Ubuntu’s Unity, revisited

October 17, 2011
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Now that the first waves of rage calmed down and i’ve been using Unity for a few days, it doesn’t seem that horrible anymore. I managed to tweak many stuff to my liking, and many still await, but now i can at least get stuff done without constantly being held up by the clumsy interface.

There are stuff that disturb me still though. There is no simple way to switch between workspaces. In the classic Gnome, there was the handy workspace switcher applet on the tray, and it took only a click. In Unity, i’ve to click the icon in the launcher for the workspace wall to show up, and right-click on the workspace i want to move to. I can’t even use the “send to workspace …” options on the right click menu of windows, because it closes the window without warning or question. Not to mention that Unity is prone to crash without any real reason. In the past three days it crashed at least three times when i was just normally using the system and pretty much every single time i tried tweaking the settings. Luckily it restarts quickly, but it’s still annoying.

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Ubuntu 11.10 PPPoE network fun

October 15, 2011
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I have a DSL network connection, which is really nice fast, at least inside Japan, if it works. Luckily unlike my previous provider at the dorm, who would randomly cut off my net for days without warning if i left the torrent client on for a bit too long, there are no problems on the provider’s side. There are smaller ones on mine though. I have to manually connect whenever i boot Windows, but i never really bothered to look deeper into it, since it only happens once or twice a week. However, under Ubuntu the problems are quite different.

After i upgraded and then reinstalled the 11.10 o-something version, i faced some problems i couldn’t really handle. First it was the “waiting for network configuration” thing mentioned in the earlier post, but that went away after the reinstall and home folder wipe. But then there were other problems. It wouldn’t or only partially load certain pages (without any connection to each other, such as Rakuten and Tumblr) although i could ping and netcat them, it wouldn’t connect to MSN and in general it was slow. I rebooted to Windows to check, and found that everything worked all right, thus confirmed that it was an Ubuntu thing. I checked every setting in the network config manager gui, but none had any effect.

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Rage mode on

October 14, 2011
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So, again Ubuntu delivered a distro update, and with it, another afternoon of pure rage. First, why the hell do you need to remove Gnome if i already have it installed? I don’t give a flying fuck about Unity, i’m not using a tablet and i always have lots of windows open at once. But all right, if you want to install that pile of crap Unity, do so, but leave Gnome on. No, you must remove Gnome. Okay then, remove it, but let me reinstall it after the hour-long update misery is over. I was naive enough to hope it’d work. I installed Gnome, rebooted (of course the distro update fucked up my bootloader too), chose the Gnome session, logged in, and faced something that reminded me of Windows 98 in 8bit color mode with the monitor’s cable having serious contact problems. I thought maybe it didn’t reinstall some required Compiz stuff (which again is fucking stupid considering what’s the point of installing Gnome if it just won’t work), so i logged out, and tried to log in into the Unity session to install stuff. It wouldn’t load. Reboot. Wait three minutes for some kind of “network configuration” (implying this fucker erased even my PPPoE settings), and i couldn’t even skip it. Still neither Gnome nor Unity would boot. So now i’m burning the install CD and getting ready for erasing the system and reinstalling from scratch. For the first time in two years.

Pénzügyek

October 13, 2011
valeblog
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Szerencsére a csődveszély már nem fenyeget, ellenben jelen pillanatban nem tudom, hogy fogok tudni hazamenni karácsonykor. Az a gond, hogy nem tudom kifizetni a repülőjegyemet. Ez így nem épp egyértelmű, úgyhogy részletezek: a hitelkártyámon, amivel fizetnék, százezer jenes limit van, a repülőjegy pedig 130. Vagyis nem az a gond, hogy nincs meg a fedezetem rá, hanem hogy a kártyámmal ekkora összeget nem tudok kifizetni. Pedig már kezdtem volna örülni, mert találtam egész olcsó, 50-60 ezer jenes repjegyeket, de aztán amikor rákattintottam, hogy foglalás, felugrott, hogy hoppá van ott még egyszer annyi “külföldi egyéb adó” és így a vége az említett 130 körüli összeg lett.

Lehetőségek: vagy várok hátha szerencsém lesz és lesz egy jegy, ahol a teljes összeg van százezer alatt, vagy valahogy megpróbálom megemelni a kártyám limitét. Ez utóbbi nagyon macerás lenne, már próbáltam: mivel diák vagyok, és nincs bevételem az ösztöndíjamon kívül, az egyetemnek köszönhető csak, hogy megkaptam egyáltalán a kártyát, és így nem éppen lelkes a bank, ha még kéréseim vannak. A múltkor kerek perec megmondták, hogy egyszeri emelést nem lehet, úgyhogy most jön az a rész, hogy nyomozok és reménykedek.

Shakugan no Shana 3

October 11, 2011
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So Shana. RHE asked me to do it, and i jumped on the chance of translating such a legendary series, even if i haven’t seen the second season or any of the specials or movies, and it’s been ages since the first season, so i hardly remember anything of it. (Let’s be honest: nothing.) I expected it to be a relatively easy show, but contrary to my expectations it ended up the hardest. After translating the last two episodes of Dantalian without any major problems, i was pretty surprised that i had so much trouble with Shana. It all comes down to that i had no idea of the context, so i was furiously googling for ages by the time i realized the word i can’t make any sense of is a name or a phrase specific to the series. As by now i more or less picked up the vocab and i know what to expect, from the second episode on, the translation mistakes will be all mostly gone (rather not make hasty promises). Not to mention that if i don’t have to investigate for half an hour whenever a phrase like Crimson Denizens or Torch shows up, it’ll be faster too. Don’t give up on me just yet.

Phi Brain

October 11, 2011
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I’m translating Phi Brain for WhyNot. It’s an anime about puzzles, on the NHK Education channel, so before and after the show there are plenty of related programmes too for the kids, all about the various puzzles, the mythical and historical references in the anime and so on. The main characters are all there during the opening song, and from the first two episodes i have a rough idea of where the story is headed in the first ten or so episodes, but i really can’t even guess how it’d progress after that.

The script is easy, so if i screw up something, i honestly apologize. Also, this is the first show i work on to have the lyrics for the opening and ending songs in the captions.

統計学A

October 11, 2011
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統計学はよく難しいといわれるが、俺一年の秋学期に確率統計というマジひどいほど難しい科目を取って、通って、それからもう統計学なんて怖くない。大濱先生の名前の字を覚えるよりは絶対楽だし。先生も言ったけど、統計学Aの方は入門の科目で、統計の基礎的な知識を得るための授業らしい。それでも勉強せずに通れるとは思えない。講義の方は１限だから起きて出るわけないけど、CSの方はちゃんと出て宿題やって勉強しるから大丈夫かな。一回目のCSはΣなどの記号の説明からやったんで、15回でさほど難しいことはやらないかな。講義はコア科目だから出席とらないし、１限はしんどくて出ないけど、CSのシラバス見ると結構勉強させられちゃうみたいで試験はそれで楽勝。であればいいけど。

国際経済論１

October 11, 2011
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外大の後専攻を決めたとき取りたかったのは外交か国際経済だったけど、どうかただの経済になった。別に構わないけど、今期国際経済論の授業を表に見たら絶対取って通ると思った。だけど…教室に行ったら教師は基礎ツールをやった大川で、やる気は一瞬でなくなった。難しいかの問題じゃなくて、基本的に授業に出ても寝るか何か読むだけで、つまらなさすぎる。一回目の授業は普通オリエンテーションとかそんなことやるけど、大川先生はちゃんと授業やった。あるいは、やるつもりだった。なんで大学の授業をいつも基本の基礎から始めなきゃならないかわからないけど、もう何回も基本的な数学の用語・記号からやるのはほんまに嫌だ（マクロCSも同じだけど）。後はおもしろい内容もあるかもしれない、そこまで耐えるかまた別だ。まっ、試験のことは心配ないけど。

産業政策論

October 11, 2011
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結局月３限はまた中野先生の授業取っちゃった。前期も産業組織論って科目取ったけど、勉強不足でおとした。今期はそんなつもりない。授業に出なきゃならないが、出て重要な数式ぐらいノート取ったら簡単に通れると思う。授業は何についてかちょっとわからないけど、だいたいミクロの範囲を越えないんでそれ通ったらなんとかなる。試験は持ち込み可だし、授業もそんなにきつくないし、退屈になったら読み物はいつも用意してある。

That feel

October 11, 2011
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That feel when you stay up late because you’ve to cap something off tv, end up late for class, but still manage to have that shave you so needed for a week, just had no chance to get it done. That feel when you go to the club meeting and in the matter of minutes the number of your bands grows from 1 to 3 (which means the number of songs boomed from 4 to 11). That feel when you get a good sleep after reading a few chapters of Gaiman’s American Gods, of course all this during a very exciting class. That feel when after classes you go to the clubroom and hang out for an hour doing pretty much nothing, and still feel that the time was well spent. That feel when you work out for an hour and run another half, and your body’s so tired you can hardly keep typing, but still when you arrive home the first thing is that you pick up your bass to play the Baseballs’ cover of Umbrella. That feel when you have a good dinner and a pack of Pocky, with coffee and orange juice. That feel when you just turned 22.