Networking 101

Some people know a lot about computer networking. I know a bit about human networking but very little about computer networking. Since I am writing a story these days and I am naturally curious, this post would be a helpful reference for myself and others. Expect periodic updates!

TTEthernet
The Time-Triggered Ethernet (SAE AS6802) (also known as TTEthernet or TTE) standard defines a fault-tolerant synchronization strategy for building and maintaining synchronized time in Ethernet networks, and outlines mechanisms required for synchronous time-triggered packet switching for critical integrated applications, IMA and integrated modular architectures.

References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TTEthernet

Interactive Fiction for Fun

Stealing Wikipedia's definition, Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of interactive narratives or interactive narrations.

IF happens to be a gem of a genre for someone like me who loved to read choose-your-own-adventure novels when I was a kid. To have books with destinies decided not just by the author but by the reader was astounding to me. Besides, I frequently look at my own life this way. What if I chose to go to the park instead of just staying in that day? What if I decided to kiss the girl on the date instead of not? What if I decided to cook curry instead of fish? The most trivial choices can lead to momentous results.

Perhaps because of this, I was intrigued when I discovered Twine -- an open source tool for creating interactive fiction. Check it out: http://twinery.org/

Here are a few examples of works that people in this community have created. I am not saying they're the best stories but they can be interesting to read.


https://tayruh.github.io/monster

http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/wtwla/ 
Strange but beautiful I hear (with music).

http://mirror.ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2013/web/solarium/solarium.html#1e

https://philome.la/winningcake/a-trial/play/index.html

http://ifarchive.org/if-archive/games/competition2018/Bogeyman/bogeyman.html

For more games, you can check out what other people are playing:
https://intfiction.org/c/playing

Useful Software for Accessibility

 

You won't be as cool as a Blade Runner running these apps but at least you'll get more work done and have a funner time doing so.

PicPick
https://picpick.app/en/download/

Yes, I know Windows comes with Snipping Tool but haven't you ever wanted something more powerful and easy to use? PicPick is lightweight and free with a lot more capabilities than Snipping Tool. One of my favorite features is hitting a shorcut key to retake the same screen area as before without me having to redraw the screen area every single time. This is a Windows screenshot software which I highly recommend.

IrfanView
https://www.irfanview.com/

Though the basic Windows photo viewer works fine, it is a bit clunky when it comes to simple cropping of images or resizing. IrfanView loads fast and has a host of features.

[Media] Useful Firefox Plugins

As an avid user of Firefox, there are many plugins which are absolutely essential to upgrade your browsing experience. Here are a few I always use.

FireShot
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fireshot

This is my favorite plugin to make web page screenshots which can be saved as images or pdfs with links!

uBlock Origin
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin

Nowadays, ads are everywhere which unfortunately includes YouTube and other popular video streaming sites. To avoid them ever showing up, I use this efficient blocker. It runs so smoothly I never notice it's even there.

DownThemAll!
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/

This is the downloader for links on a page. Download images, pdfs, links, etc. all in one easily customizable plugin.

Image Picka
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-picka

I use this app if I specifically want to just download images on a page. Not nearly as functionality heavy or customizable as DownThemAll! but it's perfect for downloading pictures.

In My Pocket
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/in-my-pocket

For those of us using Pocket to bookmark and store interesting articles, the old official plugin no longer works with the latest version of Firefox. Have no fear for a guy by the name of Pierre-Adrien Buisson created an unofficial version which is just fine. With one click, save any article you want to Pocket for later perusal.

Words That Sound Badass

 

Semantic Segmentation

Image segmentation is a computer vision task in which we label specific regions of an image according to what's being shown.

https://www.jeremyjordan.me/semantic-segmentation/

https://hackernoon.com/semantic-segmentation-datasets-for-autonomous-driving-1182ebd2aff0

Regression Testing

Regression Testing is defined as a type of software testing to confirm that a recent program or code change has not adversely affected existing features. Regression Testing is nothing but a full or partial selection of already executed test cases which are re-executed to ensure existing functionalities work fine.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) 

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application–layer protocol defined by the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) in RFC1157 for exchanging management information between network devices. It is a part of Transmission Control Protocol⁄Internet Protocol (TCP⁄IP) protocol suite.

Michel Thomas Method

Michel Thomas was a language teacher with a specific approach to teaching. Thomas proposed that there is no such thing as "a student with learning difficulties, only teachers with teaching difficulties." The method presents the target language by interleaving new with old material, teaching generalization from language principles, contextual diversity, and learning self-correction in an environment that attempts to be stress-free, as the teacher is responsible for learning, not the student.

https://www.michelthomas.com

[Media] How to Embed Videos

Guide to Embed Videos

Locate the video you would like to include and copy the embed code. For Youtube videos, this code is found within the "share" menu. For the video above, it looks like this:

<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AqZA77eABRI" width="560"></iframe>

Youtube also has an option to share without having to type this code. First, click on the Share button which is right below the video. Then, when the box appears, click on the Embed button. A code box should appear to the right side. Select the code, copy and then paste it to whatever webpage you wish to embed the video.

What about non-Youtube sites?

[IT] Display Chinese in Command Prompt

Recently, I wanted to read some Chinese document in the Command Prompt. Unfortunately, I could not display Chinese characters by default. I learned a handy technique to do it:

chcp 936

In the Windows shell, the "code page" determines how bytes are converted to characters on the screen. Using the CHCP command changes the shell's code page. Please note that before the CHCP command can be used, the nlsfunc must be loaded and country.sys must be loaded into the config.sys.

Automation
To remove the need to do this every time, you can create a simple batch file to change the code to whatever you wish. Here, it's changed to 65001 which is Unicode. This will not be able to display East Asian characters but you will be able to type other characters.

@ECHO OFF
REM change CHCP to UTF-8
CHCP 65001
CLS

You can save this in the folder C:\Windows\System32 as a bat file such as switch.bat.

Then, create a shortcut to cmd.exe on Desktop and change the shortcut's properties to C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k switch

Now whenever you need to type in a different script, you can use this shorcut.

[IT] FAT32 File-size Limits

Yesterday, I was trying to transfer a 7GB file from my laptop to my removable hard drive when I ran across a problem. The persistent message of "File size too large" popped up every time. I wondered if it was due to a hard drive problem or maybe the file was corrupted. After doing some research, I realized that I was missing some basic knowledge of FAT32 architecture limits.

FAT stands for File Allocation Table, a computer file system architecture used mainly on portable devices now due to its relative simplicity and portability across multiple file system architectures. However, it does have many limitations. For one, there is a limitation on partition sizes. FAT32 has a 2TB limit on partition size while FAT16 has a 4GB limit on partition size. My removable hard drive was one partition of 596 GB, clearly well below the 2TB threshold. But there are also limitations on the file size. The Microsoft website confirms that the file-size limit on FAT32 is (2^32)-1, one byte less than exactly 4GB.

So how did I get around the problem? As far as I could tell, there were three solutions:

1. Format my removable hard drive to NTFS. This will limit its applicability to Windows but will solve any file transfer issues in the future. However, I will have to back up my files on the hard drive before I do this. This will take some time since I don't have any other medium to store my 200GB+ of information already on there.

2. Burn the image onto a DVD. This is all fine except I don't fancy carrying around a bunch of CDs.

3. Reduce the size of the file or split the file into multiple smaller files. This will solve the file transfer issue with just a little more hassle.

I decided to go with Option 3. I had on my computer a powerful and simple freeware called HJ-Split which does exactly that. It splits one file into multiple smaller files of sizes I decide. I have only used it before to merge files that have been split but doing the reverse is definitely possible. It took about half an hour to split the single size into 7 smaller files of ~1GB each but afterwards transferring the files was a cinch. In the future, I just need to recombine the files if I ever want it again.

By the way, you can download HJ-Split here:

http://www.hjsplit.org/