Sheep without Muzzle

Yarrr, mateys!

We be the softwarrre pirrrates!

gvocab has a new home at google code. There is also a link at gnome files.

Here is the second release of gvocab, the vocabulary builder. New features:

• gvocab remembers session state after closing
• mistakes are crossed out, hints are bold
• faster start up time with a progress bar for reading the words xml file

Click to view the screenshot:

It turned out that gconf recommends to not store anything except properties in the gconf database. gvocab stores session state in ~/.gnome2/gvocab/session.xml, similar to gedit, which stores its own session information in ~/.gnome2/gedit/sessions/gedit-*.

For the next release, I am planning improvement to the teaching algorithm. I think a word should not be marked as learned the first time the user guessed its meaning right. Repetition is essential to learning.

Here is a GTK vocabulary builder with 5k+ words. Key advantage: it will not get off your back until you have learned every single word.

In the next release I want to use gconf to remember the learning progress.

Gutsy

Upgraded to Gutsy Gibbon on my Medion MD2900. I like that it boots faster and has newer software, especially the new Appearance Preferences. However, the fonts became tiny for some reason. I had to switch from 10pt to 12pt everywhere. Too bad that my 4+ years old laptop keeps sporadically committing suicide via overheating in idle. Can’t wait to get a new one.

Feel good feature of the day

Recently noticed an awesome but sparsely known feature in Deskbar. I can search for a word in my clipboard if the following option is selected:

Now I can browse through NYT or WP, select the word viscerally, press Alt-F3, and select Dictionary. Sweet.

Found a bug in gtk-doc and solved it

I started posting links to the books I recently enjoyed reading. Each link has a short description of how I came across the book and what I thought of it. I got the idea from Kyle.

Monitors eat up lots of power. To save it, tell the monitor to shut off after one minute of inactivity by

1. Adding this line to Section “Monitor” in xorg.conf:

           Option "DPMS" "True"

2. Adding this section to xorg.conf:

   Section "ServerFlags"
           Option "OffTime" "1"     # turn off after 1 minute
   EndSection

If you are watching a long movie, disable power management using:

$ xset -dpms

Then enable power management again when you’re done, use:

$ xset dpms 0 0 60

Fore more information, see the manpages:

$ man xorg.conf
$ man xset

Visit Powertop for useful tips on saving power.

According to World Religions, a Historical Approach, the political ascendancy of a new middle class of farmers and merchants in China happened in the VIII century BCE (p.104). Take that, West!

The same book states that the Chinese government officials applied the Taoist principles of nonaction in as early as the III century BCE (p.113). Did you think Adam Smith invented laissez-faire?

The author is probably bias, but I can understand it. Taoism is an appealing philosophical system.

I am giving back to the society by helping the Powertop project, which aims to reduce the power consumption of Linux on Intel. As part of the effort, I needed to cast away the already elderly 2.6.20 kernel that comes with Feisty. Thus I came face to face with the beast called git. To my pleasant surprise, the beast did not bite. It obediently filled up my hard disk with hundreds of megabytes of the fresh Linux source. The simplicity of its language manifests the beauty that we all cherish in Linux:
$ git-clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git linux-2.6