Post some tweets in an irregular language
posted on 18 July 2009 | shortProblem
Most people use one main language (e.g. English) to post there tweets. But sometimes you really want to post a tweet in a different language. If you just post the tweet in that “irregular” language, most of your followers would not understand the tweet. So you don’t want to bother those people with those tweets. Some people use a second Twitter account to post in another language, but this isn’t very convenient because you’ll have to which between accounts.
Solution
Recently Twitter has changed behavior of @reply system. This change caused that tweets starting with an @username you don’t follow, would not appear in your timeline. A lot of people (including me) really didn’t agree with this change, and protested using the #fixreplies hashtag.
But maybe this #fixreplies problem can solve the language problem. If for every used language a user would exist, users can post a tweet in a irregular language starting with this username. If your friends follow this user too, which means they understand that language too, they will see this tweet, otherwise they don’t.
Language Users
As test I’ve created the @lang_nl user, use this one if you want to tweet in Dutch (Nederlands). If you need another language, feel free to create one. But try to use the same name convention, meaning: @lang_[language_code], with [language_code] the code taken from ISO 639-2 Language Code List, and leave a comment which user you’ve created.
Did you ever think about using a mindmap?
posted on 24 June 2009 | shortIntroduction
At work we’ve been using Visual Mind. It is a mindmapping application, which allows users to capture and organize information in a visual manner.
I really liked the idea of that. So I was looking for a free tool to do this and I preferred it to be a webapp, so it would be easy to access from anywhere. I’ve found these three great tools. Basically they all do the same, all with subtle differences which makes it hard for me to decide which one is best.
Basic features
The basic features are for all mindmap webapps the same:
- Create nodes, child nodes
- Add links to the nodes
- Add icons to the nodes
- Use of keyboard shortcuts
- Importing and exporting maps (in several formats)
- Public and private maps
Mindomo
If I have to pick a winner, it would be Mindomo. Probably the best feature is the nice “home” screen where you can manage folders, public & private maps. The downside is the Office 2007-like toolbar with the tabs, but it actually quite intuitive.
Mindmeister
Another great one is Mindmeister. I really like the way it looks, it is just great! It has a nice sidebar with all tools, but it the beginning it is not very easy to find the correct tool fast.
Mind42
Last but not least is Mind42. The thing I like the most about this one is that it seems to work really fast. If you drag the screen, the map moves real smooth. But it would be great if there where some kind of tool bar for quick access to the most important functions. This would make it easier then using the dropdown menu’s on the nodes.
Tip
All the above tools are free, but when using the free version they show advertisements. I’ve found a small trick to remove these advertisements. You can read about it in a earlier blog post.
Get rid of those ugly blue Firefox menu buttons on Vista
posted on 20 May 2009 | shortProblem
I am a Vista user, I’m not very proud of it but can’t afford a Mac at the moment, and use Firefox as my favorite browser. Works like it should, but I have one problem with it. The menu buttons are in a real ugly blue, see it for yourself:
Solution
I not really in to using themes for your browser, because most of the time they just slow down your system. But for one time I wanted to make an exception.
I’ve actually found a Firefox addon to solve this problem. XP on Vista. If you can’t install it, try to install another version. So after install and reboot your menu buttons look like this:
Additional
If you like the blueish Vista like buttons you can try the Vista on XP addon.
Flag All Those Tweets Read
posted on 17 May 2009 | shortProblem
Every time I switched between Twitter client (client at work, client at home, client on mobile phone) I lost track of which tweets I’ve read. Although it’s not required to read all tweets (see Twitter isn’t email), but I like to do it. I’ve been thinking for a solution to this problem and I think I’ve found one.
Solution
I’ve created a new Twitter account @fattr. fattr is an acronym for ”Flag All Those Tweets Read”. The idea was: Send a direct message to @fattr to flag all current Tweets read. So all tweets received after sending the DM are new.
Realization
Using the PHP Twitter library of Tijs Verkoyen @fattr will follow you back within 10 minutes. This is required to send DMs. The same library will make it possible to log in at website to read new tweets.
Future work
I really need to improve the code of the project and work on the page design. And I would like to promote use of this @fattr idea to Twitter client authors. So on every client you would be able to read new tweets, even if they are tagged by another client/location.
LaTeX on Windows: Installing MikTeX
posted on 11 May 2009 | shortIntroduction
In my graduation year I learned to use LaTeX and I fell in love with it. The output is just so clean and consistent. Meanwhile it has been a while since I’ve used LaTeX, but I wanted to use it again. I had to install everything again because my computer got reinstalled. So I’ll explain you how I did it.
MikTeX
MikTeX consists of an implementation of TeX and a set of related programs. MiKTeX only provides the tools necessary to prepare documents using the TeX/LaTeX markup language; it does not include a text editor or graphical word processor. So it’s the “engine” behind LaTeX. MikTeX comes in 2 versions:
- Basic: This installer (82 MB) contains the most used packages, what will do for most people.
- Complete: This Net installer (3 MB) operates in two steps: Downloading (almost all available) packages (850 MB), and installing them. They both support automatic install of missing packages, but I like to have most of them installed in case I’ll need it so I’ve have chosen for the second option. But I didn’t use the Net installer to download the packages. In the past I had problems doing it this way, and I figured it is much easier and faster to download from a public FTP directly.
MikTeX lists all available Repositories on their site. I’ve used the FTP of the Nederlandstalige TeX Gebruikersgroep. The MikTeX packages on this FTP are in the folder: /mirror/tex-archive/systems/win32/miktex/tm/. So just download the packages-folder to a local drive using your favorite FTP client, and you can use the Net installer (select “Install packages”) to install them.
That’s it, now your ready to roll, for example type…
pdflatex myfile.tex
… to compile your first LaTeX document to PDF.
Online
On the net I’ve found two sites who provide compiling LaTeX to PDF online, both do a great job:
… but I would not recommend using them to edit online.