You can use git on a VFAT disk (for example, a USB key) without all of the annoying mode issues, by using the following setting in .git/config: 1 2 [core] filemode = false What I haven’t figured out is how to do force a chmod in this situation; for example, if I create a new script, I was hoping to be able to git chmod +x it. Cream is a very good editor if you’re used to Windows applications.

Deskbar has a really neat plugin which allows you to search your browsing history and bookmarks. Firefox 3 has switched the storage format to an sqlite-based one. I’ve been working on a new plugin to make use of that - so far it’s very enjoyable to use :) » Deskbar_FF3

This one took me a while to figure out, which is reason enough to post it here. First of all, you’ll need aspell-he, as pidgin uses gtkspell (which, in turn, uses aspell) rather than enchant (which supports hspell). There is a patch for gtkspell which gets it to use enchant, but I don’t know of a simple way to get it to work in my distribution of choice, Ubuntu. Now you need a neat little plugin from the Guifications plugin pack, called SwitchSpell.

Due to an exercise in an AI course, I’m forced to confront an old nemesis - C++. Part of the reason is that the exercise contains a time-limited tournament, and the code needs to run very quickly. Another reason is, I guess, the fact that C++ serves as a sort of lowest common denominator in the course (which used, by the way, to be taught in LISP, along with the language).

YNet was running a story on how to use your computer as an alarm clock. Here’s what I do, for our commandline junkies :) Here’s ~/bin/run_alarm.sh: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 #!/bin/bash find ~/music/ -name '*.mp3' -print0 | xargs -0 mplayer -shuffle & MAXVOL=31 TIME=900 for (( i = 0; i <= $MAXVOL; i++ )); do amixer set Master $i > /dev/null; sleep `echo $TIME / $MAXVOL | bc -l` done This basically plays all of my MP3 files, in random order.

I’ve switched to a Nokia 6120 Classic, and I’ve switched my carrier over to Orange. I’m very happy with it: The price is right, at 0 NIS a month (if your monthly bill adds up to over 100 NIS without it, which it does). It’s very small, but has a nice screen and a respectable 2 megapixel camera. It’s “3.5G”, which means it has a very fast internet connection (I’ve clocked over 50kbyte/sec), and the Symbian S60 operating system lets me use it well - it comes with a very, very nice webkit-based browser and RSS reader, and a fast GMail client is a few clicks away.