I switched to Colemak about a year ago. It's much better than QWERTY. And in the standard Colemak setup, Caps Lock is replaced with another Backspace key. That's useful.
If your wife doesn't need intensive gaming or complicated environments and only uses a laptop for web browsing, office work or other rudimentary tasks then I would also say go for Linux to save money. You can buy a basic laptop for pittance or, if she doesn't mind the design, just install it on the mac.
I still choose windows because I'm a hardcore gamer and on that front, Linux still disappoints me. If you want to buy a new windows laptop, here's what I did. First look at a competent company, as far as construction is concerned. Then look at the work space the laptop offers and then match specs which, as far as I can see, are not different from the mac.
I got a Toshiba Satellite L500 which is big and wide with a full keyboard, from a company that built my wife's still going eight year old machine. It has a decent CPU, GPU combo that can even run Crysis well. Perfect for my gaming needs.
If you only want one for office work, I'd go with a Lenovo laptop which are usually smaller, has a very comfortable design for long periods of work (I just love the joystick, they have) and they are also a very competent company (my brother has one which he has worked on for several years now). You don't need a very powerful CPU so just pick one of the Intel E brand or an AMD Athlon. And unless some high def video is involved, pretty much any GPU would do. I wouldn't go for less than 2GB of memory either way. And you might want to try breaking a 500GB HD in half and make it dual boot with Linux.
Yeah, I like to hate Microsoft just like everyone else but I'm still a Windows user (Mostly for the games compatibility). And I have still not seen a better solution for writing down lecture notes than the Word/MathType combination. Yes, they are both proprietary software (Which I get free through the university.:) ) but I've been using them for the past two years and I'm faster than the lecturer. Yes, I write as fast as the lecturer speaks and faster than he/she can write themselves.
MathType is quite comprehensive, I don't even use half of what it offers myself, and the whole catch is shortcut keys configuration. You can set up combinations for 'macro' equations (Like Limits) and with two presses of a button call down a set that will take other students a few seconds to put down.
The only problem I found with it so far is a symbol or two it doesn't have (Like the under-tilde not-equal sign) and you have to build yourself and the fact that when you write integrals, the lecturer does the limits first but you have to add them last.
For sketches, graphs and diagrams there is no comfortable solution I found. I either draw them in Word shapes with a pen-mouse, plot the graphs with Mathematica (Best analytical math tool I found) and copy over or just photograph the board and paste the image into my document.
I pay for the ticket to get in. I usually stay out of the theater for as long as possible but those that sit there from the very first minutes are subjected to numerous advertisements, and not just cool new trailers. That is advertising, in a product I payed for. And that is without discussing in-movie ads, sponsorships and product placements.
I have nothing against in-game advertising, mostly because I unconsciously censor them from perception, but also because they can add some realism, as much as I hate to admit it. I mean, when I drive around in [insert racing game here] and I see billboards and adverts, or if there are posters on the edges of football fields, it seems very realistic to me. And it's a reasonable tactic for a publisher to take.
But if it becomes excessive, if the ads are up in my face, interrupting my game and preventing my progress, then I want the price slashed. If I'm still playing this game altogether.
Right, keeping a spreadsheet of all relevant information is one thing that you should do, especially if you're in a strict organization that needs to keep track of every piece of equipment.
Secondly, I work in a university computer lab. Right now, I got about 3 rooms full of computers which are placed against walls and barriers so I give them the lab name, the room name and a sequential number counting clockwise from the door. Hopefully, it'll make more sense to my boss than the last scheme, counting them by order of arrival.
I know of the revamping of engines and remastering of resources but I want a proper clean reboot, if something.
And if you find a Master of Orion revision or port or something, like Gemini Gold or Ur-Quan Masters, I'd sure like to try it.
Yeah. My brother bought that one and brought it home. I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it. Full motion video! On that piece of shit machine! With Mark Hamill! And the dialogue was just awesome.
UFO Extraterrestrials is unrelated to the new UFO trilogy. I played the trilogy about a year or two ago and I remember having truly great fun playing them, just biting my nails waiting for the next installment when I heard it was due.
I only tackled Extraterrestrials briefly but from that encounter I remember it being damn close to unplayable.
I got a kind of beta version of UFO Defense on my WM5 machine. It's kinda buggy but still a time guzzler like always.
And if you liked the original X-Coms and want more I'd seriously recommend getting a copy of the new UFO series: http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/ufo-series
The first one is completely awesome, the second a bit of a downer but the third is also wicked cool. And I'm not talking just mechanics, I'm talking storyline, narrative connections, drama, action, whatever...
Though X-Com, or the UFO series, has been remade recently, and remade very well in my opinion, I would like to see newer, more advanced games.
And if to remake anything, I say remake one of the ultimate classics: Star Control.
I'd also say to remake some of my personal all-time favorites with 'Urban Chaos', 'Privateer' (and remake completely not just redo the graphics), 'Death Rally' definitely, 'Master of Orion/Magic', 'Oni', 'Recoil', 'Star Flight', 'System Shock', 'Dark Reign', 'One Must Fall' (A proper remake this time) and hey, why not the Super Solver Adventures too?
Well, I saw that setup of his some time ago and he might have ditched it. I also heard him mentioning GrooveShark so he might have moved on completely.
A friend of mine is a long time Pandora user and he hasn't stopped when Pandora blocked everyone outside the US. Currently he says Tor helps. If I'm not mistaken, he's using a Tor/FoxyProxy combination but I haven't delved too much into it.
I don't feel like hassling with something if there's an easier, equally good, solution. So now I'm listening to music via GrooveShark. FineTune, Deezer and other services are also available but most are annoying and anti-users, unlike GrooveShark.
I admit, Pandora probably has the best song matching algorithms and GrooveShark's database is quite a mess but it does what it's suppose to do and short of quite obscure albums, I've found everything I wanted.
That is basically what my calculus teacher told me at the end of my first semester.
First of all, I type everything on my laptop, I scan and collect everything I can. I'm not as insane as a triple offshore backup but I do copy my entire school directory to my portable drive and back home every few weeks so backups are available.
Secondly, if someone asked for my material I'd just say they can have a copy, they can't have my hard drive, I can recover anything you ask me to delete, I have more backups at home and if you try to force it I'll make sure it's up on the web by the end of the day.
Thirdly, back to my original sentence. My professor told me that the material he teaches is proprietary. The proofs and ideas were there but he redid everything, came up with more elegant ways to prove and to explain it, hence my notes are his IP. He asked for a copy of mine but didn't ask me to delete them. He only asked not to publicize them. Is that also right? Can he do that?
Currently, I plan to sell the notes as much as I can to the friendly campus notes booklet store and upload everything when I graduate.
The oldies are goldies. Go up on Home of the Underdogs, if the title still sells, they say so.
Other than that, there are some free goodies out there:
Ur-Quan Masters and Alien Invasion, I second those. Still great fun to play. http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
For a space simulator, I love Privateer, and always has. Now, they remade it with the Vega Strike engine and you can get the original with Righteous Fire with enhanced models and they call it Gemini Gold. And it's also cross-platform. http://priv.solsector.net/
Dungeons Runners is a Diablo/WOW kind of Massive Multiplayer Action RPG and you can play it for free or pay for some extra stuff. http://www.dungeonrunners.com/
Nexuiz is a Tron-style first person shooter which is open source and free. http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/
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I switched to Colemak about a year ago. It's much better than QWERTY. And in the standard Colemak setup, Caps Lock is replaced with another Backspace key. That's useful.
Yeah...
If your wife doesn't need intensive gaming or complicated environments and only uses a laptop for web browsing, office work or other rudimentary tasks then I would also say go for Linux to save money. You can buy a basic laptop for pittance or, if she doesn't mind the design, just install it on the mac.
I still choose windows because I'm a hardcore gamer and on that front, Linux still disappoints me.
If you want to buy a new windows laptop, here's what I did. First look at a competent company, as far as construction is concerned. Then look at the work space the laptop offers and then match specs which, as far as I can see, are not different from the mac.
I got a Toshiba Satellite L500 which is big and wide with a full keyboard, from a company that built my wife's still going eight year old machine. It has a decent CPU, GPU combo that can even run Crysis well. Perfect for my gaming needs.
If you only want one for office work, I'd go with a Lenovo laptop which are usually smaller, has a very comfortable design for long periods of work (I just love the joystick, they have) and they are also a very competent company (my brother has one which he has worked on for several years now). You don't need a very powerful CPU so just pick one of the Intel E brand or an AMD Athlon. And unless some high def video is involved, pretty much any GPU would do. I wouldn't go for less than 2GB of memory either way. And you might want to try breaking a 500GB HD in half and make it dual boot with Linux.
Inspired by the XKCD strip: http://eran.geek.co.il/wp/archives/1975
Yeah, I like to hate Microsoft just like everyone else but I'm still a Windows user (Mostly for the games compatibility). And I have still not seen a better solution for writing down lecture notes than the Word/MathType combination. Yes, they are both proprietary software (Which I get free through the university. :) ) but I've been using them for the past two years and I'm faster than the lecturer. Yes, I write as fast as the lecturer speaks and faster than he/she can write themselves.
:)
MathType is quite comprehensive, I don't even use half of what it offers myself, and the whole catch is shortcut keys configuration. You can set up combinations for 'macro' equations (Like Limits) and with two presses of a button call down a set that will take other students a few seconds to put down.
The only problem I found with it so far is a symbol or two it doesn't have (Like the under-tilde not-equal sign) and you have to build yourself and the fact that when you write integrals, the lecturer does the limits first but you have to add them last.
For sketches, graphs and diagrams there is no comfortable solution I found. I either draw them in Word shapes with a pen-mouse, plot the graphs with Mathematica (Best analytical math tool I found) and copy over or just photograph the board and paste the image into my document.
Trust me, I've been doing it for two years.
I pay for the ticket to get in. I usually stay out of the theater for as long as possible but those that sit there from the very first minutes are subjected to numerous advertisements, and not just cool new trailers. That is advertising, in a product I payed for. And that is without discussing in-movie ads, sponsorships and product placements.
I have nothing against in-game advertising, mostly because I unconsciously censor them from perception, but also because they can add some realism, as much as I hate to admit it. I mean, when I drive around in [insert racing game here] and I see billboards and adverts, or if there are posters on the edges of football fields, it seems very realistic to me. And it's a reasonable tactic for a publisher to take.
But if it becomes excessive, if the ads are up in my face, interrupting my game and preventing my progress, then I want the price slashed. If I'm still playing this game altogether.
Right, keeping a spreadsheet of all relevant information is one thing that you should do, especially if you're in a strict organization that needs to keep track of every piece of equipment. Secondly, I work in a university computer lab. Right now, I got about 3 rooms full of computers which are placed against walls and barriers so I give them the lab name, the room name and a sequential number counting clockwise from the door. Hopefully, it'll make more sense to my boss than the last scheme, counting them by order of arrival.
I know of the revamping of engines and remastering of resources but I want a proper clean reboot, if something. And if you find a Master of Orion revision or port or something, like Gemini Gold or Ur-Quan Masters, I'd sure like to try it.
Yeah. My brother bought that one and brought it home. I couldn't believe it the first time I saw it. Full motion video! On that piece of shit machine! With Mark Hamill! And the dialogue was just awesome.
UFO Extraterrestrials is unrelated to the new UFO trilogy. I played the trilogy about a year or two ago and I remember having truly great fun playing them, just biting my nails waiting for the next installment when I heard it was due. I only tackled Extraterrestrials briefly but from that encounter I remember it being damn close to unplayable.
I got a kind of beta version of UFO Defense on my WM5 machine. It's kinda buggy but still a time guzzler like always. And if you liked the original X-Coms and want more I'd seriously recommend getting a copy of the new UFO series: http://www.mobygames.com/game-group/ufo-series The first one is completely awesome, the second a bit of a downer but the third is also wicked cool. And I'm not talking just mechanics, I'm talking storyline, narrative connections, drama, action, whatever...
Sounds Totally Awesome! I'd go for that. Now, Goblin and Unicorn. Fight to the death!
Though X-Com, or the UFO series, has been remade recently, and remade very well in my opinion, I would like to see newer, more advanced games. And if to remake anything, I say remake one of the ultimate classics: Star Control. I'd also say to remake some of my personal all-time favorites with 'Urban Chaos', 'Privateer' (and remake completely not just redo the graphics), 'Death Rally' definitely, 'Master of Orion/Magic', 'Oni', 'Recoil', 'Star Flight', 'System Shock', 'Dark Reign', 'One Must Fall' (A proper remake this time) and hey, why not the Super Solver Adventures too?
Well, I saw that setup of his some time ago and he might have ditched it. I also heard him mentioning GrooveShark so he might have moved on completely.
A friend of mine is a long time Pandora user and he hasn't stopped when Pandora blocked everyone outside the US. Currently he says Tor helps. If I'm not mistaken, he's using a Tor/FoxyProxy combination but I haven't delved too much into it. I don't feel like hassling with something if there's an easier, equally good, solution. So now I'm listening to music via GrooveShark. FineTune, Deezer and other services are also available but most are annoying and anti-users, unlike GrooveShark. I admit, Pandora probably has the best song matching algorithms and GrooveShark's database is quite a mess but it does what it's suppose to do and short of quite obscure albums, I've found everything I wanted.
The angrier they get, the calmer you be and then they'll get angrier and it'll be a whole lot funnier.
That is basically what my calculus teacher told me at the end of my first semester. First of all, I type everything on my laptop, I scan and collect everything I can. I'm not as insane as a triple offshore backup but I do copy my entire school directory to my portable drive and back home every few weeks so backups are available. Secondly, if someone asked for my material I'd just say they can have a copy, they can't have my hard drive, I can recover anything you ask me to delete, I have more backups at home and if you try to force it I'll make sure it's up on the web by the end of the day. Thirdly, back to my original sentence. My professor told me that the material he teaches is proprietary. The proofs and ideas were there but he redid everything, came up with more elegant ways to prove and to explain it, hence my notes are his IP. He asked for a copy of mine but didn't ask me to delete them. He only asked not to publicize them. Is that also right? Can he do that? Currently, I plan to sell the notes as much as I can to the friendly campus notes booklet store and upload everything when I graduate.
I'm Israeli and I think I can say that you can convert to Judaism (and to C). It's just easier if you haven't tried anything else before.
The oldies are goldies. Go up on Home of the Underdogs, if the title still sells, they say so.
Other than that, there are some free goodies out there:
Ur-Quan Masters and Alien Invasion, I second those. Still great fun to play.
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/ http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/
For a space simulator, I love Privateer, and always has. Now, they remade it with the Vega Strike engine and you can get the original with Righteous Fire with enhanced models and they call it Gemini Gold. And it's also cross-platform.
http://priv.solsector.net/
Dungeons Runners is a Diablo/WOW kind of Massive Multiplayer Action RPG and you can play it for free or pay for some extra stuff.
http://www.dungeonrunners.com/
Nexuiz is a Tron-style first person shooter which is open source and free.
http://www.alientrap.org/nexuiz/