Tag: geek

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August 19, 2009
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The weekend was about fixing my laptop and the home desktop computer. We’re talking about Windows, so one could guess how much pure fun that was. I finished the laptop in one evening, though there were some complications. First, i couldn’t yet get the scrollbar on the touchpad to work, but i guess if i find the right driver, that’ll be fixed. The other is more problematic, as the video card is an “old” ATi X700, and the drivers simply don’t install for it anymore. Thus i couldn’t get even the 3d-using Chronflow foobar2000 plugin to work… Sucks on high heels. And i had to play a lot with the desktop one. That’s a bit older, about six or seven years of age now, so it’s damn slow anyway. The normal installations (drivers, browser, mail client, office) was without problems. That arose with the security. On my laptop i have the Comodo Internet Security (CIS) thing with built-in everything, which is just fine for how i use my machine. On the desktop i had the eTrust antivirus and the Comodo firewall before the reinstall, but the eTrust became simply useless, as no updates were provided anymore (even though i bought the software). Thus i tried to install the CIS there as well, but the installer didn’t start, literally. The process started, and started to consume huge amounts of memory (starting from 60 megs, climbing as high as 180, sometimes dropping back to 10-15, but then going up again) without anything appearing (no dialog, no error, nothing). So i rather got the Avira antivirus and Online-Armor firewall for the desktop. Both are free, and although i had to play quite a while with the firewall to let the ICS (connection sharing) work normally, it’s now fine. And i hope it’ll stay like that…

Markup

July 22, 2009
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I’ve been reading A List Apart since i woke up (two hours now, whoa) and started wondering again how a proper website should work. The three main fields: valid markup of the data, accessibility of the data and a nice design. Except for accessibility (which is a pain for me, because i’m not familiar with it) these are not too much trouble–at least in themselves. But they need to be put together…

Techniques worth considering: (at first) SVG, MathML, CSS @font-face. SVG is strange for me, because it’s XML markup of an image. Wikipedia has a couple of SVG pics, but i don’t really like them. The reason is simple: it takes ages to render a world map from SVG. On the one hand then, it’s small, because it’s just text, but on the other hand, it’s huge, because it burdens the user’s computer. Not to mention marking it up by hand seems to be troublesome (GIMP can’t save to SVG apparently, at least i couldn’t find it at first blick), and i can do well with PNG’s and JPG’s so far. For MathML: Firefox renders it correctly (been lazy to check on other browsers), so the only thing i’d leave it out is that i don’t need it. @font-face is very useful, for i could include my own fonts into the page with it, it seems to be supported (who cares about IE6 anymore), there’s only one issue with it: speed. I don’t mean rendering, that’s not a problem i think, but download. Since my pages are in multiple scripts, i need UTF8. And a more or less complete Unicode font is around 15 megs (just for japanese consider the roughly 3000 characters…) which takes time to download, even with a very fast connection. May be a short time, but it’s still annoying. The solution could be a flash-like “loading” animation with JavaScript, but this is still subject of consideration for now.

Furthermore, i’m considering doing the blog output in XML-XSLT-XHTML, since i’m (once again) reconsidering the working of the engine, as i think i finally grasped how i should work with OOP properly.

Elromlott

July 2, 2009
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Egyrészt, úgy tűnik most mosogatáskor egy kicsit túl nedves lett ott a konyha, mert a tűzhely megint lecsapja a biztosítékot — mint kitaláltam, nyilván mert beázott. Sebaj. A földszinti konyhában összeütöttem egy tiramisut. Legalábbis annak volt szánva, de nem igazán jött össze. Nagyon híg lett a krémje, az egész kifolyt. Az íze mondjuk nagyrészt stimmel, de így akkor se az igazi.

Ebéd is vicces volt, mert disznajt sütöttem, legalábbis egy darabját, jó lett. A szelet egyik oldalát paprikával, a másikat borssal szórtam meg, olíván kezdtem sütni majd ráütöttem egy tojást öntöttem rá paradicsomszószt. Na ez utóbbi volt a vicces. Ugyanis miután belelocsoltam egy jó adagot vettem észre, hogy egy jókora telep (Zöldfa úthoz mérhető károsanyag tartalommal és a névhez illő színnel) penész vigyorgott vissza rám az üveg szájából. Úgyhogy inkább sokáig főztem, de nem lett semmi baja.

Meg a tiramisu miatt a kedvem is. Nagy morcosan elrágtam az utolsó szál régi répát a hűtőből, hogy legalább azzal ne legyen baj. És hogy betetőzze a dolgot, házit is kell még írnom, plusz a Firefox megint kitalálta, hogy az “ő” és “ű” betűket csakis és kizárólag duplán hajlandó szövegmezőbe beírni. Vagyis: “őz” = “ő + backspace + z”. Vicces. De legalább ezt a program újraindítása megoldja. Ellentétben az internettel, ami csak úgy ismét nem működik (“mű + backspace + ködik”), úgyhogy szerencsém lesz, ha el tudom küldeni ezt a bejegyzést.

Nem akar összejönni

March 17, 2009
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Én tudok valamit. Nagyon ritkán sikerül valamit nem elszúrnom, nem elfelejtenem és társaik. Most például nagy svunggal elindultam az esti busszal, ahelyett, hogy holnap jöttem volna egy délelőttivel – egy kicsit nem kicsit nyugodtabban. Most elég rohanós lett, mert délután az otthoni asztali gépre Windowst telepítettem (és büszke vagyok magamra, hogy nincs egy darab illegális program se rajta), és ez okozott némi nehézséget. Egy körül nekiálltam (addig egy duplarétegű dévédére (hogy meglepődtem, hogy tényleg viszi a laptop írója!) írtam ki animéket és hasonlókat), és hamarosan jött az első meglepetés. A telepítő partícionálójával legyalultam a régi maradvány Ubuntus partíciókat és a Win rendszerpartícióját, az üres helyre direkt lassú formázással pedig ment az új Win – na a gond ott jött, hogy az újraindítás után közölte, hogy lemezhiba, és ő nem hajlandó elindulni. Hurrá. Ráadásul még a cd meghajtó is vacakolt, és csak ötödjére volt hajlandó onnan bootolni. Végül úgy sikerült csak működésre bírni, hogy ami eddig master vinyó volt, átkötöttem slave-re és fordítva (röviden: csere). Aztán már ment minden rendesen, szerencséjére… De normálisan mindent befejezni nem volt időm a hatnegyvenes buszig, úgyhogy édesanyámra maradt az Office és a Skype, kíváncsi vagyok, boldogul-e majd vele…

Ráadásképp pont mielőtt felszálltam volna a buszra észrevettem, hogy a telefonom nincs nálam, és amikor egy mellettem álldogáló volt osztálytárs megcsörgette, kiderült, hogy ki van kapcsolva (legalábbis nem elérhető). Remélem csak, hogy otthon vagy a kocsiban kiesett a zsebemből és elmozdult a simkártya (le nem merült, az fix), nem pedig a parasztelosztóban lopták ki a zsebemből… Plusz még a fogkefémet is otthon hagytam, azt vennem kell.

News?

March 15, 2009
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Now there’s no backing off… not so long ago i got the mail from the embassy informing me that my plane will set off at 9:55 AM on the first of April, to Tokyo Narita via Frankfurt. I think this will be about the same length flight as when we went to Chicago, twelve hours in the air altogether, with a two hour ground time in Frankfurt. I still have loads of stuff to do until then. The last of which is checking out of the dorm, so that someone else could take my place. The most important of which is to say goodbye to important people i probably won’t see for a very long time. The most challenging of which is to learn how to wash my stuff and learn to cook basic stuff (i don’t want to live on instant soups and such for five years)—oh and to finish as much of my webdev projects in the coming two weeks as possible. Since i won’t be attending much university classes (i think at most two a week) i’ll have time for them, the thing is i’ve to learn to divide up my time right, something i couldn’t yet accomplish.

My “new” laptop will have to undergo a total reinstall before my departure. I hope i’ll be able to get everything working all right. Today i took the time, searched and found a utility to light the “new email” led. There was one provided on the official site, but it’s no use and also about six years old without updates, while this one is just two years and i think contacting a private developer is much easier than getting in touch with Asus, in case there were problems with it (which i doubt). It’s fun to see the blue light flashing whenever i get new mail.

Winamp vs foobar2000

January 12, 2009
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Lately i’ve been using foobar2000. Don’t ask me why—there’s no particular reason. When i was using Winamp back for years, i was perfectly fine with that too. And so i am now. There are a few features in both that i’d miss. For example, foobar has very clever tools for tagging and renaming masses of music, which came pretty handy when i reorganised my library in the winter break. Foobar can also ping last.fm without needing any plugin or such, while i’d need to install something to do that with Winamp. But Winamp can instantly burn music cds, with it i can put music on my mp3 player, and a lot more than else ways, because i can make it transcode them if the quality’s too high—since i mostly use that gadget when i’m outside, there’s no need for extreme high quality, but file size does matter (it’s an 1 gig Creative MuVo, in case you haven’t read me back in summer 2007). Also, i have a totally legal pro licence for Winamp.

Why do i still use foobar then? No reason (maybe the last.fm thing being the only point). I think i’ll use them what they’re fit to. I’ll categorise, organise and manage my collection mostly with foobar, while exporting will remain Winamp’s job. For playback i’ll use whichever i first start. It doesn’t matter. For opening any kind of media file (audio and video) i still have VLC as default, because it’s dead annoying when accidentally opening a file resets my carefully built playlist (sadly foobar doesn’t open a new playlist for that—in Winamp that’s not even a question, as there can’t be more than one playlist open at a time).

Oh God…

January 9, 2009
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My Windows died, out of nowhere. It’s not letting me log in. I enter the pass, then wait… and wait… and then reset and decide to try what i wanted under linux. Ubuntu says it couldn’t mount my drives, because the logs show that it’s in use, indicating unclean Windows shutdown. Sure it was unclean, but not that much that all (not just the system) ntfs drives would be locked. Force mount them, they work fine, no trouble. I can’t see anything wrong with the system drive either–last time i had such a problem, i accidentally created (due to a typo) a directory named “Documents And Settings” (capital A), which confused Win. But now there’s no such. At least, not apparent.

What might be important: before shutting down the last (then working) session of Windows, i wanted to run an AdAware scan, but it crashed. I wanted to check if i had a virus but it’s not that easy installing an antivirus program with the most recent database under Ubuntu–with direct net access it would be, but my laptop couldn’t connect, because Ubuntu can’t handle my wireless network card. I’m right now trying to update the ClamAV database, and then run the scan on my drives. Maybe. (Though it shouldn’t find anything: after downloading something i always make eTrust AV scan it–and that thing won most of the antivirus tests i’ve read.)

Edit 17:40

It turned out that the AdAware service couldn’t start, and that made the logon hang. Logged on onto the command line safe mode, and managed to figure out what the problem was, so at logging on normally i could evade it using alt-tab, then uninstall the whole thing. It works fine.

Annoyed

January 6, 2009
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I’m a bit annoyed right now. Yesterday i got fed up with that under Ubuntu all sounds on the output were noisy and quiet (the built-in speakers of the laptop sounded all right, but i hardly ever use those). I looked at the Ubuntu forums, and found a post asking about this very same problem. They sent that guy over to a page where the first link was a guide on how to install open sound (OSS) instead of ALSA. And i fool followed. First, installing OSS wasn’t simple. Included downloading loads of stuff and running home-made shell scripts i didn’t even know doing what. Before that Ubuntu produced noisy and quiet sound. Since then, none. So i wanted to revert back to ALSA–at least that worked somewhat. Unsuccessful. I tried reverting the steps of the OSS install, i tried following a guide on how to reinstall it, and tried running a supposedly installer script–but all failed. Then i wanted to reinstall Ubuntu as a whole. That would surely solve it. But i only had a 8.04 CD at hand, and that Hardy doesn’t recognise even my wired network card (or it does, but the main thing is that no networking works) (Asus A6M-Q035 laptop), so no updates, no use. Back under Windows i downloaded the 8.10 CD and burnt it, but it won’t boot. At all. I’m reburning it right now (i always use rw discs, and they worked fine, so i will use them later too).

All that was in vain, by the way. The problem was that the volume of my “CD drive” (in the mixer or volume control it goes by “CD”) was set too high (who would’ve thought that could make the normal sound output that noisy?). I muted it, and no noise. I hope i could get it working again.

Naturally the Total Commander CD/DVD burner plugin decides not to work properly only when i’m in a hurry. When else? This is not my day. (I hope tomorrow will be, with my linear algebra exam.)

Edit 16:30

And to further my happiness, the otherwise over-10M net in the dorm is for some reason under 1M, so downloading the alternative Ubuntu image takes about five hours (normally about ten minutes). I am overjoyed.

Ubuntu

December 5, 2008
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That’s a nice word in some african languages, i think zulu, maybe? It’s a nice idea, anyway about the universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity (now i’m quoting the Wiktionary page of the word). Anyway, i’m not going into linguistics now, rather into the open source community. I’ve installed Ubuntu, and it works fine and well. Tomorrow will be its grand test when at home i’ll try out if that proprietary driver for my wireless card it installed works as it should. I hope it does. I already managed to share the Pidgin and Firefox profiles between Windows and Ubuntu, though making my heart stop for a few minutes. The Pidgin one wasn’t as simple as with Firefox, i had to add a parameter to the shortcut so that it’d launch with the profile files loaded from the Windows version’s folder (mounted under linux too). But i accidentally typed the “and” in “Documents and Settings” with a capital A—and because of that my Windows profile wouldn’t launch and that scared the deep burning hell out of me. But i figured out what the problem was (it was strange there were two “Documents and Settings” folders, and then i just had to find out which one was the original), so it should work all right now (since then i haven’t launched Win, but i hope it’ll work as it should).

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Controversy

October 18, 2008
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In the morning whenever i have time i read the news feeds my reader collected for me, and one of these is Ars Technica. I don’t want to go deep into advertising them, so i just link the article i read now. The title says it all: “LittleBigPlanet delayed over Qur’an quotes in soundtrack”. Now i guessed that this is some kind of american insanity that the holy book of islam shouldn’t be quoted at all, or else the game would be supporting some fanatic terrorist groups. The strange thing is that it’s right the opposite: islamic people requested the removal of that track from the game, because for them using the words of their holy book as lyrics or accompanying them with music is something offending. I can see the point why, but what’s rather strange is that the Slashdot article about the same matter doesn’t take the trouble to clear that, and you can see that those commenting don’t get the idea either. And some of who do feel offended, because the quotes could offend the religious beliefs of some. That’s the country of tolerance and equality for you.