ideas

while working intensively on my final project for financial engineering, I start to wonder of new questions as ideas for my future research and study:

- freemind software reminds me when data get large and people at lost, visualization can be extremely valuable. It's good to be able to brainstorm ideas down in a visual structure. It helps to organize ideas especially when working on long paper. So the questions are:
- how to encode and represent knowledge or rules in a knowledge base, ruled based system? format may be text, drawing, video... How to set up a mapping or a user customized meaningful correlation between these representations?

- how to visualize and solve abstract concepts visually?
- how to visually encode knowledge?

I don't have the answers for these questions now...because I'm busy working on this final project paper and have not thought out those questions yet! but I think sometimes it is important to come up and ask the right questions first...to drive direction for answer rather than looking for some random answer blindly...again...another question and ideas about the approach of problem solving...
- is it active questioning/asking driven? or is it "search"/answer driven? how to search if you dont know what to search for????

Install new VM in Centrix XenCenter

Here are a few ways to install/instantiate a new VM in Centrix XenCenter. Some I have learned the hard way.

option1: install from online repositories source
ex: install CentOS. You can find some online repositories. Otherwise, you can follow instruction in User guide for XenCenter to set up your own Redhat repositories.

option2: install from DVD - ISO files
this is the common method we set up a regular machine. Somehow, at first few attempts, I have problems figuring out how to attached DVD or select install from DVD when creating new VM. The KEY is: if you select any existing template in XenCenter when create new VM, you CANNOT select the option to install from ISO library or DVD. Also, it's stupid, but don't bother about attaching DVD to VM because they already have.

the solution is to set TEMPLATE for new VM as "Other install media" in the drop down list of template. Then you will have the options enabled for install from DVD or ISO library. Alternatively, you can leave the Installation Media section empty, then once the VM is created and started the first time, in the "Console" tab dropdown, select the desired DVD or ISO library.

note:
- when create new ISO library such as CFIS/SMB windows share, specify path as //server/share with valid login account
- alternatively, can use a trick to install from URL by running a local Python built in web server serving ISOs files from local with the command:
> python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Life is good again;)

QP

evaluating tools for statistical data mining and analysis of financial application

Many solutions existing including Matlab, C/C++. Java and Python

I choose Python for my projects because:
- scripting language = fast development
- easily translatable/migrate from Java OOP and integration through JPython or with C
- hook up well with R for stat analysis
- beautiful graphing
- free + open source
- great tutorials, documentation

restoring dell laptop running windows vista

My girlfriend laptop Dell XPS M1330 running vista has more likely been corrupted with virus and is mal functioning. A few inportant steps to note for myself that may not be obvious:

- backup important data by manually copying User folders to external hard drive using an ubuntu linux cd
- perform factory backup *** by clicking F8 on boot up=> system repair -> login and choose factory recovery... This step is not obvious and there is no menu option in regular windows log in to do this.

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied&docid=DSN_336966&isLegacy=true

A week on "network path not found" error

This whole week, I have been reading madly to set up Active Directory and Domain Name service on windows server 2008 and windows 7 clients. Learned that DNS is the KEY to understand and configure AD-DS. But what's more? before even configure DNS, set up computers to connect and share/access resource can be tricky.

The error: network path not found
when I try to join a client computer to a domain. Thought it must be some AD-DS error. But hang on, let me try to do simple file sharing...and yes...I got the same error. The frustration is that I can ping and dns test with nslookup fine the server. Even when all firewalls on server are turned off.

the solution.
Network adapter setting must be set properly for
clients: - check Client for Microsoft Networks
server: File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Network <= ****** key solution without this no effort works - and I have figure it out today Friday after a long struggling week with nothing done but madly reading.

configure multiple virtual host on apache server on fedora

A few note to myself the necessary steps to configure virtual hosts on apache server running Fedora:

- first need to get DNS mapping correct first. Test ping machines/hosts to verify dns working correctly.
- configuration file = /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
- check that this is the correct configuration file that control the apache server by redirect default web page to a test page and make sure it is displayed correctly. It may be necessary to use different browsers on different computers to access the web server to verify that the server is working properly. Sometimes, I find using the same browser in one machine like firefox seems to cache data and create wrong illusion that the server is always available even when I shutdown the web server.

- modify configuration file to uncomment and enable NameVirtualServer line

- virtual host means using 1 instance of apache server to server multiple web domains/hosts.

- sample configuration for one virtual host:


ServerName www.test.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/


Once >=1 virtual host is configured and used, then every host is considered a virtual host and must have its own configuration as the segment of code above.

- finally restart the web server as below:
#> /sbin/service httpd restart

Done ;)

more on R&D

possible master thesis:

-comparative contemporary programming languages
- high performance programming language
- how to integrate modern programming languages
- concurrent mutation testing

- research work on motivation for programming languages design study as motivated by the need to generalized knowledge in web development