tkh’s blog

Qt Designer and OpenGL

I designed a GUI for an OpenGL application using Qt Designer, and encountered some glitches. First, you have to subclass QGLWidget class, say MyGLWidget, and put OpenGL stuff there. Then open Qt Designer and place a some container widget in a window as a place folder for MyGLWidget. You should use QWidget because QGLWidget inherits directly from it. However, QWidget is not available in Qt Designer. So you are forced to use QFrame as a place folder and promote it to a custom widget class and specify MyGLWidget. Now save the GUI layout to a .ui file, and hand edit it and delete the lines which declares some of QFrame properties. You also need to rename QFrame in the custom widget section to QWidget. Now you should be able to compile your code.

Actually I found a ML thread about this and a Trolltech engineer said that they would add QWidget in Qt Designer. Apparently it’s not fixed yet. I really want the fix!

Swimming

After two years of break, I finally started going swimming again. A part of reasons I started again is that my LDL, a bad cholesterol, was over the optimal range when I took physical exam back in July. Since then I’ve been decreasing consumption of saturated fat, but obviously exercise is much better than diet. I try not to push my limit to swimming distance. I hope this strategy would work and swimming would be my life-long habit.

Got Tiger

I received Tiger last Friday and installed it on my G3 iBook. It’s definitely faster than Panther. It’s surprising that Apple still can optimize the operating system even for aging G3 machines. Most noticeable speed up can be seen in Safari and Terminal. New features rock, too.

Audition

Yesterday, I was asked if I could do an extra for a movie. The directors want to have handful of Japanese of age between 26-30 to act as Japanese businessmen. I thought it would be interesting to have experience in a different world, so I went to a studio in the town for the audition. When I arrived at the studio, there were already many people who looked like extras. I told the manager my name and phone number, and she asked me to fill out the forms. In one of paper, it specifically mentions that they will hire me as an employee. Bummer! I can’t work off campus without getting permission from INS. So I had to gave up. I may have missed a really good opportunity, but that’s life. BTW, the title of the movie is “Border Town” and one of the main cast is Jennifer Lopez.

Star Wars

I’ve heard from people that the Episode 3 is much better than the previous two new installments. I still haven’t seen it, but I’ll see it sometime in next week.

Form 1042S

I went to the payroll office and asked them to give me the form, but it turned out that I don’t need it as long as I write specifically about the US-Japan tax treaty article on page five of the form 1040NR. To receive 1042S, I had to sign up for tax treaty at the payroll office and fill out required information at the website they use. Usually I am notified in December or January by email to login to the website and enter information, but I haven’t been notified in this year. I have no idea what went wrong, but it’s not a big deal since I can claim tax exemption without attaching 1042S. This kind of things are really rare in Japan, but they do happen in the US. Now I’ve sealed the envelope for 1040NR and ready to send it to IRS. I also filed the state tax return via Internet.

BTW, you can file the form 1040 via Internet using one of various free Internet filing systems listed on the IRS website, but I’ve never seen a system supports 1040NR. Until I become resident as tax purpose, I have to enter PDF forms, print them, and send them to IRS.

Tax

I filled out the tax forms for 2004, and I noticed that I haven’t received from the university the form 1042S which can be used to exempt $2000 from the income by the US-Japan tax treaty. I need go to the bursar’s office to discuss this and get the form.

Back from Berkeley

I came back from Berkeley on Thursday evening. The visit to LBL was really valuable to me, and it is so beautiful in the bay area. We even crossed the bay bridge to San Francisco three times during this trip.

Came back

I came back to our apartment in NM around 8:30pm. I arrived at Albuquerque Airport almost on-time, but my checked-in bag didn’t. There were about 10 people having the same situation at the baggage claim area, and we all were told that the baggages will arrive at the airport with the flight at 9:30pm. Fortunately, I got a phone call from American Airline at 11:30pm and they delivered my bag to our apartment. Seems like AA just failed to move the baggages from international flights to the connecting flight. It’s far better than mis-routing of baggages.

Curry Buffet

We went to Taj Mahal (an Indian restaurant) for lunch buffet. I ate chicken curry, beans curry, spinach curry, and tandoori chicken. They were really tasty.