02.22.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:57 pm by Administrator
I found some good resources here and here. The only problem I’m still having is that for some reason when I set the THINKPAD button to run /usr/bin/gnome-terminal, I get two new consoles when I only really want one.
I also installed ndiswrapper and drivers for my wpc54gs wireless card. That was easy, but for a while I didn’t know I had to do “ndiswrapper -m” to get it to load at boot time.
Some more cool stuff that I fould. VLC video player is awesome and it looks decent, too if you use the skins. I much prefer it to kaffiene and totem, especially kaffiene. Also, even though you can’t get quicktime or such things with linux, if you use the Media Player Connectivity plugin for firefox, you can easily open embedded video in whatever player you want. Also, network-manager is nice and easy, as long as you remember to add nm-applet to the startup session.
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02.01.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:59 pm by Administrator
I for one, think object databases are promising. I’m currently taking a databases course and even though we won’t be studying object data databases at all, I think they’re fascinating. I do think there are some major problems, especially with what seem to be the most common implementations. Object databases need to be simply persistent objects, as the most simple specification define them. Imagine all the efficiency and storage of a database, but with the ability to interact in a standard object-oriented programming language. I know it’s hyped and there are many problems and increased costs, but ultimately, efficiency isn’t going to be as important as programming time and ease of interfacing. If implemented smartly it could also vastly improve prefetching by prefetching all objects linked to by an object currently in use. I really don’t know all that much about low level implementation of object databases and how it differs from relational databases, but it seems that there are possibilities for major advantages over traditional databases. One particular interesting project is Ozone .
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:38 pm by Administrator
So, that was a long time without me writing anything. It’s all Laura’s fault. She gave me a diary thing with pictures of all our friends from last summer that I wrote in most of the time. Anyhow, Laura came, we had an incredible time. We went to Eger, Budapest, Vienna, Salzburg, and Prague. It was pretty much amazing everywhere, from the old plump woman walking around outside in her underwear asking about “your lady” (Laura) to Prague all covered in snow. As I mentioned, Eger was fabulous, we went to the wine cellars, walked around in the park, took a walking tour of the castle. Had the trout that my dad fell in love with. Just had a great time. We got back to Budapest in time for the end of program party ordeal. It was really nice, getting together and having fun one last time. I’m really going to miss everyone a lot, the hungarians and fellow americans. It was just a swell time. Then, we were off to Vienna, also fabulous, where we saw the Hofburg and the treasury and everything amazing and golden in the world, went to Figaro at the state opera house, and went to some christmas markets. The church place was amazing but really creepy, too many skeletons for my taste. Then off to Salzburg, for what was supposed to be an afternoon but due to complications with the dang train we spent the night there. That was a beautiful city. For about the last hour of the train ride I would poke laura every five minutes and point outside and say MOUNTAINS!! I miss mountains. They’re pretty. The next day, we took off for prague. It snowed a lot!! So much, in fact, that a tree fell on the train tracks and delayed us for about 3-4 hours. NOT COOL! But, that meant that in the end, when we got to prague, everything was covered in snow, which was, in a word, breathtaking. It was absolutely amazing! The city is incredible anyway, old, historic, well-preserved, charming (minus the disgusting touristy crap), etc. But covered in snow it was something else, some kind of magical winter wonderland. Eventually we had to leave and go back to Budapest, where laura got to meet gyuri and mano, who are absolutely Awesome, as well as the mcgraths, who have got to be the best people in the world. It was fun being back in Budapest, too. We went to Szechenyi (we went to Rudas earlier), went to the terror museum, went to the opera, just had a nice last few days. In the end, we went home, and I got to be warm for about a week, in Florida, which was pretty sweet. Anyhow, now I’m back at carleton and life feels pretty much normal again. My semester abroad was fabulous and wonderful and I’m incredibly glad I did it, but it’s so good to be back home. Coming back to carleton and spending time with my friends, after about 15 minutes I forgot I’d even left. I just love carleton. Budapest and Hungary and Hungarians are wonderful, though. I definitely plan on returning and I’d highly reccommend it as a slightly more adventurous travel destination.
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