Author Archives: Justin

Express Oil Change on Roswell Road Possible Scam

One of the joys of having an old car is those times when you leave work, turn the key and realize that it’s going to be a long evening as your car refuses to start. Such was the case on … Continue reading

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Physics…What are you gonna do with that?

First, I’ll admit that in the past I’ve gone from being puzzled by this question to annoyed to down-right pissed off. It’s uncanny how often it comes up when I meet someone new. However, lately, I’ve learned to take it … Continue reading

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Effect of Reference Pulse Width on XFROG

In preparation for the upcoming Frontiers in Optics conference, I’ve been experimenting with the cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating (XFROG) algorithm. We’d like to prove that it can be used to measure extremely complex laser pulses with time-bandwidth products of ~1000. … Continue reading

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The Fall of American Manufacturing

What happens to a service-based economy when the countries it depends on for tangible goods decide to stop trading? It’s a troubling scenario, but it’s not far-fetched. Take a look at Sinopec: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/08/china-npc-sinopec-idUSBJI00260720110308. Source: http://www.bea.gov/industry/gdpbyind_data.htm

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How to use the FoRCE computing cluster

I’m trying to recount some of this from memory, so bare with me. The FoRCE (http://pace.gatech.edu/force-cluster) computing cluster is part of the PACE program at Georgia Tech. It is a shared resource that is available to any researcher at GT … Continue reading

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Run an ssh tunnel in the background

Usually, creating an ssh tunnel initiates a prompt on the remote ssh server, but it’s easy to run it as a background process: ssh -f -N -L localip:localport:destinationip:destinationport username@ssh_serverip -f forks the process -N no command to be run on … Continue reading

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Django dynamic forms on the fly

Django is a really nice web framework for Python, and it definitely speeds up the development of web apps. In particular, Django makes it ridiculously easy to create web forms. It’s as simple as creating a new class with a … Continue reading

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Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid LAMP and beyond

Linode has, probably, the most complete guide to setting up a LAMP stack in Ubuntu that I have seen. They even go a step further by showing the reader how to manage and configure virtual hosts on Apache2. I’m posting … Continue reading

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Check your WAN IP from the command line in Ubuntu

Create a simple script: mkdir ~/bin cd ~/bin nano whatismyip.sh Now, copy and paste these commands into the script: #!/bin/bash wget www.whatismyip.com/automation/n09230945.asp -O – -q echo exit 0 Make the script executable: chmod u+x ~/bin/whatismyip.sh Type ~/bin/whatismyip.sh into the terminal.

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Ridiculously Awesome and Amazing Guide to Household Light Bulbs: Incandescent, Compact Fluorescent (CFL) and LED

Choosing the right light bulbs for a home or office can lead to millions of dollars in savings! OK, maybe not millions, but choosing the right bulbs means some extra Benjamins in our pockets, improved family morale, fewer mercury-exposed children and … Continue reading

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