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Getting stuff to work from the Ubuntu Menu is pretty straightforward, but I ran into some little problems that confused me with Matlab. This post goes through the steps and difficulties I had, which might be useful in general, not just in relation to Matlab.

First up, I installed the Student Edition of Matlab (currently R2009a and a steal at the student price), taking into account the fact that I’m running a 64-bit OS and the student edition doesn’t come with the 64-bit architecture libraries. Pretty confusing on first install as the installer detects the architecture but then can’t find the libs, but corrected using this guidance on the Mathworks website.

Once you’ve done that, you need to pass the argument ‘-glnx86′ to Matlab every time you start it up.

That’s a pain, plus the other boilerplate to run it in the background – so I tried to set up a menu option using ‘Main Menu’, which is the relevant administrative tool that comes with Ubuntu. It’s in System – Preferences – Main Menu if you’ve not used it before. Here’s a screenshot of it, set up with a Matlab launcher.

The obvious thing is to give Main Menu the command that works from the command prompt, but no. Doing this results is strange behaviour where the splash screen fires up, disappears, and nothing. Checking the .xsession-errors log file in my home directory shows what’s happening. The application is launching in command line mode, writing its prompt to stdout, and then being shut down.

Kinda weird, maybe, as launching the app from the command line launches the Matlab GUI. Anyway, you also need to also add a ‘-desktop’ argument to the launcher command. My Matlab is installed in /opt/matlab, remember to change the path as appropriate for you.

You can also add the icon if you want by clicking where the Matlab icon is shown above, browsing to wherever you installed Matlab then into the ‘X11/icons’ directory, where you’ll find a number of icons.

Now you can launch the program from Main Menu, or drag-dropping it onto a panel, onto your desktop – wherever you like.

Paul Brabban Ubuntu, matlab matlab, MSc

Before each academic year, there’s ‘Induction Week’, where alongside the orientation stuff going on for the new students, the academics running the courses sell their wares to the students who’ve signed up to do an MSc. There’s a choice of 25-odd courses which seem to cluster around formal methods, artificial intelligence, high performance computing and the semantic web.

This year, I’ve saved up a few days’ holiday to let me attend the Wednesday and Thursday, when the course talks are going on. It also lets me sort out library books, admin stuff and the like. The 05:45 starts to get to Manchester on time are painful, mind.

I’ve transferred most of the introductory talks I was interested in seeing to my Google Calendar, so that I had my agenda for the day on my phone. That saved me potentially missing anything I wanted to see without me having to sit in the same room all day. In theory anyone who’s interested in what’s going on should be able to view my MSc calendar here. I haven’t tried to give out links to a personal public Google calendar before though, so let me know if you want to look and it doesn’t work.

It certainly felt very different this year from last. Knowing where everything is and seeing a few friendly faces makes everything much easier and more comfortable.

As for the courses, I confirmed what I want to study this year, so it’s time to get stuck into maths and Matlab ready for Machine Learning, which starts on Tuesday.

Paul Brabban MSc induction, manchester, MSc

I’ve been using Astrid, a nice little free app on the Market that lets you set up tasks with deadlines and then notifies you when they’re due. I mentioned it on my HTC Magic review, but a few weeks on and I’m still using it. In fact, I’m really starting to appreciate it.

It’s a pretty simple idea that I’ve tried before using other platforms (desktop, Symbian phones) without much success. It’s working much better for me on my Magic, which I put down to the functionality beating other phones I’ve owned and the portability beating the desktop apps.

The keyboard and simple setup of tasks and repeats means that it’s really no problem for me to pop stuff I need to remember into there as-and-when I think of it. If it goes in the phone, I remember it. Simple. Just…got…to…be…disciplined…

It syncs up with rememberthemilk.com so you don’t lose all your stuff if you lose your phone, and you can get to your stuff from the web.

In use it’s transparent until it needs to tell me something, at which point I get a buzz and a little notification appearing in the notifications bar. Drag it down and I can see the tasks I need to do. Once there’s a few tasks in there, that notifications window fills up quick if you don’t stay on top of things – although that does kind of compel me either not to put things off, or to think about how long I’m putting something off for.

From a notification, you can open the task and complete it, snooze it or edit it. If you complete it and it’s due to repeat, it gets notified when it is next due.

Irritations: there isn’t a button to complete a task straight from the notification – which is what I do most often. It can also be a little slow, but that criticism could be levelled at most apps depending on how busy the phone is, so it’s probably not actually to do with Astrid. More annoying is the delay whilst it syncs up with rememberthemilk – it makes you wait, instead of just doing it in the background.

That said though, overall it’s a big plus. It’s a nice feeling to drop a task in there and know that you’ll get reminded when it’s due. It’s a really nice feeling when you get reminded of some silly little thing that there’s no way you would have remembered otherwise!

Paul Brabban android