Category Archives: Software

Learning SolidWorks

In order to use the Dimensions 3D printer at TechShop, I needed some 3D CAD software, so I purchased the Student Edition of SolidWorks. In my spare time have been learning to use it. The built-in tutorials are good, but … Continue reading

Posted in 3D Printer, CAD, School & Education, TechShop | 4 Comments

Nonpareil status

Several people have inquired about the status of Nonpareil, so it’s time for an update. There are major changes in progress that are mostly “under the hood.” The released versions of Nonpareil install KML, image, and ROM files in a … Continue reading

Posted in Calculators, Nonpareil | 1 Comment

Sprint Mobile Broadband (EV-DO)

I finally decided to get a cellular data service, Sprint Mobile Broadband (EVDO). Short summary: I’ve only tried using it at my office so far, but the performance is great. I’m getting over 500 Kbps downstream, with round-trip ping times … Continue reading

Posted in Customer satisfaction, Fedora, Hardware | 3 Comments

Nonpareil release 0.78

This is just a minor release to fix build problems.  Two missing semicolons were added to src/kmly.y because some versions of Bison complained about them.  The GDK initialization in src/str2png.c was replaced with GObject initialization, so that str2png doesn’t require … Continue reading

Posted in Calculators, Nonpareil | 1 Comment

Bidirectional Debugging

I’ve often wished that GDB would let me single-step backwards as easily as it can go forwards.  Now UndoDB, a commercial addon to GDB, allows exactly that. It’s not Free Software (or Open Source).  If you’re only going to use … Continue reading

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Fixing Firefox Frustration

For some time I’ve been annoyed with Firefox because every time I try to type an apostrophe or slash into a text box, instead of entering that character, it goes into “find” mode.  In the advanced tab Tools/Options dialog there’s … Continue reading

Posted in Blog/website/news comments, Software | Leave a comment

/home partition recovered

I was able to recover the /home partition from the disk that Windows clobbered a week ago.  Windows overwrote the partition table, and none of the usual methods I’ve used for data recovery were able to find it, nor was … Continue reading

Posted in Disaster recovery, Linux | 2 Comments

Updates to Black Box

The latest version of Black Box now uses icons to represent relfections and hits, and can be played on either the normal 8×8 board with four atoms, or the larger 10×10 board with six atoms. I’m not sure whether I’ll … Continue reading

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Black Box game

The Computer Science deparment at UIS requests of applicants a sample of Java code they have written. They don’t give any particular guidance as to the desired size or complexity of the code. I am submitting a Black Box game … Continue reading

Posted in BlackBox, Computer Science | Leave a comment

FreeNX

I just tried using FreeNX instead of X port forwarding with SSH. The problem with X port forwarding is that if your SSH connection dies for any reason, you lose your X session. You can use the ‘screen’ program inside … Continue reading

Posted in Fedora, NX | 2 Comments