Moodle links

Useful links:

1. Best practices for quiz questions  🏅

Useful plugins:

1.  Question types:
   1. All or nothing multiple choice question type
2. Question behaviours:
   1. Deferred feedback – all or nothing
3. Filters:
   1. Generico filter 🏅
      1. Generico Atto Icon 🏅
   2. Prettify 🏅
      1. Prettify moodle forum discussion (#1 #2) (direct link)
      2. Prettify themes gallery
4. Atto editor:
   1. Generico toolbar Icon 🏅
   2. Toggle preview 🏅
   3. Full screen 🏅
   4. More font colors
   5. Cloze editor

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MBR vs GPT partitioning scheme

BIOS+MBR vs UEFI + GTP

Acronyms:

• BIOS: Basic Input Output System
• UEFI: Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
• MBR: Master boot record
• GPT: Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table = GUID Partition Table

Multiboot configuration

The most effective combinations either BIOS+MBR or UEFI+GPT. You could go around that, but it is not recommended at all.

The most compatible combination is

UEFI + GPT + Fast startup disabled + Secure boot disabled

If manufacturers stay sound, Secure boot will keep working with most Linux distributions but the future is unknown.

The steps are:

1. disable Secure boot
2. disable Fast startup
3. download rufus and create a bootable USB drive (links: #1 #2)
4. boot with the USB drive and install Ubuntu.

A detailed guidefor multibooting is here:

• Step by step instructions at askubuntu.com

Other questions …

BIOS vs UEFI FAQ:

1. Official UEFI FAQ
2. UEFI vs BIOS

MBR vs GPT FAQ:

1. Check to see if you have MBR or GTP (Windows OS)
2. Convert MBR to GTP (Windows OS)
3. How EUFI works
4. Basic disks vs Dynamic disks

 

Copy text from pdf does copy gibberish

 

Read the full explanation (optional)

It’s a  “problem” that often happens accidentally, but is also used intentionally to prevent copying and indexing of PDF files, especially when posted online.

Fonts in PDF files are stored with two tables, one contains the glyphs (the character shapes) and one contains a “toUnicode” map, which says what character each glyph represents. Acrobat uses the first table to draw the page, so it doesn’t actually know what the text “says”, only which patterns of shapes to draw. When you copy or search the file, the second lookup table is used to work out what the text says (i.e. in the word APPLE the first table says the second shape looks like “P” even if the shapes aren’t stored in alphabetical order, the toUnicode table says the second letter is 0x0050, a capital P).

If this toUnicode map is corrupted or missing, the PDF will render to screen (and print) just fine, but Acrobat has no idea what the shapes mean. The result when you screenread, export, search or copy/paste is a default set of mappings – so it will be a 1:1 relationship (every “A” will become the same character) – but the pairing is not predictable, so it cannot automatically be repaired. You can do it using plugins but would have to manually work out what each pair should be, and recreate the map table a letter at a time.

When this happens intentionally, it means the document author has removed or re-written the toUnicode map, using a plugin. When it happens accidentally it usually means the software exporting the PDF didn’t pass the correct font information to the PDF print driver (in the PostScript stream).

 

Here are the solutions:

#1 – Best Solution – Use google docs. Platform independent solution

1. upload pdf to google docs
2. open the document in google docs
3. copy paste whatever you want

#2 – Use OCR

You need Acrobat 9:

1. Document  → Watermark  → Add (add a text watermark, hit the space bar once).
2. Advanced  → Print Production  → Flattener Preview  → Convert all text to outlines (checkbox on). Save.
3. Document  → OCR text recognition  → recognize text using OCR. Select all text with the type tool, copy.

#3 – Print to Microsoft XPS Document Writer

1. Print from Acrobat using “Microsoft XPS Document Writer” Output is: “your file name.oxps”
2. Open “…oxps” with XPS Viewer.
3. Print to PDF (Acrobat PDF, or CutePDF), using the highest resolution (600 DPI).
4. Open with Acrobat and use OCR (Searchable Image (Exact)) option.

References:

• https://forums.adobe.com/message/3937628#3937628
• https://forums.adobe.com/thread/915012
• https://superuser.com/questions/137824/pdf-has-garbled-text-when-copy-pasting?utm_medium=organic&utm_source=google_rich_qa&utm_campaign=google_rich_qa

 

Algorithms

Alternating least squares:

http://danielnee.com/2016/09/collaborative-filtering-using-alternating-least-squares/

World stories

• The Man Behind Plugin Spam: Mason Soiza
• Bitconnect – Anatomy of a scam
• Mat Honan – Hack
• Mat Honan – Recovery
• Ackman – Herbalife short
• Bernard Madoff: the inside story of an obsessive control freak

 

Mathematics in web pages

Online editors:

• Online MathML editor (tutorials point)

Fonts:

• Fonts
• Mozilla fonts & how to install

APIs:

• https://www.mathjax.org  (latest documentation)

Documentation:

• W3C documentation
• MathML Interface
• MathML – Linebreaking and Indentation
• MathML entities

Summary:

• Tutorials point – HTML5 MathML (all elements summary)

Examples:

• MathML examples

• MathML Presentation Markup

Practice:

• Torture test

Grayham pyramid of disagreement

Crypto APIs

https://dzone.com/articles/top-3-cryptocurrency-rest-apis

https://www.cryptocompare.com/api#-api-data-price-

https://chasing-coins.com/api/

Junctions in Windows 7

To create a junction you can use the following command from a terminal:

mklink /J C:\...\linkname C:\...\OriginalFolder

To add a GUI, you can install the shell extension from:

http://schinagl.priv.at/nt/hardlinkshellext/linkshellextension.html

You perform the following steps:

1. install the x64 prerequisites package
2. install the link extension
3. restart explorer (you will be prompted after installation)

Then, instead of copy and paste, you use pick and drop to create junctions and links:

1. Right click on the original file/folder  and select Pick link source
2. Right click on the destination folder and select Drop Here  → Symbolic link