Backing Up Files Using Amazon Glacier

Amazon Glacier is a cheap massive cloud storage solution that is mostly suitable for storing cold data - data that are rarely accessed. The price is fair: $4/TB/month. However, it's not like Dropbox or Googld Drive that has nice client programs that you can simply drag and drop the files to be stored. Instead, you'll have to work with their APIs to upload you files. In this post, I'll explain the basics about how to upload the files and also how to query the inventory.

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Generating All-In-One LaTex File for Journal Submission

Recently I need to submit to a journal that does NOT accept the final PDF but requires all LaTex sources so that they can compile the PDF on their own. Given that any LaTex projects with reasonable size would have multiple *.tex, *.bib and figure files. It'll be nice to flatten the LaTex project so that we have as few as files to upload. Here is how.

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Chromecast Wireless Protocols Part-I: Setup

There are plenty resources online that explains how Chromecast works. But most of them focus on up-layer protocols, such as mDNS, DIAL/HTTP. I am more interested in the 802.11 MAC layer. In particular, I was curious in questions such as:

  • What happens when you set up a Chromecast?
  • How the cast device (such as an Android phone) and Chromecast communicate (in 802.11 layer)?

Some of the questions were obvious, others are not. In this post, I will document the process about the Chromecast setup process. This will be the first of the series of posts on this topic.

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