Science and technology in one sexy package
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
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You are a self-proclamed genious? You like to see how things react with certains settings? You’re often stuck in the traffic when you want to go to work? Here’s a microsimulation which might give you a good visual explanation of why you’re stuck in what you hate each day.
There’s 6 differents type of simulations:
1. Ring Road
2. On-Ramp
3. Lane Closing and Speed limit
4. Uphill Grade
6. Lane Changes
Try them out and see how they act based on differents configuration.
Road Traffic microsimulation
I was finally able to setup the latex wordpress plugin which will enable me to post mathematical/scientifical formulas through my post. Here are some simple examples:
[tex]x_{1,2}=\frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}[/tex]
[tex]\int udv = uv – \int vdu[/tex]
[tex]\begin{matrix} 5050 \ \overbrace{ 1+2+\cdots+100 } \end{matrix}[/tex]
[tex]\phi_n(\kappa) = \frac{1}{4\pi^2\kappa^2} \int_0^\infty\frac{\sin(\kappa R)}{\kappa R} \frac{\partial}{\partial R}\left[R^2\frac{\partial D_n(R)}{\partial R}\right]\,dR[/tex]
I have yet found how to improve the image quality, but I’m sure I’ll find it soon or later (I hope it’s possible…)
WordPress Latex Plugin
This japanese company is know for it’s cheap plastic products. Targeting those who can’t pay for a high quality mp3 player, this small “device” runs for 5 hours on a single AAA battery. It supports up to 1GB SD cards. Yet, it’s not the smallest mp3 ever, but for the price you pay, it is the smallest in both price and size. A two-legged robot that walks at record-breaking speed has been developed by researchers from Germany and Scotland. “RunBot” is the fastest robot on two legs – for its size. At 30 centimetres high, it can walk at a speedy 3.5 leg-lengths per second. This beats the previous record holder – MIT’s “Spring Flamingo” – which is four times as tall but manages just 1.4 leg-lengths per second.It’s been said that the robot mimics biological behavior to enable their robot to have faster speed. “Humans have simple neural systems that learn a few basic modes of movement that function as reflexes,” he says. “RunBot works the same, putting it on the ground triggers the reflex.” The robot actually works the same way as neurons transmitting info which translates into reflexes. The few sensors actually detect one of these two things: when a foot touches the ground, and when a leg swings forward. Available videos: 1. Walking at a steady speed 2. Gradually walking faster
Source: http://www.newscientisttech.com/
Making the server switch was an easy task. I uploaded my sql database in it’s new home and checked if things where fine. At first sight, it looked fine, but when I wanted to post something on my blog, I would get the Duplicate entry ’0′ for key 1 error showing up. Did a little search on the subject to find out that my exported database didn’t contain the auto_increment ability in it… (I’m using wordpress 2.0.1 with phpmyadmin 2.6.2 (if I’m right))
So to make a long story short, here’s how I fixed it:
1. Go into your phpmyadmin panel. 2. For each tables structure, edit the first entry (which should be a primary key such as ID). 3. Delete the 0 in the default value and select “auto_increment” in the drop-down menu next to it (on the right). 4. Save. 5. Go to the next table and do the same.After doing this, you should not face the problem anymore. Thanks to search engines for the answer