Computer = instrumentum computatórium, and other recent words translated into Latin

The Latinitas Foundation publishes a 15,000 Latin dictionary of modern words, called the Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis.

Here are some interesting ones:

computer	instrumentum computatórium
cowboy	armentarius
cigarette	fistula nicotiana
engineer	doctor machinárius
amnesia	memóriae amíssio
deodorant	foetoris delumentum
megalomania	effrenata glóriae appeténtia

These would make for a good blog name or album name.

Installing Wikipedia on your mobile device

It's cool to have Wikipedia on your mobile device. It takes less space than you think. There are a few different ways to do it.

Windows Mobile

• What I did was install MDict (free), then the free 860 MB May 2009 Wikipedia (there's also a 2.7 GB version)
• There are a couple of other alternatives that cost money: TomeRaider ($22) and Lexipedia ($20)
• Pocket Wikipedia (free) runs on Linux, Windows, and Windows Mobile. It's smaller than the others (175 MB).

iPhone

• I haven't researched iPhone, but I hear that there are ways to install Wikipedia on it.

MDict with the May 2009 Wikipedia

Babies trailer

For those of you with babies, check out this trailer for a new movie called...Babies.

My new daily schedule

There is so much that I’d like to study, and I’m not getting any of it done. So I’m making this new schedule for myself.

12:30–8:30 Sleep. A nice 8 hours.
8:30–9 Rosary
9–7 Work
7–9 Study. The three books I'm going to focus on are: the Iliad (Book 8), the Bible (Psalms), and Algorithm Design Manual (Chapter 5).
9–10 Free. Checking RSS feeds; puttering around the house.
10–11 Evening prayer; meditation.
11–12 “Free”. Family / exercise / calligraphy.
12–12:30 Random bedtime reading from my large pile of unread books.

Hopefully I can make progress on my reading plan between 7 and 9 pm.

Traditional Latin Mass in Victoria BC

On Sunday I went to something called a Traditional Latin Mass, for the first time. Unlike most Catholic masses today, TLMs are done entirely in Latin (except for a brief English sermon in the middle). The priest faces away from the people for most of the mass. A group of men in the choir loft sings Gregorian chant. The people remain silent throughout.

This is actually how it was done from Catholicism’s early days until the 20th century.

In short, it’s pretty cool.


Yes, Victoria has Traditional Latin Masses: Queen of Peace Parish, 11:45am on Sundays


Get ready to brush up on your Latin!


The priest faces away from the people (ad orientem).

Improving the Fitaly keyboard layout by adding common punctuation

Of the different Windows Mobile on-screen keyboards, Resco Keyboard is one of my favorites because you can customize it: changing the shapes of the keys, moving them around, and changing the look:



I also like the Fitaly keyboard. The placement of the keys is brilliant. It really minimizes the travel distance when typing with a stylus. But an annoying thing is that common punctuation is not on the main screen; they’re hidden away in a secondary screen (for example, $, @, and "):



So I spent an enjoyable evening customizing Resco to re-create the Fitaly keyboard, but redesigning it to include all punctuation available on a standard keyboard:



The customizability of Resco Keyboard is great. Someone should try porting the IBM Shark layout to it.

It’s not Christmas yet—it’s Advent

I just want to remind everyone that it’s not time for Christmas yet—we are currently in a season of its own called Advent. We’re starting the second week of Advent, a four-week period between ordinary time and Christmas. It’s a period of time specially marked out for quietly preparing for Christmas.

So contrary to the holiday ads on TV, it’s not Christmastime quite yet. It’s Advent.

An old but good PDA: Dell Axim X51v

My Dell Axim X30 PDA finally died after 5 years of faithful service. So I picked up another PDA from eBay: a Dell Axim X51v. This was the PDA I lusted for back in 2005 when it was $500; these days, you can pick one up nearly new for $220.

And this time around I got a proper case (Sena) and a good screen protector (BoxWave Crystal—though I hear these scratch easily; the matte BoxWave Anti-Glare may be better).


Like it’s 2005: The Dell Axim X51v with Windows Mobile 5 (A12 ROM).

So I stayed up until 4am on Friday night installing software on the PDA:

1. Any necessary OS patches (for Windows Mobile 5 there are a lot)
2. Calculator (Calc98, free)
3. Photo viewer (Resco Picture Viewer, on Dell CD)
4. Shutdown dialog (psShutXP, free)
5. Wikipedia (860MB, free)
6. Text editor (Flinkware’s Made, free)
7. Loan calculator (MortgageCalc, free)
8. Timer/stopwatch (Simple Timers, free)
9. Screen dimmer (Screen Switch, free)
10. .cab file installer (CabInstl, free)
11. Temp-file cleaner (ClearTemp, free)
12. Launcher (iLauncher, $15)
13. Screen-capture utility (CapSure, free)
14. Video player (TCPMP with Flash plugin, free)
15. MP3 player (GSPlayer, free)
16. Unit-conversion calculator (ConverterCE, free)
17. PDF reader (Adobe Reader, free)
18. Ebook readers (Haali Reader, free; Microsoft Reader, free)
19. Password manager (KeePass, free)
20. File manager (Total Commander, free—check out its "virtual 2 window mode")
21. Notes (Tombo 1.17, free)
22. PIM (Pocket Informant, $20—already purchased for my old PDA)

Stuff I was tempted to buy, but didn’t:

1. Memory optimizer (MemMaid, $25—people find they don’t use it much)
2. System utilities (SKTools, $20)
3. Alternative keyboard (Fitaly, $30—I don’t think I type on it often enough to justify it. I may change my mind later.)
4. Backup (Sprite, $30—I used the trial to do a backup of the fresh system; if I need to do another backup, I’ll go ahead and purchase this.)

AutoMinimizeOutlook.exe—workaround for creeping Outlook 2003 memory usage

A pernicious Outlook 2003 bug is that it gradually increases its memory usage, typically hitting 200 MB. A workaround is to simply minimize the Outlook window—this drops the memory usage down to 15 MB. But who wants to remember to minimize Outlook throughout the day?

I have created an automatic workaround for this, called AutoMinimizeOutlook.exe. This application sits in your system tray. Every 60 seconds, it minimizes any inactive Outlook windows, freeing up tens or hundreds of MB of memory. (Source code for the AutoHotkey script.)

You can control the number of seconds between each check, for example: AutoMinimizeOutlook.exe 30

If you're not backing up your hard drive...

...you should be. Pick up an external USB hard drive for $75 from Amazon (or NCIX.com in Canada), for example, the 320GB My Passport (the four-star WDME3200TN, not the two-star WDBAAA3200ABK), or the fast, shock-resistant 160GB Transcend StoreJet (cnet review).

Next, you'll need backup software. Macs have Time Machine; for PCs, there's a good free one called Macrium Free Edition (reviews 1, 2, 3, 4). It took a couple of hours (if I remember correctly) to back up my 80GB hard drive as a 40GB image on the USB drive. After that, you can open the image as its own drive letter—just takes a few seconds to open.

I plan to back up my hard drive weekly. The ability to restore individual files is useful.

Two useful subtle colors: subtle beige and subtle silver

I find these two colors useful for subtly highlighting information on a web page.

Subtle Beige
#FFFFDD
r=255 g=255 b=221
h=60 s=14 v=100

Subtle Silver
#F3F3F3
r=243 g=243 b=243
h=0 s=0 v=95

Jon's Vacation Routine

I have the week off, and my two goals for the week are (1) catch up on reading (2) catch up on sleep. As Stefan Sagmeister described in his TED Talk on taking sabbaticals, I need to make a schedule, a routine, in order not to dissipate my energies in lounging around.

I'm going to try for the following. I've put down study for the odd hours; the even hours remain free (e.g., keep going on the study, or do something totally different, like check my RSS feeds, etc.).

 9 Wake up
10 
11 Read the Iliad
12
 1 Read Algorithms (Skiena)
 2 
 3 Read Aristotle
 4
 5 Read Physics (Halliday)
 6
 7 Read Math Refresher for Scientists and Engineers
 8 
 9 Calligraphy, exercise
10 Evening prayer, meditation
11 Evening tea with mom
12
 1 Sleep—8 glorious hours

We'll see how it goes.

The "Survival Kit In A Sardine Can" Challenge

I have recently become enamored of the Survival Kit In A Sardine Can, containing 25 survival items, from compass and blade to pencil and tea bag.

My challenge to you: How close can you get to replicating this kit?

I bought a few things from the dollar store and am going to try to assemble this as a little project. Here's what I've got so far:

Survival Kit In A Sardine Can	Jon's Survival Kit In A Soap Dish
sardine can	soap dish
Tylenol	Tylenol
bandage	bandage
alcohol prep
antibiotic ointment
matches	matches
tea bag	tea bag (peppermint)
chewing gum (Big Red)	chewing gum (Dentyne)
sugar
salt
energy nugget (Tootsie Roll)	energy nugget (Werther's Original)
duct tape	duct tape
fire starter cube
paper clip	paper clip
first aid instructions	first aid instructions
fish hook and line	twine
note paper	Post-its
pencil	pencil
razor blade	razor blade
safety pin	safety pin
whistle
compass	compass
reflective signal surface
waterproof bag	Ziploc

Build your own kit and let me know how it goes!

DIY International Pocket Briefcase aka David Allen NoteTaker Wallet

Wouldn't it be nice to have a pen and paper in your wallet? It would be an easy way to capture ideas wherever you are—in a restaurant, on the bus, in the kitchen—wherever. You can buy this sort of thing, but the price is steep. The David Allen NoteTaker Wallet will set you back $89, while the Levenger International Pocket Briefcase is $58 (or $86 with pen).

Or you can make your own. Here's what you need:

• a wallet
• a pad of paper
• a small pen
• duct tape

Affix the pad of paper to your wallet using a few pieces of rolled-up duct tape. Then stick the pen in one of the wallet pockets. You will then have a perfectly good note-taker wallet. Pull it out when an idea strikes you, in grocery lineups, while walking, etc.



Advanced technique: When you need a pen (but not paper), disengage the pen from the wallet while leaving the wallet in your pocket. Now put it back.

For pens, you have a number of good choices, depending on how much you want to spend. If you've got cash to burn, the $20 Fisher Bullet Space Pen has a loyal following, but I think the $33 Lamy Pico is cooler (video). On the cheap, you can make your own "winged" PicoPad-style pen from a ballpoint ink tube and a piece of tape (see below). Or you can just head to an art store and buy a small pen for $3 (like the Pilot G-2 Mini shown below).



There—I saved you 89 bucks.

Alarm Clock Design Rant

I went shopping for an alarm clock for my mother today. Why is it that the largest button is for a function that is never used? I'm referring to the Snooze button. Does anyone use that? Instead of stopping the alarm temporarily and have it ring again in 5 minutes, I want it to stop for today and ring again tomorrow. Isn't that what most people need?

Instead, we have to find a tiny switch and move it to the off position, then back to the on position. And all alarm clocks are like that. Ugh.

Reviewing high school and university science subjects

I learned an awful lot of science in high school and university. And it’s a shame that all of this knowledge from years ago has been forgotten. I’d like to rectify this by refreshing my knowledge of chemistry, biology, math, and physics. And I’d like to use books that are more interesting than what I used in my courses.

For instance,


General Chemistry by Linus Pauling ($9 used including shipping at bookfinder.com)

Why we like it: It’s by Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel prizes.
What you’ll learn: Covalence, oxidation, aldehydes, etc.
Amazon-review money quote: “Linus Pauling's treatise on general chemistry is exciting and interesting.”
Opening line: “The universe is composed of matter and radiant energy.”


Biology by Neil Campbell ($4 used including shipping at bookfinder.com)

Why we like it: It’s widely considered to be the best undergraduate biology textbook.
What you’ll learn: Photosynthesis, DNA, circulation, etc.
Amazon-review money quote: “Many times I forgot to take notes because the richness, depth and flow of the text made me feel like I was reading a novel instead of a text.”
Opening line: “In this very first section, we introduce one of life’s most distinctive features, its order.”


Math Refresher for Scientists and Engineers by John Fanchi ($26 used including shipping at bookfinder.com—get at least the 2nd ed. to get the statistics chapters)

Why we like it: It’s a dozen math courses packed into one short book.
What you’ll learn: Linear algebra, calculus, statistics, etc.
Amazon-review money quote: “It's the sort of book that you can easily read for an hour, cover 20 or 30 pages, and not feel too exhausted.”
Opening line: “Math Refresher for Scientists and Engineers, Third Edition is intended for people with technical backgrounds who would like to refresh their math skills.”


The Feynman Lectures on Physics by Richard Feynman ($57 used including shipping at bookfinder.com—search for ISBN 0201021153 to get the 3-vol set)

Why we like it: We love anything written by Feynman.
What you’ll learn: Relativity, dielectrics, the Schrödinger equation, etc.
Amazon-review money quote: “If you already know physics you can probably breeze through the books pretty easily getting a lot of nice insights, but otherwise you need to be prepared to work hard. ”
Opening line: “This two-year course in physics is presented
from the point of view that you, the reader, are going to be a physicist.”

What textbooks would you recommend (or not recommend)?

How merging works the second, third, etc. time you merge a file?

I asked a programming question on stackoverflow.com for the first time today. I was pleasantly surprised to get an answer in 9 minutes.

My question was about how revision-control systems do repeated merging between two branches. I understand that the first merge is a 3-way merge between two files and their common parent. But I didn't know what happens on the second, third, etc. merge: what are the 3 files involved in the 3-way merge at that point?

Greg Hewgill gave me a great answer—in short, use the two files and their “closest common parent”. See Greg's answer for a nice diagram of this. It was an Aha! moment for me.

Buying glasses online - success!

A week ago I wrote about buying glasses online for the first time. Well they just came in today.



Note the coupon code: TELLAFRIEND, for 20% off.

The glasses seem pretty nice. My eyes are gradually getting used to them. Going to give it a few days before sending in the payment.

Around a lake in Victoria in October

Come with me and I'll take you on a mini tour around Swan Lake near my place in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.



Brrrr! First thing to notice is that it’s cold in Victoria in October. Good thing you’re wearing that sweater and warm jacket.



A neat thing about Swan Lake and other nature sanctuaries in Victoria is that you’ve got all these nice bridges and old wooden structures. They’re a part of my childhood.



This little bog feeds into Swan Lake. I wouldn’t recommend swimming in it. Ducks like to eat the green stuff though.



It’s definitely fall—everything’s orange except for the evergreens. OK let’s head home for some hot chocolate!

Is it cloudy and chilly back where you live?

X-Acto Personal Paper Trimmer

I picked up this X-Acto paper trimmer at Staples for 15 bucks. Basically it cuts a straight line through paper up to 12" wide. I don’t use it often, but when I need it, it’s a pleasure to use.

Simply apply a little pressure to the knob, then slide it across the paper.

30 Essential Typefaces for A Lifetime

My bro recently blogged about the book 30 Essential Typefaces for A Lifetime which is a survey of 30 important typefaces.

Here’s the list. The ones installed on my computer (woefully few) are in bold:

• Sans-serifs: Akzidenz Grotesk, Avenir, Bell Centennial, Bell Gothic, DIN, Franklin Gothic, Frutiger, Futura, Gill Sans, Helvetica, Meta, Myriad, Trade Gothic, Univers and Vag Rounded.
• Serifs: Adobe Caslon, Adobe Garamond, Bembo, Bodoni, Clarendon, Courier, Excelsior, Lucida, Minion, Perpetua, Sabon, Stempel Schneidler, Times New Roman, Trajan and Walbaum.

I hope you have more of these gems than I do.

Microsoft Word has a nice outlining tool built in

Sometimes when I’m writing code, I need to check a tree of function calls. It can be tricky to remember which nodes I’ve checked and which I still need to check. Tracking my progress on paper or in a text editor doesn’t work very well. Sometimes I would use a diagramming tool (bubbl.us) to build out the tree, but it’s cumbersome.

It turns out that Microsoft Word has a great outlining tool built in. You can add sibling and child nodes very quickly (by pressing Enter or Tab). And you can easily cross out items that are done.

I’m a fan.

Buying glasses online - the experiment begins

Ordered some glasses online from clearlycontacts.ca. My optometrist would not give me my PD measurement. Fortunately there are ways to measure your PD yourself—I like Ken's Post-It method. ClearlyContacts (or CoastalContacts in the US) is cool because you can try glasses on a photo of yourself, you can return the glasses if you don’t like them, and all lenses are antireflective, antiscratch, and UV. My frames and lenses came out to $100, but because of the high prescription I opted to pay another $100 for an ultra-thin lens. $200 ain’t bad for a pair of glasses.

Here’s me trying on some Guccis.

Recharging on Sunday: Physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual

According to author Matthew Kelly, this is a good way to spend a Sunday:

Fill the seventh day with enriching experiences that bring new meaning and depth to your life…in each of the four areas of legitimate need—physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.

Here’s what I’m doing in each of the four areas today:

• Physical: Going for a walk up nearby Christmas Hill.
• Emotional: Took my mom out to a Chinese buffet.
• Intellectual: Read five chapters aloud from the Book of Psalms.
• Spiritual: Went to mass at St. Andrew’s Cathedral.

What activities are you doing today to recharge?

Type Drop

For his typography project my brother is dropping eggs stenciled with Helvetica Condensed from 50 feet.

Automatic photo resizing for Mom’s webmail [Windows]

Mom asked me how to attach photos from her digital camera to her webmail. I showed her, but we waited an annoying amount of time for the five 3-MB photos to upload. Googling around a bit, I found a great free utility called Shrink Pic. It magically resizes photos down to 50-150kb. Works for both webmail clients and desktop email clients. It’s totally automatic—Mom doesn’t know it’s there (other than an icon that appears in the system tray).

Mini Kitchen Scale

This is one of the most useful $8 purchases I’ve ever made. It's a small kitchen scale. It weighs things up to 450g (16oz). I use it to weigh my cereal in the morning (55g of Mini Wheats). But it’s also come in handy for determining how much postage to put on envelopes and parcels.

Executor is better than SlickRun

Executor and SlickRun are keyword launchers for Windows. With a hotkey, you pop up a window and enter a keyword representing a webpage or desktop application to launch.

I’ve been using SlickRun for three years. But yesterday I switched to Executor. Why?

• Unlike SlickRun, it's under active development.


• It shows an auto-completion drop-down.


• SlickRun sometimes caused my windows to go all flickery after launching a keyword.


• Executor also looks cool.

I exported my keywords from SlickRun, massaged the output a bit, then imported them into Executor. Someone should write a conversion utility for this.

Almonds + Apples = Yum

Today I discovered that thin slices of apples go nicely with almonds.

Try it as a snack.

The sad state of window management in today's operating systems

Window management hasn't changed much since the Xerox PARC days. They are still these overlapping rectangles that hide other rectangles. I currently have 19 windows open, and only 3 are visible (full screen on 3 monitors). I cannot tell at a glance which monitors the other 16 are on.

Surely there must be a better way to manage all of these applications—all of these contexts—that are open on one’s computer screen. Surely some clear-thinking soul has thought up a second way to manage this plethora of rectangles—some way that is easy and natural, that doesn't involve hiding windows behind others, losing your focus and context in the process.

Sigh.

Meanwhile, I am fighting the problem of multiple window contexts with a variety of approaches:

• Desktop Sidebar. This sidebar keeps the time, mini calendar, system statistics, a mini web-browser, and (most importantly) a mini notepad always in view.


• mIRC. This IRC client has a text-to-speech feature that lets me hear what people are saying, even if the window is hidden behind other windows. This saves a bunch of real estate.


• Executor. This command line pops up with a hotkey, and lets me launch predefined shortcuts (with parameters) for web pages and applications. SlickRun is similar, albeit no longer developed.


• MaxiVista. This lets me use a spare computer as a third monitor. It doesn’t solve the root problem, but it alleviates it a bit.


• Alt-Tab Powertoy. A slightly better Alt-Tab. In addition to showing you a bunch of icons to choose from, it shows a thumbnail of the window for the selected icon. Not sure if this helps much.


• iswitchw. This tool lets you switch to an open window by typing a few letters in the window title. For example, to get to my Putty window, I do Alt+w put. Saves one’s mental health.


• A script for moving the active window from one monitor to another when I press both mouse buttons. I use this a lot.


• VirtuaWin. A virtual desktop. Having too many virtual desktops confuses me, so I just have two: my main one, and an alternate universe that I switch to when someone interrupts me with a question and I don’t want to mess up my window arrangement.

It’s an ugly set of interactions, but it helps. Sorta.

Many of us live in our computers, so there must surely be a connection between a chaotic ecosystem of windows in which one cannot find the window one needs, and one’s mental health.

So for the health of our world,

for the sanity of humanity,

someone please give us a better way to do window management.