Preparing a math presentation with Zoho

I had to give a presentation yesterday. A math one. Filled with dirty little symbols, expressions, equations and geometrical figures.

I had done that quite a few times already, but this time, I wanted to try to make slides and see what tools are available out there.

I'm pretty sure there is a proper LaTeX template, but I wanted something more modern and colorful. I was thinking Google Docs, but they don't support any kind of math. There is however a better tool, Zoho, that does. Insert a whole paragraph of praising Zoho here.

Using LaTeX in Zoho is fast and easy: you click on "insert equation" and a little LaTeX editor shows up. Once your equation is ready, an image is inserted in your document. Image, but you can always right-click on it and edit it. All I can wish for is that those images were rendered a little faster.

Okay, I've been a little manipulative here. LaTeX works great, but only in Zoho Writer (the "Word") and not in Zoho Show, the presentation tool. At least officially. I did, however, manage to make a math presentation, not without issues, but I easily found workarounds:

• First, prepare your whole presentation in Writer. You won't be able to edit much in Show.
• To make a slide with math, pick a text slide. Put some text you might remove later, then paste your text with math. If it looks good, better not touch.
• Do not use bullet lists, they don't work. Your text gets parsed and the equations disappear.
• Sometimes a bug occurs: a slide stays on the screen and seems to overwrite all the others. Close the presentation and reopen it, it should work then.

I'd love to see LaTeX supported in Zoho Show soon, but still, I managed to prepare my presentation, so insert another paragraph of praising Zoho here.

Here's the result (in Polish):

First day of work

The title of the post is misleading: today is my second day of work. But I was so busy on the first one that I didn't get to tell my fascinating adventures.

I had to get there after 11p.m., so I decided to learn a bit of C#. I printed made Brother print for me the advanced chapters of "C# Programming" on Wikibooks - cool and useful. That page lead me to a tutorial entitled "learning C# in 5 minutes" which I tried in the 5 minutes before going out, but I don't really feel like that made me learn C#.

And the I went to the real work. Finally. And spent the whole day preparing my workstation, whcih means mostly installing Windows XP. That went not too bad, reinstalling my systems in March was a good idea as I knew pretty well everything I had to do.

Well, and that was all on my first day. Today I installed Office and I'm gonna discuss with the boss wich project I will join and therefore what developement environment to set up.

You know you're a geek when...

Well, you know you're a geek when it's written all over your blog, but besides that, there are many situations in life that prove you geek. I just had one again.

Boyfriend got an MacBook today and as I'm writing this, he's figuring everything out about this new computer. So I told him:

You know what I'd start with? I'd browse Lifehacker.com, they've got plenty of tips and software suggestions for Macs.

He liked my advice. So did I. A second later, I was browsing http://lifehacker.com/search/mac/ myself. There's a lot of cool stuff there, including:

• Mac security basics

  If you're worried about the new Mac-targeting worm, or Mac security in general, Mac Geekery has a nice introduction for you.

• Get things done on your Mac

  Journalist Giles Turnbull publishes a plain English primer of methods, tools and resources for Mac users to organize their workflow and get stuff done.

• 10 things for new Mac owners

  If you've got a new Mac and are looking for ways to get the most from it, Paul Stamatiou has a great post for you.

• The best twenty Mac apps you've never heard of
• Speed up your Mac While we all wait for Leopard to get released, here are 52 Ways to Speed Up OS X.

I quickly found myself thinking:

Hey, it would be so cool to have a MacBook right know and discover a new OS and its possibilities and the tricks and the software and everything...

You know you're a geek when you feel a sudden desire of acquiring a new computer, not because of its parameters, not because of the marketing, but for the thrill of software discovery.

We're setting a Guinness World Record!

Let's set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours!

All there is to do is to sign-up and then download Firefox 3 on Download Day.



I hope I'll see you all there! Spread the word!

Off my wishlist: Amy Studt's "My Paper Made Men"

I finally managed to get Amy Studt's new album "My Paper Made Men" I mentionned a few days ago. Man, was that a journey!

iTunes didn't let me buy because I'm from Poland. HMV (link works in IE only, sorry) didn't validate my card. No Polish mp3 store had the album, as it has only been released in the UK. 7digital was tricky because the album didn't appear on Amy's page, so I went there quite a few times, throught it wasn't avaliable and closed the page before finding it. But I finally did, paid with PayPal, and got wma files. While I was there, I also downloaded four b-sides.

The wma files turned out to be DRM-protected and Winamp wouldn't let me validate them. Windows Media Player did, but didn't let me burn a CD. Well, as it turns out, DRM removal is way easier than coping with DRM. That's the type of security I adore - the one that causes more problems to honest paying users than to pirates. But, there's no point in ranting, the point is that I got the album legally, contributed to its charts positions and most of all, that the music is simply delightful.

Writing my Google SoC application, part 3

A week ago, I wrote and posted my SoC application and was very happy with it. Then I learned the deadline had been pushed by a week and things got a bit crazy.

The first thing to do was to contact the potential mentor and ask him whether it was what was needed. Actually, it was a thing to be done long before. There's a week before the student application period starts for that and then the entire week. But, silly me, I missed that first week. (Wasn't I finishing the operating systems project then? It doesn't matter anyway.)

So I asked. And got answered. That another student had applied for the same project and they preferred him. The project got therefore split into server-side and client-side, the second one being for me, and I had to rewrite my application. I am not as happy with it as I used to be, but well, otherwise I would have no chance of being accepted. Not that the odds are very strong now, OLPC has over 150 applications, and I guess it won't have more than 20 spots, so there can't be two on one project.

Speaking of numbers, there are 175 organisations and 7000 applications. 7000/175=40, so OLPC is high above the average. (I should have applied to Tux Paint.)

Anyway, I did my best and the guy in charge does what he can too, so we can just hope for the best now and wait patiently for the results, which will be announced on April 21st.

Writing my Google SoC application, part 2

Here's part 1 if scrolling down doesn't let you see it and you wonder where it is.

During the next few days, I browsed the OLPC wiki a lot. I also installed my own Sugar: one emulated on Quemu under Windows with a ready-to-use image, and one I compiled myself under Ubuntu (it really does take hours). I tried out DrGeo and made a project that illustrates that the angles of a triangle always sum up to 180 degrees:


I wasn't getting any answer and time was passing, so I started thinking about alternative ideas. For the language and finance teaching software, the competiton had grown. I decided to go for the blogging project - creating a blogging platform based on Wordpress easy enough for the children to use and bandwith-saving (if I have a hard time loading Blogger's home to start posting - how about kids in the bother countries?). Friday - started thinking. Saturday - discussed it with Boyfriend and wrote down a few use cases. Sunday - spent the entire day (excluding: sleeping late, visiting Grandma, going to Church) writing my application and I finished past midnight.

I was quite happy with my application and glad that I was done. All I had to do was now wait patiently for an answer and get back to my school work. Well, I thought so. But I was wrong.

To be continued.

Writing my Google SoC application, part 1

Storytime, kids. I spend most of this week preparing my application for the Google Summer of Code and will tell you a bit about it.

So, on Tuesday, I started looking at the list of organisations and their ideas (they were published on Monday). One definitely stood out for me: One Laptop Per Child. I already wrote about my enthousiasm towards this initiative a few days ago. Although some others had interesting ideas, I decided to stick with OLPC, for two reasons: first, I'm really enthousiatic for it (and would do something for them even without the SoC), and second, with 175 organisations with a dozen of ideas each, you have to narrow it down somehow.

I also registered to their wiki, did a little bit of translating - you can't reach me better than give an opportinity to help with "Only have five minutes?".

On Wednesday, I kinda picked my project. A few ideas looked interesting to me, namely some language and finance teaching software. But, some people already expressed their wish to write these things and had some ideas about it. I had no ideas and didn't really hope for suddenly having any, as I am exhausted and my creativity is dead. Plus, I decided not to get into competition, these people were there first, but to pick something else.

Then I noticed DrGeo, program that lets kids learn geometry. I loved geometry in high school, know SmallTalk and French (in which the program and the documentation are written), and there's a nice to-do list - I decided to go for DrGeo.

Okay, once the project was picked, I had to write the application, and teherefore figure out what exactly I would do. I knew I was able to do whatever was required (if I can just take the Linux kernel's sources, read them and start modyfing them - is there something I can't?), but couldn't really estimate how long each task would take (if you don't pick enough, you won't get selected, if you pick too much, you won't make it and won't ghet the cash) and still was pretty blurry about what was to be done. I e-mailed one of the authors asking for advice about it.

To be continued.

Geek ends the week (happily)

I haven't posted much since Monday, day 1 of a tough week. Here's what I've been up to meanwhile.

Day 2. OS study-party. Few were allowed to participate in this exclusive, invite-only event. (I couldn't just say I had a study buddy over, could I? Nor could as just say "friend" now, there is no rhyme in "friend".)

Day 3. OS study after-party. I love after-parties. Never been to one actually, except for this one. Still, I love them.

Day 4. Morning: studying for the OS exam. Afternoon: Taking the exam. I didn't do bad, but I'm not sure I'm gonna pass either.

Day 5. Playing the Sims 2. My boyfriend bought me the newest expansion pack, "Free time". Now, you know you're a geek when your Sims can play "the Sims 3" and you wonder how deep this recursion goes. Or you make a list of the bugs and the usability issues. Or you pick a different language while installing the add-on just to see what happens. (That's a great idea, by the way, as soon as I have revised my French a bit, I'm switching to German.)

Day 6. Staying at my boyfriend's. We went for a walk as the weather was great and later to the swimming pool. Yep, I've really been lacking sport recently.

Day 7. Staying at home and doing lots of stuff that had been pushed away for quite a long time, like making back-ups. By the way, do you know how great ImgBurn is? I used to have Nero and it kept screwing my blank CDs. ImgBurn is the man! (I mean the app.)

Okay, life is getting almost normal. How awesome is normal?

Wow, 2008 OS for Nokia 770!

The Nokia 770 was born with the 2005 OS. Then came the 2006 OS. Then came the Nokia n800 with its 2007 OS and soon, a 2007 OS Hacker Edition was released for the 770. Then n800 got a new OS, the 2008 one. Here's a picture. Nice, isn't it?

Okay, enough history, hot news coming: there is now a 2008 OS for the Nokia 770! That's like "hacker hacker edition". Announcement here.

Okay, looks cool, BUT:

Extra swap memory is required to get a decent performance, the device reboots from time to time... This release is definitely not recommended to end users and not even to users depending on this device alone. We are releasing it to show how far we have gone but for us this is a proof that the Hacker Edition has reached its limit.

Okay, I'm not reflashing. It's nice to see that the geeks made it work, but I need something stable at the moment. Right now, my rs-mmc card is screwed (the 1 GB one) and I have to use a 64 MB card, which doesn't even hold 10 mp3 files. Plus the browser crashes when I try to log in to the hotspot at school (how annoying!) and I don't know how to fix it without reflashing.

The 2007HE OS is slow enough as it is. I tried to post here from bed the other day. The browser had to be the only program running. The Opera browser couldn't handle the JS Blogger is based on. The Mozilla browser was slow as hell and when after 15 minutes a guest came over, I gave up. It really is pushing this hardware to the limits.

Someday, I'm gonna get a giant new card, install both 2006 OS and 2007HE OS, extend the swap to the card and everything is going to work so great...

What the geek is doing

You might be wondering what I'm doing when I'm not working on my operating systems lab projects. Well, I am studying for my operating systems exam. I set up a personal wiki for that purpose with Wiki on a Stick. By the way, I learned a bit of the wiki syntax, so I will most probably make a good use of it soon.

I am so looking forward for this semester to be over. The operating systems are a real pain-in-the-brain (and a legend in my school). All I wish for right now is pass. They're not my biggest passion, they don't inspire me to anything (ever wondered why there is no post here starting with "hey guys, did you know that the slab allocator..."?). How I long for some high-level programming... And some "code what you want" programming... I fortunately will have those next semester.

So the exam is tomorrow. On Friday, there's the correcting codes exam. I'll start studying revising after the OS. Today is Ash Wednesday. Fasting when you're supposed to study as hard as you can is not cool. (Okay, fasting is not supposed to be cool, by definition.) There's no milk and I can't stand coffee without it... poor little me studying computer science, forced by... er... wait... That's it! I can quit, not have to study OS and have time to buy milk! Still, there's a reason I'm much better off the way things are (better by far).

Flag the bastard! (with cool Firefox add-ons)

I listed my blog on a few blog toplists and decided to see what other interesting blogs are there. One of these sites didn't have an "adults only" section and among the top blogs, many had inappropiate content. I decided to flag them a little bit. Now please don't give me the tolerance speech, flagging a blog doesn't send the authors straight down to hell, see here or here.

The rules are simple: bloggers are free to blog about what they want, readers are free to flag them. Cool. But one of the bloggers disabled the navbar. I'm pretty sure he didn't do it for estethical reasons, as he didn't care for a nice blog template. I felt my right to flag has been violated. I got angry. The dude had to get flagged. But how?

First thing to do, RTFM. A help group led me to The Real Blogger Status, who advised to make a bookmark to the URL "javascript:toggleFlag();". I was too lazy to make a bookmark and only copy-pasted the command in the navigation bar using that blog as a lab rat (intending to unflag it right away, of course). Failed. Still to lazy to make the bookmark and afraid the solution might be outdated, I decided to find my own way.

What is the navbar anyway? Normally speaking, the navigation bar at the top where you can search or flag the blog for example.
Geek speaking:

1. Click down here to activate Colorzilla.
2. Move the cursor here to find out what it is.
3. Get the answer from here: div#b-navbar. So it's called "navbar" and is placed in this div.

Okay, now to the bastard blog. In the Web Developer Toolbar, let's pick "CSS", then "Edit CSS".
What to we have here:

1. Inappropriate content (blurred, kids are reading).
2. No navbar to flag it!
3. A "navbar" iframe (I guess it's in the div mentionned above.) with the "display" property set to "none".

So what did I do?
1. Of course, changed the "display" property. Removing it didn't help, but setting it to "block" did.
2. Flagged the bastard!

I'm not saying it's the best or easiest way or anything. However, Colorzilla and Web Developer Toolbar are definitely cool to have.

Microsoft encourages bad behaviour

I am really concerned about Microsoft's influence on the youth nowadays. It openly encourages swearing and drinking.

I was once using Microsoft Visual Studio and look what I saw in the documentation:

At least, the f-word wasn't entirely written, still, everyone knows what the word is.

The following story is also very concerning:

***Welcome to MSN Support***
<MSN Assistant> Hello how can I help?
<Divination> I recently downloaded msn 6.2 and it has been giving me problems…
<MSN Assistant> Yes, please continue.
<Divination> I can’t stop drinking I think I’ve turned into an alcoholic…
*MSN Assistant has left the conversation.

Not only MSN made this young person drink, which is scandalous in itself, but the corporation denied all responsibility and refused giving any help. What a wrong example for the youth!

You know you do it too much (again!) when...

These days, I'm only sitting at home, mainly browsing http://lxr.linux.no/linux+v2.6.17.13/ in order to find out how to write my prefetching kernel patch and typing a bit. Anyway, kernel hacking all the time.
All the time is too much. It's not right. It's not sane. And you know it when you feel the urge to try this:

/usr/bin/time halt

(The first command measures how long the second one is execuded, and the second one shuts the system down.)
Here's the result:

Broadcast message from root@ubuntu
(/dev/pts/0) at 14:29 ...

The system is going down for halt NOW!
0.00user 0.00system 0:00.05elapsed 16%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k
0inputs+0outputs (2major+379minor)pagefaults 0swaps

Well, I guess this means /usr/bin/time behaves right when it gets a kill signal. But what does it say about my behaviour? (I don't think I wanna know...)

Geek busy again

I'm really busy again and I'm afraid you won't see much relevant content anytime soon here.
This time, I'm working on a kernel patch that does some prefetching. I hope I'll finish this assignment in time and won't have to fix it in March. It's due next Monday and I'm already tired. It's no good when you find solitaire interesting. It's much worse when you wanna switch places with Britney Spears because she doesn't have the operating systems class. I know she's double-divorced, her kids have been taken from her, photographers follow her all the time, she's addicted to smoking, she has family issues, her mental health is questionable, but at the moment, I claim she doesn't know her luck.
Wait, didn't I say I was happy, I wanted this myself and stuff? I still do, but the end of the semester is coming and I'm really tired of it, and my health issues (which I didn't exactly ask for and don't make me as happy as compiling the Linux kernel) don't really help.

Givin'up on UML

The last week was a nightmare. Well, no one ever said it was gonna be easy. On the contrary, the operating systems lab is a legend. Anyway...
I spent quite a few days setting-up User Mode Linux. Compiled it, ran it, made and even better filesystem with a fresh and Ubuntu-suited script. The network didn't work. I spent a day trying to set it up. Nothing. I said "okay, I can live without mc, althrough I really like the built-in text editor as I don't have much experience with Vim or Emachs". Fine. Then make didn't work. One more day setting up the network, as successful as the previous one. I said "okay, I can live without make, I can compile on Linux1 (my machine on VmWare) then copy it onto Linux4" (the third attepmt to UML - don't ask wether I count from 0 or from 1). Fine. Modules didn't work.
This was time for a good lets'-burst-into-tears crisis. One week to deadline and I don't know how much trouble is UML gonna cause. So my boyfriend and I decided to give it up - I would mess with Linux1's kernel. He gave me access to the VmWare console so I could take snapshots and clean my mess.
Fine. Donwloaded a vanilla kernel. Compiled it (you gotta edit the Makefile a bit to compile 2.6.17-13 under Ubuntu, easy to find). Edited Grub and tried to run it. Once. Once again. And again. And again. And again.
And let's burts into tears again.
My boyfriend changes the hard drive on VmWare from SCSI to IDE. I reinstalled Ubuntu. He came over. Half an hour and it worked!
Man, when I think we could have just started off that way... One week to deadline and I haven't started writing the module. I just wasted an entire week.
Okay, gotta be strong now and type as hard as I can.

How geeks behave

My father was recently at a conference when one of the scientists, a great speaker, said he always began his lectures with a joke. So I'm gonna start this post with a geek joke. It doesn't translate really well into English, but you should get my point.

Some geeks are having a party and are only talking about computers. Finally one of them says:
"Guys, let's talk about something else for a bit.
-Like what?
-I don't know... bitches!"
A minute of akward silence. Then a geek finally speaks out:
"You know, my graphic card is a bitch!"

So the other day, I was at school, talking about you-know-what. Some guys were talking about how hard it is to pick up the girls at the dorm when every conversation ends the way it does (see above). So I joined their conversation and reminded them the joke. (You don't tell geeks geek jokes, cause they know them already, you just remind them.) And then I said:

"But you know what? Mine really is! Finding the drivers took me sooo long..."

Everyone laughed and I walked away. I went to have lunch with two girlfriends of mine. Another of our girls was there with her boyfriend, talking about virtualisation. This was pointed out: "My, having lunch with her boyfriend and talking about vitualisation...". Ten minutes later, we were talking about virtualisation ourselves.

Getting organized with my Nokia 770

My concentration and memory have caused me a few troubles lately. And my time planning... I almost never am satisfied with it.m So I decided to use my Nokia and get a bit more organized. Here's what I installed:
GPE Calendar + Ermining to synchronize it with Google Calendar, which I extensively use.
GPE to-do list. Cool for tasks lists, with both categories and priorities. BUT: I have plenty of ideas that are not exactly tasks and putting them on a to-do list is no good idea, because it becomes very messy, and I keep on adding and removing the same tasks over and over as I postpone realising them. That's when MaemoPad Plus becomes handy: it works on SQLite and lets you build a tree, with nodes that can be sketches, text or lists. I use that for a kind of mind-mapping. (There is no real mind-mapping software for the ITs.) That's where things that are more ideas than tasks go, like making a headband with the fabric I used for my latest dress (when the sewing machine will be fixed) or that website with a Scottish pattern as a background (when I have time for that....).
Last but not least, Gnumeric Spreadsheets. Amazing tool! I don't use it to its fullests, it has a nice bit of arithmetics implemented (and add-ons, which I haven't even installed). I just use it to keep track of health-related stuff, like my physical activities (how many times have you been told to write them down to motivate you?)

My new baby

Originally posted: 15 Sep 2007

I got a new baby: a Nokia 770. It's really great and unique: it costs around 100$ and has it's own operating system, IT OS, a a modified version of Debian GNU/Linux. The average user will just click on the colorful icons, the advanced one can modify the operating system!



So, since I have a blog, I'll just post here all the wondreful things I did with my baby. Hey, I gotta find a name for it!

So... I changed the operating system for a start. Because "2007 Hacker Edition" sounds sooo cool. I did it the simpliest possible way:
1. Got the os from http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/
2. Flashed the Nokia with it usung the windows wizard from http://europe.nokia.com/A4144790

If someone prefers the good old Linux command line instead of the wizard, there are plenty of cool thing to do described on http://maemo.org/community/wiki/flasher_tool_usage.html.

Picture credit: florisla.