notes on x11

x was originally developed in mit in '84 on system v, with the goal of not having much hardware dependence; the version 11, x11, appeared in sep '87

x386: the first x windows system based on intel 386 cpu, '91, based on x11r4, later became proprietary

'92: xfree86 (cf x-three-86): open source successor to x386; maintained x11r6

x.org: took over from xfree86; x11r6.7 onwards; '05: x11r7

xdarwin: apple's implementation of x server in os 10.3 and before, based on bsd

x11.app = xquartz: apple's implementation of x server for os 10.4 and later

in 10.4: x11r6.6, based on xfree86 4.4

in 10.5: x11r7.2, based on x.org




x server: for local user, handles local machine (monitor, mouse, keyboard, etc)

x client: remote server; creates data for plotting

window manager (e.g., gnome, kde): contains software for x client

startx: a shell script to set up x server, get parameters from x client; then xinit

xinit [client option]--[server/display option]
(eg xterm)

spring equinox

looking at the west; sun setting at about 6pm

it's a holiday in japan, as well as the persian new year (which makes a lot of sense!)

new mac

with so many troubles with the macbook, the company that sold me the laptop agreed to give me a replacement. after waiting for few weeks, the new one finally arrived.

when i turned it on, i selected to use the migration assistant to transfer data from the time machine. it worked remarkably well (note: both computers need to be set to use the ethernet in case they are connected by an ethernet cable) -- most of things got copied over. i only needed to set up the mouse, printer, network setting by hand. some non-apple-native applications that i installed in the application folder, such as topcat, gimp, also needed re-installation. i was happy to find out that instead of iwork+ilife '08, they gave me iwork+ilife '09.

pretty soon i realized there were some problems:

• grab didn't work perfectly: when trying to grab a sm window, all i got was an image with the bar on the top, and blank everywhere else (NOTE: it turned out that downloading the latest x11 from xquartz project fixed (?) the problem...)
  
• finder didn't work: i couldn't find pdf files that i knew exist (NOTE: it turned out re-indexing spotlight solves the problem)
• java didn't seem to work perfectly; some java programs worked, but topcat didn't
  

are these due to the settings i had with the previous laptop? not sure...probably will have to do a re-installation, then copy data from the backup disk. sigh...

chandra

just finished reading the biography of subrahmanyan chandrasekhar by kameshwar wali. this is an excellent biography, written with great care, clarity, and authority, as the author was apparently a close friend of chandra's, and over the course for the preparation of the book, he and chandra had numerous conversations. it vividly recounts the life of a great astrophysicist and a humble person, his days in cambridge, his migration to the university of chicago, and his long term service to the astronomy community as a distinguished editor of the astrophysical journal. chandra's view points are revealed through his own letters, especially correspondences with chandra's father and family. the last chapter of the book contains several conversations between the author and chandra, and serves as a good source to further understanding the mind and thoughts of the master.

the book on amazon

a conference on dark energy

http://member.ipmu.jp/darkenergy09/welcome.html

hosted by the institute for the physics and mathematics of the universe (ipmu), in june '09, in the kashiwa campus of the university of tokyo

i made the webpages, with the help of the beautiful picture of odaiba taken from here

badmington

每球獲勝者得分 並取得發球權

單打時 發球者的分數為偶數時 站在右邊發球 單數則在左邊發

雙打時 發球隊的分數為偶數時 由右邊球員發球 反之則由左邊球員發 若得分 則發球員移到另一邊
的發球區發球

table tennis

11分的比賽 每人發兩球
21分的比賽 每人發五球
若是打成10平 或是20平 則每發一球便交替發球 直到一方領先兩分為止

不論發球者 贏球者得分

the curious case of benjamin button

a very touching movie

directed by david fincher, who has worked with brad pitt for several movies (fight club, seven)

the music is great; a playlist of the soundtrack is on youtube

iweb '08

some random tips

• even for "blank" template page, there are 3 sections: header, body, and footer. one can turn on "view -> show layout" to see the boundaries of these
• use the inspector -> page layout to set the dimension of the page, and each of the sections
• to put a textbox inside footer area: create the box in the main area, then option+click it to drag it to the footer, then delete the original box
  
• there doesn't seem to be a way to group objects together as in powerpoint
• there's no way to make tables in iweb; alternatives are using either pages or keynote (or the like) to generate tables, and copy and paste to iweb; however, iweb will treat those created by keynote as images, while treating those made in pages as text boxes
• when iweb is started, it's not possible to stop the annoying pop up window asking if you want to join the damn mobile me service from appearing. (in iweb '09 now there's an option to disable this window)
  

although there are certain respectable features of iweb, but given the absence of some important tools, plus my bad experience with macbook thus far, all the glorious lines in apple's ads just seem pompous and even disgusting...