Anki

SAT is coming up for me and that means that I need to start expanding my vocabulary (and learn how to spell vocabulary...)! The method I'm taking right now is basically a beefed up version of the tried and trued method of flashcards: Anki.


So what is Anki? My take on this little software is flashcards with memory, the ability to increase the number of times hard words come up, and decrease the frequency easy words (for you) come up. In the developer's words:

Anki is a spaced repetition system (SRS). It helps you remember things by intelligently scheduling flashcards, so that you can learn a lot of information with the minimum amount of effort.

The algorithm by which the product operates is a thingy called Supermemo (sounds cool doesn't it?).

Still don't really get it? The site has a few videos demonstrating the usefulness and adaptability of the software. Another thing that entices me? That you can use Latex, put sounds in the cards, and edit the HTML code to your liking.

Crossing me fingers to hope that this is as good as it claims.

• Anki (Windows, Mac AND Linux)
  

-runiteking1

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Arch Linux on A Gateway

So codersarepeople gave me an old laptop to mess with and I've been messing with it by installing Linux.  It's a Gateway M350WVN with a 2.8 Pentium, 512MB memory, 60GB harddrive and Intel graphics driver (this laptop is faster than my desktop by quite a bit... :-/, but its got a bonk soundcard). Somehow, installing Linux was such a hassle.

I wanted to use Ubuntu first, to minimize the hassle I get from configuring Arch Linux but after I put in the disk and spin up. The output was something about not syncing... kernel panic. Okay then, so Arch it is. I installed Arch (so much easier) and tried to configure the wireless Broadcom card. Failure... So I just did a ethernet cable to do a full system upgrade to see if the newest kernel might have somthing in it. Failure in updating... there's was dependency hell on the kernel. I boot up Ubuntu again, this time with acpi=off, success. I installed Ubuntu, restarted and came upon a pretty Gnome desktop. I tried to access the internet through the WiFi again.... failure.

I got sick of Ubuntu so I installed Arch again, this time from a server as to get the most up-to-date stuff. IT WORKS! Then I started to google like crazy to find out how to configure my wireless card. Stupid me, I found out that the BCM4306 rev 2 needs the b43legacy driver, not the plain vanilla b43 that comes with the Arch installation. Now the wireless setup went extremely smooth, but I do want to say that you should install netcfg by now to configure the network.

Now for the demon they call Xorg. From retrospect, I should've copied the Xorg from Ubuntu's config but I didn't think of it. A quick Xorg -configure did the trick, but I found out later that its not good enough. The display was fuzzy and not awesome. After manually configuring the fonts a little bit, messing with the resolution, changing the default stuff etc. I got it to be nice and crisp. So all is well right? Wrong. Then I wanted to have Compiz-Fusion on the computer. Installing it was not hard... but after activating it, the window decorators all went away. I followed countless forums but nothing did the trick... until I come upon another person who had the exact same graphics card with a working Compiz install that uploaded his Xorg.conf file! A copy-paste and moments later... Compiz wonderland!

The rest of the stuff is easy... pacman -S this pacman -S that, maybe a few yaourt -S this, but its starting to turn into a working computer again... except for the fact that it can't play any music.

• Wireless card config  
• Xorg.conf 

I feel so stupid for not doing my homework before hand. 

EDIT: Screenshots

Software: Gnome, Gnome-Do with docky, Internet Explorer with Crossover, Firefox 3.5 beta, Mathematica 7

Non Busy one:

-runiteking1

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Lyx

I love Latex, but sometimes it is a giant pain in the butt to configure. Most of the time it is too tedious to use or takes too long to configure for the amount of time I have to write an essay... but it's SO good looking. Lyx solves that problem.

Lyx is the first WYSIWYM (What you see is what you mean) editor built on top of Latex (don't know what Latex is? You poor soul... go to Wikipedia and find out), meaning that whatever you type in will be processed through Latex. My interpretation of it is that it's a souped up Microsoft Word that uses Latex.

The first time you open up Lyx and use it, you'll probably think it's absolutely disgusting. Everything is just ugly, just look at the screenshot. Why in the world would I blog about this when it's so disgusting?

Because look at the output.... (the image is cropped)

Ahhh, so nice of them to use Latex.

It does take a while to get use to (meaning there's a learning curve), for example, to italize a word, you can't just use Ctrl-I (unless you configure the shortcuts). But there are excellent documentations built right into the software with examples and tutorials you can try.

Perfect software to use to impress your science/math (did I tell you that since Lyx uses Latex, its math typesetting is almost perfect?) teacher with your next typed report.

-runiteking1

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Long Time No Post...

So... it has been 10 days since I posted.

Through that time, I've been working on Arch Linux as Ubuntu was feeling a bit too easy.

It was a fun install.... the install process actually went pretty well. The installation is incredibly well documented and I had no problem at all. Also, the installation took what feels like 20 minutes, incredibly fast compared to the hour it took to install Ubuntu.

The major hold up on what I would deem a "quick" instal would be the fact that Xorg took forever to set up. Somehow, the auto installer just didn't recognize that my integrated Intel card needs an Intel driver, not the Vesa one. It took forever to edit the cursed Xorg.conf file to get it to work but it finally worked.

Instead of going to a typical DE like Gnome or KDE, I decided to go towards a minimal approach with Openbox. Installation was fast with Pacman and everything went perfectly. Now my desktop is quite snappy and pretty awesome looking...

I promise to post more....

Screenshot (Christmas stuff added for privacy):

-runiteking1

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Linux Experince: The Micro Kernel...

 Took a long enough break from blogging...

After I installed Ubuntu, I found out that:

1. I can't run Compiz though I could run it on Wubi... (strange)
2. Gnome is pretty slow compared to Windows.
   

One of my main reasons of switching to Linux is to gain more speed for my old computer and the last thing I need is another slow down of my already low spec computer (2.7 Celeron, 512MB DDR, Intel Intergrated). Thus I begun the quest for a slimmed down system.

The first thing that I went to was Xfce as I used Xubuntu before and knew it was pretty good. After a quick sudo apt-get, I was up and runnig (I love how you dont' have to restart after installing in Linux). Browsing for a big on the net, I realized that, it was not so snappy as I expected.

Next up on the list was Enlightenment. Now, this one took me FOREVER to set up as all the forums were of pretty old versions of Ubuntu. I finally got it set up (not really sure how anymore, I think I used the CVS one), and when I logged on, I felt... naked? Didn't like it at all.

IceWM was next and took around the same times as Xfce to set up. The default theme of IceWM sucks but PsychoCats has a pretty good tutorial for gettign it up and running. After tweaking with it for some hour or two, I got bored and started to look other stuff up to optimize this box.

Somehow, a lot of the tips overlap (awriteback, profile, swappiness, change wm...) but then I saw a post where it said something about a light system. I started to uninstall everything. On the next bootup, I dropped to root and went into aptitude. Here's my progression throughout the deletion:

"I should be careful... hey look, bluetooth, I don't use bluetooth..." remove
"Ehh.... I don't think this is important..." autoremove
"Documentation? BAhh, who needs documentation?" purges whole documentation folder
"Screw this" delete everything

I was thinking that it would preserve the core stuff for bootup and internet connection as it poped up something saying "Warning, this is critical to the system blah blah blah" and asked to put in a sentence for it to delete. But afterwards, it wasn't there even though I didn't put anything in....after 2 minutes, I was left with a dead penguin.

Reinstallation ensued and succeed and this time, I was more careful. I first used IceWM to replace Metacity but didn't like it so I used Xfwm4. Got the thing to go pretty fast. Next took a few boot ups do a few tweaks:

1. Profile my boot (the time increase was amazing)
2. Ran an Gnome optimization tool for the XML (not much increase but... something is something)
3. Ran a e2fsck on file system

Somehow, a combination of those two made the system super snappy. Then begun my quest (excuse my overuse of quest, playing Zelda Twilight Princess here...) for a cool desktop. I immediately went to Lifehacker to get the Conky set up. Success...the embedded terminal? no success :(

Now I'm trying to get AWN up and running... here's my desktop so far... (notice the transparency :D ):

-runiteking1

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More Linux Experince

Here's my desktop so far.... I think it's pretty cool (but most of its just slight configs out of other's....):

And I'm also seeing if I like the IceWM and ROX combo...

More stories to come later....

-runiteking1

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Ubuntu

Well, I for the best some week, I've been working on installing Ubuntu on my PC, and here is my story.

On the first whack on the installation, the partitioning gone berserk and would not continue at all. Next thing I know, I've spent some 2 hours trying to find a solution to this problem before realizing that I should really defrag my disk. Somehow, I played around with the file system long enough since a week before the installation to really mess up the fragmentation on the disk.

So, the second time I popped in the disk the installation actually worked. I rebooted and came upon.... a blank screen saying error with xserver and a close button. Clicking on the close button did not help at all as I can't do anything after that, even Ctrl-Alt-F 1-6. Frustration ensued. Taking a look at the forums, not much help came up as most of the problems apparently happened during an upgrade not a clean install. Seeing that fixing this is futile, I tried installtion again.

The third time I popped in the live CD, I crossed my finger and hoped for the best. I first did a mem and a disk check, both came out great. The installtion proceeded without errors. This time when I restarted... nothing happened. It just showed a blank screen... I sort of just panicked a bit and went out looking for a solution. Maybe I just asked all the wrong questions but couldn't find an answer.

Fast forward a day later, I finally stumble upon a site saying that I should try and disable compiz fusion first if my GNOME isn't working. Taking that into advice:

sudo apt-get remove compiz
sudo apt-get remove compiz-core

 Solved...

Now, I get to see the lovely coffee stain desktop picture...

After two or three days of messing with it, I realized that my /home partition was not standing up to Firefox . I needed to repartition again. But I didn't want to waste another CD getting GParted, so I once again used the Live CD. Now I realized that the Live CD also can't display on my computer due to Compiz. A little messing around solved that problem and after 1 hour, finally enlarged my /home by a gigabyte.

Success.

I take it back. Two days later, I had problems running Eclipse. Couldn't even do a simple Scanner object, then a bit of research showed that I shouldn't use the built in java code. More research showed that I should install java from sun... only if I found that earlier without a 1 hour research. That taken care off, I was trying to installing dropbox, that still isn't working. It won't actually make a connection with the server and I don't have my files...*sigh* I thought "Hey! I can use that FAT32 partition of mine to create like an intermediary between the XP's dropbox and the Ubuntu's." Took me a while to mount the FAT32 as fstab was not edited...

Problems still occuring?

1. Hibernation not working as good
2. Shut downs are... at best inconsistent
3. Suspends are not working
4. 20% CPU usage when idle? (or maybe its just the monitoring app..?)
   
5. Inability to use Compiz even though a Wubi installation allowed me too.
6. Problems with my DVD player (probably hardware though)
   

This was not intended as a Ubuntu bash though... the best part is the problem solving. 

-runiteking1

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Hate Micorsoft? Switch to these apps on the web

Most of these apps on the internet are pretty well developed but I prefer to use the desktop based once.

• Internet based - http://mashable.com/2007/06/22/no-download-required/
• Desktop - http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/top-10-microsoft-alternatives.html