Entries filed under Computer

How to add MATLAB to the GNOME menu

Posted on Sep 21, 2010

For the installation instruction of MATLAB, refer to the following document.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MATLAB

To add MATLAB to the GNOME menu,

1. Get an icon:

sudo wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Matlab_Logo.png -O /usr/share/icons/matlab.png

2. Get the launcher file:

sudo wget 'https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MATLAB?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=matlab-r2010a.desktop' -O /usr/share/applications/matlab.desktop

3. Edit the launcher file:

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/matlab.desktop &

The contents of the launcher file (“matlab.desktop”) should be similar to what is written below. Modify ‘Name‘, ‘Exec‘, and ‘Categories‘ fields according to your configuration. Don’t forget to put ‘-desktop‘ at the end of the ‘Exec‘. Otherwise, MATLAB will show the splash screen, but will not start.

#!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/matlab.png
Name=MATLAB R2010b
Comment=Start MATLAB - The Language of Technical Computing
Exec=/usr/local/MATLAB/R2010b/bin/matlab -desktop
Categories=Development;Programming;

FYI. The ‘-desktop‘ option may not be necessary when MATLAB is executed from the command line.

Remote desktop connection in Linux: NX Server

Posted on Aug 13, 2010

My office computer was just an old Windows box which was getting slow due to the resource-devouring vaccine software. I decided to install Ubuntu (9.10, Karmic Koala) on it in order to use its computing power more efficiently. It was done quite nicely. I could run FireFox, Thunderbird and most of my favorite software as I used them on Windows just with the faster speed. The thing I wanted next was a substitute for Windows terminal service, aka, Remote Desktop Connection, since most of the time I logged on the machine remotely.

There are several implementations of VNC and RDP available for that purpose. I tested a couple of them myself, but the user experience they provided was not very satisfying to me, not to mention their slow speed. Then, I found FreeNX server1 which is a GPL implementation of NoMachine’s NX Server. It worked just like a charm. Fast and neat. It was exactly what I wanted, and I loved it.

Continue…

How to connect to file-based data sources Microsoft Access , Microsoft Excel and Text files from a 64 bit application

Posted on Mar 25, 2010

On a 32-bit Windows, you can access accdb files through the ODBC driver which is available for free at 2007 Office System Driver: Data Connectivity Components. (If you installed Microsoft Office 2007 on your machine, you already have the driver as well and don’t need to install it.)

Unfortunately this hasn’t been possible on a 64-bit Windows, because such a driver didn’t exist for a 64-bit environment. Now it seems that Microsoft is working on it to release a 64-bit version of Office 2010. It is still in beta status, but may be useful. The download link is here. 2010 Office System Driver Beta: Data Connectivity Components. They released the official version now. See Microsoft Access Database Engine 2010 Redistributable.

There is a little more information in Microsoft SQL Server Support Blog : How to connect to file-based data sources Microsoft Access , Microsoft Excel and Text files from a 64 bit application.

A workaround for a missing file, “dxtrans.h” in DirectX SDK

Posted on Jun 17, 2009

You may see the following error message when you compile DirectShow with the latest version of DirectX SDK. (the current version is “DirectX SDK – March 2009” at this moment)

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\include\qedit.h(498) : fatal error C1083: Cannot open include file: ‘dxtrans.h’: No such file or directory

This is because “dxtrans.h” is not included in the latest version of DirectX SDK any more (from DirectX SDK – November 2007) although “qedit.h” of DirectShow is still dependent on it.

I found an article posted by people who were already troubled with this problem. The point is that the part of “qedit.h” which depends on “dxtrans.h” is not necessary to use DirectShow, so you comment it out in “qedit.h” and the error will be gone. (For the details, see this) The other solution which I like better is to define some keywords before including “qedit.h” to prevent the “dxtrans.h” dependent code from being compiled. Then, you don’t need to edit “qedit.h” itself.

#pragma include_alias( "dxtrans.h", "qedit.h" )
#define __IDxtCompositor_INTERFACE_DEFINED__
#define __IDxtAlphaSetter_INTERFACE_DEFINED__
#define __IDxtJpeg_INTERFACE_DEFINED__
#define __IDxtKey_INTERFACE_DEFINED__
#include <qedit.h>

FYI. DirectShow is not a part of DirectX SDK any more, and is moved to Microsoft Windows SDK (which has been called Platform SDK for a while). Windows SDK is installed as a part of Visual Studio 2008, so you don’t need to install it additionally to use DirectShow unless you want the latest version of Windows SDK.