My first report goes in style with LyX

I'm finally very happy about being able to give my first report for Software Architecture in style! In fact, I've used LyX (pronounced 'licks').

So what's LyX? It's just a simple word processor which does "What You See Is What You Want", and not "What You See Is What You Get", as with other word processors. To put it simple, it's a simple word processor with pre-defined styles for headers, footers, paper format, font size, and so on. You don't change them. You only bother about your content. And then apply the pre-defined styles to your text! After all, is it not that content is the most important thing?

LyX is a graphical front-end for LaTeX (pronounced 'la-tek'), a markup language for TeX (pronounced 'tek').

Safari: exploring the net

A few weeks ago, Apple announced the public free release of Safari, it's legendary web browser. As an enthusiast, I downloaded it. And started to adventure on the Internet to see what's so amazing at it.

Safari's website claims that it's got major advantages. I do admit that Safari's indeed faster than any other web browser I've used; may it be for surfing or for downloading. Of course, it's not going to beat a download manager which supports threads!

The other feature which I think is new is the idea of 'private browsing'.

I get all the other features in my favourite Mozilla Firefox on the other hand.

But I've got a question: why has Apple made a release for Windows? And not for any distro of Linux? Well, I think it's following the same concept as it did for iTunes. Apple wants to make Windows users shift from their OS to Mac OS.

So how does it do so? Simple:

1. introduce some new idea
2. work well on the graphics part - that's what every user want nowadays
   
3. make things as simple as possible
4. don't give too many options that will overwhelm users
5. make it free!
   

So saying, I don't find the download rate in Safari nor the status bar to know what's happening, like a page is loading, it's fethcing some images so I should wait, etc. (Not to confuse with the percentage a page has loaded!)

Discover Gaim: a multi-protocol Instant Messenger (IM) client

May I chat with friends who use Yahoo! IM or Windows Live IM on a Linux platform? That's the question I've been asking myself for the past few days. Luckily, there's some whole bunch of IM available to do this. I've been marvelled by Gaim: a multi-protocol IM client.

The main advantage as compared to other IM clients is that I may log on using the same client instance for accounts on Yahoo!, Windows Live and ICQ at the same time! Isn't that fantastic?! Gaim also supports other protocols as well.

I'm using version 2.0beta6 for Debian archives, the install package used by Kubuntu, from http://download.ubuntu.pl/_Edgy_Eft/gaim/2.0.0-beta-6/.

If you're using Gaim 1.5 for Windows, you might expect some problems: it would crash for Windows Live accounts. Just download an updated library dll at the project's bug tracker.

I've not yet tested if the problem persists for 2.0beta6 version for the Windows platform - a bit of laziness from me - yuk!

Happy chatting!

Discover Audacity, a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds

A friend of mine was looking for some great application to record his voice and play it for his little adoring girl when he's not at home. We searched the net for the right software, but many were not available freely and were just packed with too many features that we're never gonna use. Moreover, they were not intuitive to use.


So here comes Audacity: a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds, available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems!

It has an intuitive GUI (Graphical User Interface) and is packed with many essential features. With Audacity, you may:

• record from microphone, line input, or other sources
• import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files
• apply a wide array of effects like chorus, flanger, echo, phaser...
• record any sound on your sound card (through wave, CD, line in, AUX...) in crystal-clear quality

Who says that on a Windows system you're limited to the 60 seconds recording allowed in the crap Windows Sound Recorder? No more now!

Audacity is shipped with many Linux distros including Ubuntu.

Exit Windows Vista and removing Windows Vista boot menu items

OK well, Windows Vista RC 1 has a long way to go. So better remove it, right? So I just formatted the partition hoping that I will boot in Windows XP automatically. But oops! The Windows Vista boot menu showing options to boot in 'Earlier version of Windows' or 'Windows Vista'.

I downloaded a software called Vista Boot Pro to remove the Vista bootloader. And it works! Great!

Enter Windows Vista RC 1

I finally decided to download and test the upcoming Windows Vista OS that Microsoft's been promising for more than a year.

Last month I was able to download the RC 1 version; RC 2 had been removed from Microsoft's servers. I've been given a license number that may be used on 10 computers. And unfortunately, the license expires on 1^st July 2007... And once the software is installed, I have 14 days to activate it, else some things won't run...

There's an excellent review of the new features of Windows Vista at Wikipedia.org. Here's my personal addition though...

The good

• There's a lot of transparency effects on menu bars
• There's some nice fading animation when minimising and maximising windows
• The gadgets seem OK
• Nice Flip3d
• New Internet Explorer has tabs
• New 'cooler' font
  
• Here's my desktop:
  

• I also like the snipping tool that's good to take part of the desktop's screenshot.
  

The bad

• Flip3d is not new; it's a package that exists since a long ago in Linux distro and used in Mac OS X Tiger
• Gadgets also is an idea from Mac OS X
• Tabing was introduced by Mozilla Firefox
• Though the Windows sound setup plays 5.1 surround sound, Windows Media Player 11 does not do so. It plays tracks in 2.0 only!
• My Wanadoo USB ZTE modem drivers are not compatible, so I can't connect to the Internet (more precisely it's the PPPoA WAN adapter that doesn't work)
• The new font resembles more like the one used in Mac OS X

Enjoy Vista while it's free! But don't spend on it!

Or more: test it to see why you shouldn't buy the final version!! Use a Linux distro...

Using Windows Live Messenger with other email address accounts

No need to have an email address of the type Hotmail.com or MSN.com to use Windows Live Messenger! You can use the Live Messenger with your existing email address, whether it's of GMail, Yahoo! or any other email address.

By following the steps, you register your email address with the Microsoft's Passport Network service.

The only hic in the Live Messenger: you can't check your mailbox, write new mails, see your contacts in your email's address book...

Step 1: Go to http://www.passport.com

Step 2: In section "Use an e-mail address you already have", click "Get started"

Step 3: Enter your existing email address and any other relevant details

Step 4: Click "continue"

Follow any other steps required.

In Windows Live Messenger, enter your email that you registered and password.

Bingo! Have fun :)

Windows filesystems better than Linux!

Yes, according to me, Windows filesystems are better than Linux!! I made a bad experience a while ago when my Linux box crashed.

As I stated earlier, I cannot boot on Linux. However, I would greatly want to recover some data found on that partition. So I downloaded a small application called Ext2 IFS. This application is just great since it mounts the filesystems that are used in Linux under Windows. Like this, I get new drives when I click on My Computer in Windows. Then, I am able to read or write to EXT2/EXT3 filesystems!

So far, so good. However, here's my bad experience. Since my Linux OS crashed, EXT2 IFS could not access the EXT3 partition! In fact, EXT2 IFS gave me the error message "The disk in drive X is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?". When I looked up what caused this on its website, I found out that I could diagnosis this issue by downloading and running another program called moundiag.exe. When I ran it, I got another error saying that my EXT3 filesystem has some flag set that EXT2 IFS does not yet implement, and that there are some transactions left in the journal. However, if the Linux OS had shutdown properly, I wouldn't have such problems.

So, my only hope is to re-install a Linux OS without deleting my data.

As such, the EXT2/EXT3 filesystems are not as "recoverable" as that of FAT, FAT32 and NTFS that are used in Windows. Whenever the Windows OS crashes, files on the partition may still be recovered by mounting the drive in Linux or mounting the hard disk on another computer.

So Linux users, beware! Don't let your Linux OS crash!