Inspired by Case from the book ‘Neuromancer’ by William Gibson. A punk hacker from hell that quite possibly inspired the character Neo from The Matrix trilogy. The book is enjoyable and a fast read provided that you do not try to make sense out of every little detail about Straylight, Wintermute, Tessier-Ashpool, etc. The book requires a healthy dose of abstraction!
(Made possible by Photoshop Elements.)
Some of my favorite (and most used MATLAB shortcuts).
| Description | Callback |
| Open folder XX | winOpen ‘C:\XX\’ |
| Change directory to folder XX | cd ‘C:\XX\’ |
| Open Help Browser | helpbrowser |
| Close Help Browser | com.mathworks.mde.desk.MLDesktop.getInstance.closeHelpBrowser |
| Clear Workspace | clear all close all clc |
| Set Editor at specific state (See also here and here) | editorServices = com.mathworks.mlservices.MLEditorServices; load('C:\MATLAB\Editor State Files\xxxxAnalysis.mat') for id = 1:length( editorState ) |
In an earlier blog entry I documented a way to preserve that state of the editor (that is all windows open in the editor) in a .mat file that can be reloaded whenever needed.
I decided to make a shortcut of the most frequently re-loaded set of windows. It is easy to do in MATLAB:
For my case I added the shortcut to a personal folder accessible from the Start button (Start – Shortcuts).
The code entered in the Callback field:
editorServices = com.mathworks.mlservices.MLEditorServices;
load('C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\MATLAB\Editor State Files\xxxxAnalysis.mat')
for id = 1:length( editorState )
editorServices.openDocument( editorState(id) )
end
GRIPE ON:
What is the point of having a personal folder accessible from the Start button??
I am using it as a repository of commands that would be good to have close but not necessarily add to toolbar (and thus add to clatter). However, they do not count as ‘shortcuts’. A shortcut is an 1-2 clicks operation not something that essentially takes 3-4 clicks to launch. That counts as a sub-sub-… menu! Not to mention ‘out of sight out of mind’.
It would have been much better if by making a personal shortcut folder you actually place it as an icon to the toolbar that can be launched via a 2-click operation. And everything is right there in front of you so you do not forget your shortcuts. And everything is organized.
I saw that exercise as an assignment for a MATLAB course and it reminded me of my senior year in college studying aerospace engineering. As a senior project me and 3 other people designed and build and aeroplane (great fun!) and among other things I used a plastic spline and some weights called ‘ducks’ (to set the curvature). Much easier to do generate splines with a computer!
The code to generate cubic splines is well known and makes use of a tridiagonal system of matrices which lends itself well to MATLAB programming. However, the MATLAB people have made available standard spline functions (also exotic versions for a friendly fee!) which makes the whole operation pretty straight forward. See below; All code is entered in the MATLAB command window.
I first wrote my monogram on an 8x10 engineering paper and determined the (x, y) coordinate pairs (my ducks!) See plot below for my data set. (Set axis to equal for proper appearance.)
>> M = load('monogram data.txt');
>> x = M(:,1);
>> y = M(:,2);
>> plot(x, y, 'o', 'markersize', 5)
>> grid on
>> axis equal
If the MATLAB Spline toolbox is available then the function SPCRV will work well.
>> values = spcrv(M,2); % 2nd order
>> subplot(121)
>> plot(x, y, '.b', values(:,1), values(:,2), '-r', 'linewidth', 1)
>> grid on
>> axis equal
>> subplot(122)
>> plot(values(:,1), values(:,2), '-r', 'linewidth', 1)
>> axis equal
It is almost as easy to generate the spline using the standard 3rd order SPLINE function available with basic MATLAB. I need to define common parameter t so x(t) and y(t) can be found.
>> n = size(M,1); % number of data points
>> t = 1:n;
>> ts = 1:1:n;
>> xs = spline(t,x,ts);
>> ys = spline(t,y,ts);
>> subplot(121)
>> plot(x, y, '.b', xs, ys, '-g', 'linewidth', 1)
>> grid on
>> axis equal
>> subplot(122)
>> plot(xs, ys, '-g', 'linewidth', 1)
>> axis equal
Compare the two solutions (spcrv vs. spline); The two curves are identical.
Reduce the step size of parameter ts to improve appearance of my monogram.
ts = 1:1/20:n;
xs_ = spline(t,x,ts);
ys_ = spline(t,y,ts);
subplot(121)
plot(x, y, '.b', xs_, ys_, '-g', 'linewidth', 1)
grid on
axis equal
subplot(122)
plot(xs_, ys_, '-c', 'linewidth', 1)
axis equal
Looks pretty nice!
Now I just have to create my own code (as I have done years ago in FORTRAN) and compare with the MATLAB result. Another day maybe!
From the 5/19/09 PhDComics.com comic strip (Piled Higher &Deeper). I could not resist preserving it here. The comic by Jorge Cham is very funny and right on with regards to the academic life of a graduate student.
