Tag: in English

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It’s all mathematicians fault

Another math practice lesson. Topic: Fourier’ series. Someone asked the teacher, where’s the point of this rather theoretical excercise.

We (me and my deskmate) had a short theory about that. At first when mathematicians come up with a new idea, it is rather boring for students to learn, because you can’t apply it yet. They’re not satisfied. Then physisists come up with something new and discover that this seemingly pointless theory mathematicians have is useful. They come up with a great gadget and it is used most often by military in a war. Only after people have survived that they can actually use the gadget to make their life easier, better, etc. Now there are new students learning the same thing and… no one explains what is the theory useful for or that most probably some gadget they use wouldn’t exist or work without mathematicians’ work.
And so everyone blames mathematicians.

Besides, was that bee just crazy? I don’t like to play tag with something size of my thumb and a sting. Is the fragrance of mimosa the same to bees as cat thyme to cats? Fortunately it couldn’t go through two doors as fast as I.

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Better later than never

Decided to try out css free design for couple of hours left (5th April being css naked day). I must admit that my main page looks better without design than wordpress.
By the way, wordpress’ admin panel looks confusing without css, it’s all disorganised and sort of logic-free in addition to being css-free.

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Obviously blond enough

I have two operating systems installed on my laptop for couple of weeks now. Windows XP Home being the one shipped with computer and Ubuntu as the other one.
I think I could say that Windows is still the main one I use. I have my mail in Thunderbird Portable and that is for Windows. That’s also where I do almost all of my documents. Title pages for physics practice lessons, tables and charts for same lessons, all come from MS Office. Sometimes I use 2000 version on my desktop computer, sometimes 2007 2-months trial on my laptop. I don’t feel quite comfortable yet with all the menus they changed, but it looks beautiful and opens slow just as you would expect. I also use CircuitMaker in Windows since I can’t quite stand this Dixi program we are supposed to use on Solaris to do our circuits. I think it’s from 97 and therefore quite ancient.
But I’ve wanted to try Linux for a while and with laptop I can be sure that if I mess anything up it won’t affect the main desktop computer that my mum also uses and that I have the recovery cd for Windows to count on.
I ended up with Ubuntu. I like the overall look, though it feels as if it takes longer to boot from Ubuntu than from Windows. Ethernet internet is working, wifi is not. I’m not sure if I have the patience to make it work. Instead of all those card games that Windows installs with Ubuntu has more games that make you use your brain. For example this game where you have to get four in a row, column or diagonally. I haven’t managed to win yet on 7×7 board just to tie once. At the moment I’m using Sound juicer to play an audio cd, as as far as I know Ubuntu can’t play mp3 automatically. My usb flash sticks also don’t work with Ubuntu and it seems to me that it might be a kernel bug, since I also found it in Launchpad system. One other peculiarity is that even though I have set it to hibernate when laptop’s lid is closed it won’t. But that is one of those not so important things. I guess I just have to get more familiar with the ways Linux works.
So you have been wondering why I’m so off-topic considering the post title? Well, while I was surfing Ubuntu forums this morning Ubuntu warned me about low battery so I plugged in the power adapter. I noticed that the battery icon in upper-right notice area remained the same but for some reason I didn’t think about it more and continued to browse. Soon the battery went completely out and I had to shut down. I was quite frustrated since I thought the adapter had broken and I really need my laptop next week. Until I noticed that the extension cord was turned off. Duh! Of course it wouldn’t charge the battery. As I turned it off last evening I should have remembered to turn it back on! So the good old truth: If you want it to work then turn it on :D.