cheaper than any other calling card.
3. The talk time expires in 30 days, so this would work mostly for people who call India every day and talk for hours at a stretch! Any unused credit at the end of 30 days is lost.
4. It costs more to call toll-free. The cheaper way is to use the local access number. Unfortunately Minneapolis does not have a local access number.

Let me know if there is any other catch, the offer sounds too good to be true!

Engineering Stimulus Packages

The makers of AutoCAD and SolidWorks, have each announced an "Engineering Stimulus Package", where free copies of AutoCAD and SolidWorks can be downloaded and installed for a period of 90 days. They also provide free online training tools and the opportunity to become certified users of these software, which implies that the user has attained a certain level of expertise with the software. This is a good opportunity for most engineers to get certified and add on their resumes.

The links are provided here:

SolidWorks 

AutoCAD

Cricket games online

Today I will deviate from my usual boring theme of "useful utilities", so here are a couple of cool websites to play flash based cricket online. The best of the lot in my opinion is Stick Cricket. Highly addictive, it has various game modes depending on how much time you have to waste! I strongly suggest creating a free login to track your progress. Another nice website with some cool flash based cricket games is Krish Cricket. The coolest part about this website is it also has a flash game for Book Cricket! I can't remember how many hours we have spent in school playing book cricket. I wonder who on earth came up with the game! For the uninitiated, here is good summary of the game.

Stroke It

In some sense, this is an addition to my earlier post about Mouse Gestures. Since I am quite addicted to mouse gestures, I wanted to find a program which can do the same thing on other programs, or applications such as Google Chrome, which does not have a mouse gestures add-on as of now. I found StrokeIt. Its a downloadable application, which runs in the background, and can mimic the actions of mouse gestures on Firefox. It can be customized for various applications, and the help on the website is fairly comprehensive for different applications. Let me know if anyone finds this useful.

Credit Reports & Score

The importance of good credit can not be over-emphasized in the American economy, particularly in the current economic climate. Everything from home loans to auto loans to credit card applications depend on your credit score. The credit score is a number based on statistical analysis of the credit reports, and gives an indication of how creditworthy a person is. Here are a couple of useful websites to keep track of your credit.

Every person with an SSN is eligible to receive a free credit report once in 12 months from the three major credit agencies - Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. According to the Federal Trade Comission website, the official website to obtain this is annualcreditreport.com. Other websites seemingly offering free credit reports, come with fine print requiring signing up for other services. I have not comprehensively reviewed all the other websites, but the website mentioned above is the best one to use.

By law, the above website does not have to provide a credit score. It only provides a comprehensive list of activities on your credit. A good website to get your credit score is creditkarma.com. Most other websites require payment for a credit score, but this website generates revenue through ads. After creating a profile, you can track changes in your credit score with time. It also provides a credit simulator to project changes in credit score with various actions such as taking a loan, getting a new credit card etc. It has a whole bunch of other nice features worth trying out.

Desktops

I recently wanted software to create multiple desktops, similar to an utility which exists on Linux machines. The reason I needed this was I was cluttering up my taskbar with too many programs, including programs which I wanted open, but wasn't actively using all the time (read as browser window with cricinfo.com refreshing the score!). I found this utility called Desktops by SysInternals. It looks like it is endorsed by Microsoft, so I'm quite confident about the reliability of the software. Its very simple to install and an icon in your system tray gives control over the 4 desktops. The other cool thing about the software is the ability to switch desktops using keyboard shortcuts, which I find easier than navigating to the system tray to change desktops. A must try for everyone who finds their screens too small, but can't afford to use multiple monitors.