Fix Missing Dependencies in Gentoo with revdep-rebuild
This morning I updated my desktop. When I returned, I soon discovered that wmv files would no longer play in VLC or Mplayer. Apparently the file libx264.so.78 no longer existed. Thus began one of those searches that Gentoo sometimes subjects me to, a search to find out why something no longer works (which unfortunately isn’t always tied to an update, but instead just happens). Today, luck was with me. I was able to find a reference to a tool called revdep-rebuild (on the Gentoo Forums). Looking up the tool on the Gentoo documentation page revealed it to be a part...
Ankidroid
The other day I wrote about Anki, a program which displays flash cards at intervals determined by the spacing effect. Although it has many benefits, the portability that is available with a stack of note cards may just be too much of a convince for some people to switch. Fortunately, there’s AnkiDroid. As the name suggests, this is an implementation of Anki for the Android mobile operating system. Almost of all of the same options for studying exist, the same spacing effect algorithm, the ability to type in your answer before seeing the second part of the card, and it...
Anki: An Open Source, Spaced Repetition Flash Card Program
Having started college recently, I regularly have to study. Often this studying takes the form of memorizing information about an image, or remembering the formula that will allow you to find a specific value. I find, as many other before me have, that going with the traditional route of creating flashcards for such studying is quite effective. Of course, me being me, having to keep a stack of note cards with me whenever I want to study simply doesn’t work. However, having an electronic version of these cards, which I can study anywhere that I happen to have one of...
Change the Word Completion Accept Key
OpenOffice has a helpful feature which suggests possible endings to a word that you are typing, something that can really come in handy if you have regular difficulty spelling the word. However, the default key to accept one of these suggestions is the Enter key. I find this to be very confusing because I use the terminal often, and so I am used to hitting the Tab key to get suggestions, thus to make OpenOffice have a more natural work flow, the Word Completion key must be changed. Doing this can be a bit counter intuitive if you except the...
Taxonomy Menu Generation
I like to tag the posts on this site with the categories that they fit in, to make the navigation of the site easier. Of course, for this to be worth the effort, a menu is called for, a menu that contains links to each of these categories so all it takes is a single click to deliver every post tagged for that category. I’ve had such a menu for quite a while - but I have had to manually edit this every time I want to add a new category, which has inhibited me from creating new tags when...