Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Writing for Publication: My Experience So Far


PhD is about doing a good research and getting recognition in the research community and it is desirable to have a list of recognized ‘publications’ at the completion.  I'm a second year full-time PhD student from the school of computing and technology and the nature of my research is more amenable to progressive publication. So far, I have published two journal papers; eleven papers and posters in conferences, workshops and a doctor consortium; and co-authored three papers with supervisors and a colleague.  I have also participated in various events, students’ conferences and a summer school abroad.

Publishing is rewarding and intellectually satisfying experience. During this period, I have travelled to eight different countries and met with researchers around the world from engineering and the social sciences. It has provided a great opportunity to share my research experience, received valuable feedback and suggestions which will immensely help to improve the quality of my PhD thesis. But, due to limited available funding from the University, it has been an expensive experience of attending conferences and travelling.

The supervisor’s encouragement and support has played an important role but to manage resources and support necessary to facilitate publication have been challenging. Publishing is a time consuming process and writing coherent chapters for a thesis simultaneously and in time will not be easy. Because of this I have limited my academic and social activities within the school and outside.

However, by publishing in stages, it has exposed me to a process of continual review and criticism from a wider community within my research domain. I am also learning to deal with rejections constructively.  I find it an efficient strategy for researching in rapidly evolving technological context as it avoids a risk of publishing outdated information and data at the conclusion of a study. But publishing early is also risky as it is difficult to have a clearly developed idea to start with and changing the direction at the later stage can be problematic. However, my publication experience has been positive so far and the advantages outweigh the difficulties that I encountered during the process.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Gnome Classic Desktop in Ubuntu 11.10

I think Gnome Classic Shell is more flexible and easy to use and I prefer this over Ubuntu Unity.  I'm not sure if Unity is up to the standards that we expect from a Linux desktop. Of course Gnome 3.0 looks professional and is very cool but I prefer simple and flexible workspace. After using all the possible UIs, I found myself comfortable using the classic. Not a big concern or issue, I also prefer to have the missing ubuntu logo in Applications menu. I also prefer to use the old style unified applet containing all of the indicators.

Install the Classic Desktop in Ubuntu 11.10 by just clicking this link or use the following command:

     sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

Log out , select Gnome Classic and log in.
You can customise the panel by using Alt + right-mouse-button sequence.  If you use compiz, use Alt+Windows-logo-key+ right-mouse-button.
To replace standard notifications area and use the old style “A unified applet containing all of the indicators”, you can update your system with unsupported packages by adding ppa:jconti/gnome3 to your system's Software Sources. This is from this untrusted PPA.

     sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jconti/gnome3
     sudo apt-get update
     sudo apt-get install indicator-applet-complete

Then, remove clock, notification area and user switch applet, and add a unified applet containing all of the indicators to the panel.

(source) If you want Ubuntu logo to be displayed in ‘Applications’ menu, open /usr/share/themes/Ambiance/gtk-3.0/apps/gnome-panel.css file and change this block of code:

PanelMenuBar.menubar.menuitem {
    background-image: -gtk-gradient (linear, left top, left bottom,
                                     from (shade (@dark_bg_color, 1.5)),
                                     to (shade (@dark_bg_color, 1.05)));
}
to this:
PanelMenuBar.menubar.menuitem {
    background-image: -gtk-gradient (linear, left top, left bottom,
                                     from (shade (@dark_bg_color, 1.5)),
                                     to (shade (@dark_bg_color, 1.05)));
    -PanelMenuBar-icon-visible: true;
}