kinput2 on Linux
Posted on July 28, 2003
It took me awhile, but I finally got kinput2 working on my PC. Kinput2 is kind of intermediary between various japanese laguage servers/daemons and the programs that use japanese text. So far, I only have a program called Yudit that works with kinput2. Yudit is a unicode text editor. Since it is a text editor, it’s not very fancy, but it gets the job done for my purposes. The funny/frustrating thing about kinput2 is that I had it on my system, I just didn’t know how to use it correctly. There is no GUI for it, so I didn’t know how to change settings to get it to work.
What I used to do was go into bash and type “cannastat” to make sure the canna server was running on my machine (Canna is one of the japanese language servers). It would show that it was, but there were no clients. Then I would type “kinput2″ to start kinput, and I would usually get an error saying “error connecting to jserver,” or something to that effect. I turns out that kinput2 was trying to connect to a language server that isn’t on my machine. After searching the net, I finnaly found out that I had to type “kinput2 -canna&”. This has kinput2 connect specifically to the cannaserver and the “&” makes it run in the background as a daemon.
Since then I have used Yudit to do a few assignments for my Japanese class. Below is a speech I am supposed to give today:
デジタル写真
私はハックスマイコスです。
この デジタル カメラ です。
私は ごろ おととし カメラを きました
それから、よく しゃしんを とりました。
フイルムを つきません。
それでら、メモリカードに しゃしんを とります。
コンプーターを つなげって、 しゃしんを つみこみます。
コンプーターで ソフトワアを とって、しゃしんを かえます。
そして、インターネットに しゃしんを あきます。
きりきり 四本 たん三がたを つきます。
私は たてものと アーキテクチャを しゃしんを とって 好きです。
この オーランドに しゃしんを とりました。
よく ダワンタワンで たてものしゃしんを とります。
この ほりわりに ちかいです。
ときどき しぜんも しゃしんを とります。
この 九月 きょねん しゃしんを とりました。
しゅみは しゃしんを とる 大好きです。
ども ありがと ききます。
Digital Photography
My name is Michael Hawkes.
This is a digital camera.
I bought the camera about two years ago.
Since then, I have often used it to take pictures.
It doesn’t use film.
Because of that, it takes pictures with a memory card.
It can connect to a computer and load the pictures.
On the computer, I can use software to change the pictures.
Also, I can put the pictures on the Internet.
It uses 4 AA batteries quickly.
I like to take pictures of buildings and architecture.
This picture was taken in Orlando.
I often take pictures of buildings downtown.
This is near the canal.
Sometimes, I also take pictures of nature.
This picture was taken last September.
Taking pictures is a hobby I like very much.
Thank you for listening.
Of course, my speech won’t have links:-)
St Jude, I pray for your help…
Posted on July 16, 2003
St Jude, I pray for your help
I ask you to help me with:
my job,
my finances, and
with not having a girlfriend.
I pray that you will help me and
I hope I can repay the favor.
Amen.
I pray every day, though usually it’s just some Hail Marys and Our Fathers (a/k/a: The Lord’s Prayer or the Paternoster) before going to bed. However, for the past eight days, I have also prayed to St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes (if I remember correctly). Tonight I will say the above prayer nine times, as I have for for the past eight days.
ASP Linux 9.0
Posted on July 2, 2003
I suppose it is too early for a very thorough review, but I can at least provide some basic first impressions. From the time of my last post, I installed it again, but when I tried to boot it up, it stalled on trying to get the swap partition going. So I reinstalled it again. This time it worked, but I was a bit unprepared for how everything looked and felt.
I had heard that Red Hat more or less created it’s own interface that was supposed to be a compromise between Gnome and KDE. I think that ASp, being a Red Hat derivative, uses that desktop. It’s either that, or a lot of work has been done to Gnome so that it is vastly different than the Gnome I have used in the past. This new desktop has a lot of the functionality of KDE, but still has many Gnome aspects to it, particulary in the directory browser, which seems a lot like Nautilus. There were some problems, however. When I installed it, I chose the wrong mouse. I’ve been using a generic optical scroll mouse, but haven’t been able to find a good driver for it. So during the install I chose a scroll mouse from some company or other (not Microsoft, Logitech, or generic). This was the wrong choice, because when i got to a desktop, it wouldn’t right click at all, scroll didn’t work, though the scroll wheel acted like a button when pressed down, and the left button worked intermittently. It’s also a pain in the ass to graphically choose a new mouse when the mouse you have behaves erratically.
On the positive side, I was able to get connected to the Internet by logging into the root console and going typing adsl-setup. I believe it’s part of the RP-PPPOE (Roaring Penguin – Point-to-Point Protocol Over Ethernet) suite, which is very good for DSL. I also bought an HP DeskJet 3820 printer, so I can (hopefully) use it for the Japanese class I am taking, which has at least 5 composition assignments. This is kind of a big deal for me, because I haven’t used a printer with my home PC (or really needed to) since I graduated from college a few years ago. I got an HP because they have a good reputation for being usable with Linux. I got that setup in under 5 mintues and printed a test page with no problems. I also tried to print a Japanese test page, but that just sent gibberish to the printer. On the other hand, while I installed Japanese language support during the ASP installation, I haven’t had a chance to evaluate how extensive this “support” is. That’s one of the things I will be working on over the weekend.
Overall, once I got it installed, and got the mouse problem solved, I was duly impressed. I haven’t had too much time to explore it thoroughly…to learn the quirks, pros, and cons, but I think this distribution holds promise.
