Latex: draft option

Writing some long document/article in latex with a lot of figures can be not very nice; providing that, the more figures you have the more time it takes to render your documents. Therefore, sometimes it is usefully to just switch off graphics. This can be done by using 'draft' option in a document class e.g.\documentclass[onecolumn,12pt,draft]{article}
Thanks to this embedded pictures are not displayed; instead, only an outline of the box taken up by the picture is shown. This significantly improve rendering.

Matlab: getargs.m

Get arguments function code (getargs.m)
function S = getargs(defaultS, varglist);

if mod(length(varglist),2) ~=0
error('Odd number of variable parameters');
end

S = defaultS;
i=1;
while i <= length(varglist)
if isfield(S, varglist{i})
S.(varglist{i}) = varglist{i+1};
else
warning_wrap('getargs:unknown_param', ...
['Unknown parameter "' varglist{i} '"']);
end
i = i+2;
end

Ubuntu: quick setup of vsftpd server

Instead of proftpd it is faster to use vsftpd. After installation (sudo apt-get install vsftpd) just: sudo vim /etc/vsftpd.conf
And uncomment lines:write_enable=YES
local_enable=YES
and comment line: #anonymous_enable=YES
Finally restart server by: sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart