tkh’s blog

iBook

I got a new keyboard and rubber sheets from Apple and installed them. It’s refreshing to have a new keyboard even though I’ve been using my iBook for one and a half years.

bash 3.0

bash 3.0 has been released. There are lots of new features, but I like the brace expansion which expands {x..y} to x, x+1, x+2, …, y. When you work on a sequence of images or some data files, it’s very handy. I used to do this expansion by C-like for statement which requires the start and the terminate conditions, but now it’s so easy.

lookup.el

I’ve been using lookup.el in emacs to look up words that I don’t know or is difficult to translate. You need to have a dictionary that can be accessed by ndtpd, a network dictionary server, but it’s worth paying for few hundred dollars. I own Kenkyu-sha’s Reader’s Plus which contains half a million words, and Eijiro which contains over a million words. I’ve been translating a book into Japanese, and it has been so productive since the introduction of lookup.el.

Look at the screenshot of an emacs session. After you launch lookup.el with M-x lookup, you can lookup words in any buffer with C-x C-l. Also it
automatically find a verb root from plural or past form.

Tech Support

I called Apple again to fix my keyboard and the missing rubber sheet at the bottom of iBook. The tech support guy was nice, but I had to pay $8.28 for rubber sheets. It includes four screws and rubber sheets, so it would be enough for the entire life of iBook. Keyboard was free for sure since my iBook is warranteed with AppleCare Protection Plan. The extended warranty for laptops always pays off. I learned this from my previous experience with a Dell laptop. I’ll write about it sometime.

JibJab

I watched a really funny flash animation called This Land today.

Kernel Upgrade

Yesterday, I noticed that 2.6.7 had been uploaded to debian sarge, so I downloaded it, compiled it, and rebooted the machine. I was able to login with ssh, but there was no tty* device files under /dev. I checked the configuration of udev and found that there were devfs compatible rules files under /etc/udev/rules.d. They are supposed to make devfs-compatible device files under udev environment, but in my installation, tty* were not created. If you add compat-full.rules, probably you will get a working system, but I didn’t try it becase I don’t like the devfs naming scheme. So I removed the symlinks to devfs rules and made a symlink to /etc/udev/udev.rules. After rebooting the machine, finally I got a stable environment.

Spatial Nautilus

I must confess that I like the new Nautilus introduced in Gnome 2.6. It’s so easy to organize files and directories. As I said before, spatial Nautilus is not suitable for file browsing, but there is an option for Nautilus that enables you to run in browsing mode. With this option, I can still browse files with one window. There is a gnome icon to launch Nautilus in this mode. I love new Nautilus.