robotgeek » Mac OS X and Apple http://www.robotgeek.org/blog Still only human Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:31:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 The week that was http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/05/08/the-week-that-was/ http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/05/08/the-week-that-was/#comments Sun, 08 May 2005 11:06:17 +0000 robotgeek http://robotgeek.freefronthost.com/blog/?p=60 Well, what a week…

Tiger got released. The whole Mac world went crazy!! Anyways, I still can’t afford to pay 69$ for an OS! If anyone is willing to give a poor grad student some money… :)

Anyways, for some strange reason, I was unable to get Pyro working on Mac OS X. So, I removed the Fink installation on my ‘/sw’ by doing a ‘sudo rm -rf /sw’ . Turned out that my Fink installation had grown to about 1.5 GB. Sounded like a mini-Linux installation. So, I thought, why not install Linux and dual boot my Powerbook. And so I did.

I downloaded the Ubuntu Live CD from www.ubuntulinux.org and tested it out. Everything worked fine, so I thought I should install ubuntu on my powerbook. It seemed logical because ubuntu has already done what I would do…upgrade kernel and stuff like that, save me the extra trouble!! Everything worked out fine, and the ubuntu forums helped out a lot.

I thought I had to reformat my hard-drive, but due to the partitioning scheme I used last time I installed Linux on my Powerbook, I did not have to repartition or anything. I just backed up the data on that drive, and away we went!! The nice part is I can access the Linux partition from OS X. What’s better is that I can run my Mac OS X from within Linux, without rebooting thru the use of “Mac on Linux” emulator!

I also managed to compile player, stage,gazebo and pyro, though there is some problem with the stage simulator. Have to figure that one out! Will be posting screenies after a while!

]]> http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/05/08/the-week-that-was/feed/ 1 vi, emacs or pico? my answer http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/15/vi-emacs-or-pico-my-answer/ http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/15/vi-emacs-or-pico-my-answer/#comments Fri, 15 Apr 2005 13:40:21 +0000 robotgeek http://robotgeek.freefronthost.com/blog/?p=54 Some of the most heated debates occur on the best text editor to edit with. I have pretty much used nano/pico most of the time, but it a very simple editor. I find it difficult to move around my code. So, pico kind of sucks unless it’s for small changes here and there. Of course, there’s smultron which I use all the time, but i don’t like switching between apps to see what’s happening.

Next emacs vs vi:

My major problem with emacs is that I like my keys and use them all the time to move around my Apple. There are too many shortcuts which clash. Also, the problem with the meta keys. so no.

vi, similiar key bindings no matter whereever u go, linux, unix or mac. no intereference with apple shortcuts. small and powerful .

So, VI it is!!

]]> http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/15/vi-emacs-or-pico-my-answer/feed/ 0 OpenOffice 2.0 Beta Rocks! http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/01/openoffice-beta-rocks/ http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/01/openoffice-beta-rocks/#comments Fri, 01 Apr 2005 14:13:52 +0000 robotgeek http://robotgeek.freefronthost.com/blog/?p=40 I received a brand new machine yesterday. It’s a 2.6 Ghz machine with 512MB ram, and currently that is the machine that I use to work on in the lab.

First thing I did is put Firefox on it, got Filezilla. Then I put Openoffice 2.0 beta on it. Installation was a snap. Finished in less than 2 minutes.

Firstly, interface…awesome work. More intuitive than 1.1, looks and feels like Microsoft Office (yeah, get people using Office to move to Word, for their own good)

But you can’t beat this feature… Go to Tools, Options, Load and Save -> MS Office, and enable check boxes for compatibility to save in MS Office formats.
Like conversion of Math Formulas converted to MathType (a.k.a Equation Editor). My professor asked me to type something up. And I did in OpenOffice.org, saved it as an .doc, and it opened perfectly, flawlessly in Word, with equations, diagrams made in OpenOffice draw open flawlessly in Word, Powerpoint etc.

I am just waiting for the Mac OS X port to become more active. Too bad I dunno much of C++/Java and also don’t have loads of time! Maybe later.

]]> http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/04/01/openoffice-beta-rocks/feed/ 1 Cocoa Development http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/02/17/cocoa-development/ http://www.robotgeek.org/blog/2005/02/17/cocoa-development/#comments Thu, 17 Feb 2005 10:37:47 +0000 robotgeek http://robotgeek.freefronthost.com/blog/?p=18 I am tired of using Windows. Last week, I tried to burn a CD. Windows crashed, and screwed my blank up. I tried doing it today, on a different computer. It crashed again, and luckily, din’t screw up my CD.

Been thinking of writing some apps which I need. I am gonna learn cocoa in summer, and try and finish off these apps. Of course, it will all be open source. And only for Mac OS X.

1. A good ftp client for OS X, with job queueing facilities ..most probably based on lftp .
2. A news reader, similiar to Tofu, which I like very much, but lacks a couple of features. Like displaying image files (resized maybe, and clickable links..which might be cached, so that after your reading session, you may open it up in your favourite browser)
3. Maybe a better text-to-speech convertor, maybe using some neural networks? ( this is big..will take a lot of time!! )

On another note, also have to right a Firefox extension to right-click and view selected text in tofu.

Right now, i just have too much work with my thesis and stuff going on. Summer should be relatively easier on me!

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