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Status report

Kathy and I had a lot of fun with the videoke thing this evening. We
tried Tragedy among other old songs. It was kinda funny seeing how we
knew a lot of the old songs but few of the new ones. I felt slightly
guilty about not taking Jerome’s call but reason that I rarely get to
bond with my sister like that.

By the way, I’m typing this in dasher. I think Eric will be very glad
to see it tomorrow. He was absent today because of a headache and
missed all his classes. I think I rather missed chatting with him. In
terms of funky research, that is.

I received coke’s card and quickly wrote him two limericks. It was
nice hearing from him. I’ve been remiss in terms of friendship — I
haven’t met Martin in ages!

Status report: Research

Gesture-based input on Linux is still haphazard, and I haven’t found
anything particularly taking advantage of FingerWorks or allowing easy
cross-application scripting. Fake per-application keypresses seem to
be the best bet, but I can’t quite get Xgesture to compile yet – let
me just grab the libXtst-dev package. I think that might be the best
way to approach it. I’ve gotten quite used to rotate-CW to close a
browser window and foursfingers to scroll; now all I need is a
next-tab without closing, and I’ll be all set for funky gesture
navigation. I really just want to blog with a gesture, though. I
wonder how that can be done.

Bringing candies for the midterms was a big hit, with one student
explicitly mentioning this as a Very Good idea. I think some people
think better when they’re eating; I know I like munching on something
while I program. That said, I’m seeing a disturbing number of careless
mistakes. Fortunately this is an irregular course, so at this point I
can help people decide whether they really want to get into computer
science – knowing the exactness and discipline that will be required
of them – but still… I think I should’ve started with the reading
exercises earlier.

Some way or another, we’ll manage.

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/1605

On This Day...

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  • 2011: Emacs 24 and the package manager — Update: Added (require ‘package) – thanks, Ryan! By default, the Emacs 24 package manager (M-x package-list-packages) points to a small repository [...]
  • 2011: Weekly review: Week ending January 14, 2011 — From last week’s plans Work [X] Finish up on project S [X] Start testing project M [...]
  • 2010: Microblogging talk — I’ve promised to give a short talk on microblogging for the knowledge and collaboration community (KCBlue) at work. Might be [...]
  • 2009: Diminishing returns on cat affection — Click on the image to view a larger version.
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  • 2008: Planning a talk! =) “”Networking 2.0: Blogging Your Way Out of a Job… and into a Career” — So it looks like I might be talking at the next Concordia University alumni event. Wouldn’t that be cool? Thanks [...]
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  • 2007: What people don’t know about me — Toronto uber-girl-friend Quinn has just tagged me with the “5 things people don’t know about you” meme. Ordinarily I’d stick [...]
  • 2007: Returning to chess — I’ve missed playing chess. The chess books I’ve had since grade school are still on the bookshelves, waiting to be dusted [...]
  • 2007: My sister’s in love! — Synchronized movie dates, daily webcam chats, endless retellings of favorite moments—my sister’s in love, and distance is not a problem! They’re really [...]
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  • 2007: BBDB: Print birthdates — This snippet goes through all the records in my Big Brother Database, prints out birthdate and a link to the record, [...]
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  • 2005: Squeak talk — - Luca, from Italy. Been in Japan for 1 year. 4 months in Tokyo. Lived in Sendai. Working as a [...]
  • 2005: TLUG meeting: Knoppix — Today we have two presenters talking. Before we do that, we usually have new faces give a short introduction. - Craig. [...]
  • 2005: Planner poetry — I’m up to here with things to do   And buried under data The notes I keep all filed away,   The tasks—I’ll do them [...]

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