Useful research stuff

PhD

Computer Lab

References

 

 

Conferences

Keshav's Virtual Conference

For a list of upcoming conferences:

Journals and Transactions

Documents

Tools

  • Unix

    • gnuplot - tool for generating good looking graphs
    • jgraph - another graphing tool
    • awk - for parsing strings (useful for processing simulation results files)
    • latex - excellent format for writing research papers (Latex resources)
    • xfig - produce nice looking figures for including in latex source
    • ispell - spell checker

  • Windows

    • wgnuplot - windows version of gnuplot
    • winfig - windows version of xfig
    • 4Spell - Spell checker. Can check .tex files (skip tags)
    • Miktex - Windows latex compiler
    • Yap - Windows dvi reader

  • Simulators

    • OMNET++ - Excellent discrete event simulator. Good for simulation networks, queues and computer processes. Many existing examples available. Programming in C++.

Tips

  • Bibliographies of published papers are very helpful for finding other relevant papers.

  • Write as you go. Try to write during every stage of your research degree. Don't leave all the writing until the end. Chances are, you won't remember everything you've done in the past couple of years.

  • Plan ahead when you are writing. Identify a conference you are interested in, and write your papers using the formatting templates they provide, that way, you won't have to worry about formatting after you finish writing!

  • Use batch files to execute experiments, so later on, even if you don't remember how to run an experiment, you can find out from the batch files.

  • When writing simulations, make your program write the events into a file first and then feed the file into your simulation. This way, if you need to repeat a simulation for a second time, the exact same set of events can be regenerated from the same event file.

Useful vim commands

To comment the next 10 lines :.,.+10s/^/%/
To comment lines 0 to 10 :0,10s/^/%/

Useful Unix commands

Search and replace strings in multiple files perl -pi -e "s/search/replace/g;" *.txt

Useful latex stuff

Put figure to top of page \begin{figure}[t]
Put figure inline with text/here \begin{figure}[h]
Put figure on a new page on its own \begin{figure}[p]
To put verbatim text inside colour box:

Result :

Your text goes here 
\usepackage{fancyvrb, pstcol}

\definecolor{Gray} {rgb}{0.8, 0.8, 0.8}
\begin{SaveVerbatim}{temp}
  Your text goes here
\end{SaveVerbatim}

\begin{figure}
\colorbox{Gray} {
   \BUseVerbatim{temp}
}
\caption{my verbatim box}
\label{my_verbatim_box}
\end{figure}