medicalnerds.com

I regularly exchange data between computers at University and home. To maintain security, I keep a firewall running on all machines, and “tunnel” through the firewall(s) using SSH – the secure shell. For example, I run a web server on my main machine for web application development, and do not wish this to be publicly […]

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JabRef is one of the best reference managers available and provides a realistic alternative to Endnote, as well as being open-source & free. Unfortunately most users are not aware that JabRef (or any other BibTeX based reference manager) can easily be integrated for use with Microsoft Word. In this guide I will show you step-by-step […]

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It is often necessary to batch convert PDF documents and graphics into other formats. I explain how to do this using totally free software. Searching for PDF software using Google is fraught with difficulty — one ends up with endless links to commercial sites, who charge lots of money, mislead users into paying for software […]

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Running your own email server is great, but it must be secure against attacks from hackers and “script-kiddies”, idiots who scan networks looking for systems that advertise services and allow remote access. You can secure certain services on your linux-based machine, such as sshd and imapd using tcpd’s hosts.allow and hosts.deny functionality, to limit the […]

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Before you start out with your research project you need to be equipped with the tools required to help you keep notes, write papers and produce professional looking documents. In this 2 part article I will describe 10 of my favourite applications, most of which are open source, all are free.

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If you have the credentials to view February’s 2007 issue of The Lancet, have a look at a published letter about the “ten pieces of free software every doctor should have”. If you don’t, then don’t worry too much – you’re not missing much with this article. I should have guessed that something wasn’t right […]

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R (The R project for statistical computing) and Filemaker provide a compelling solution for the common problems involved in medical research, namely data entry, reporting and analysis. However, there are pecularities in this combination, particularly when running on Mac OS X and trying to use ODBC, that can cause difficulties. This article discusses some solutions […]

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